Many social software vendors run on a purely software-as-a-service (SaaS) based model, where the data is hosted offsite and users access applications using a web-browser. Many companies find this a desirable option, especially when users trade a lot of non-sensitive information.

Embarq, however, knew that its people wanted to talk about product development and other R&D related projects over a social software platform, so it wanted to own the servers housing the data. While Embarq looked at purely SaaS collaboration vendors, it settled on Jive because the vendor offered the option to hook a special collaboration server up to Embarq's existing infrastructure, and Embarq could purchase licenses as they needed them, Stafford says.

Jive includes profiles for each user to upload his or her picture and list expertise. Each site you set up within Jive has the capability for blogs, wikis and discussion forums on certain topics. You can tag and search for information, making it easily discoverable later.

According to Stafford, the Jive platform at Embarq is in the "early stages of maturity," but they have doled out 1,000 licenses to date.

Executive Buy-In Is a Must