Saba Summit in Three Words: Social, Talent, HD Video

By Jim Lundy

Saba held its annual customer user group meeting this week in Miami Beach, Florida and there are three words to summarize what we saw: Social, Talent and HD Video. There were a number of announcements on product introductions. This Blog is about the event and what we saw. We will also be releasing several Aragon First Cuts with analysis of some of the new products and services.

The Buzz on Social, Talent and Video

On the opening day of the event, Saba announced the acquisition of Human Concepts, an organizational modeling firm whose offering will complement and augment Saba’s Talent Suite. While that was interesting, the buzz was really about the new products that Saba was introducing and that they demonstrated live on-stage.

Author Jim Collins of Good to Great fame, gave a great keynote and talked about leaders and that the signature trait of great leaders is putting the right people in the right job.

The most applause of the morning was given for Saba’s refreshed Web Conferencing offering (aka Saba Centra) which now features full 780P HD Video. Even on a poor quality PC, the video quality looked stunning (see video site). The other part of the story is that Saba Classroom, popular in Learning circles, is fully integrated into the new Cloud Suite. We think this marks the rise of the advanced video enabled virtual classroom.

Social Enterprise, Social Talent and Video

The buzz about Social was because Saba has made its Social capabilities part of its new Saba People Cloud Suite, which also includes its full Talent Suite. Saba was not shy about offering its customers the chance to try it out with a link that automatically provisions a full Social Talent Suite for users to try.

One of the new set of capabilities that Saba demonstrated is a full Social Network Analysis tool called Dynamic Network Analysis. Saba DNA offers six modules out of the box and it will make it easier to understand how people connect, form teams and get work done. Saba also previewed a tool that shows the level of influence a user has with a Klout like score it calls PQ.

In Talent, Saba refreshed its full Talent Suite and also reinforced that it is serious about Talent with its HR Concepts acquisition. The demonstration highlighted the formal and social ways that performance can be rated, with gamification features including badging that didn’t look overdone.

Overall, a very good conference that saw many smiling customers. One thing is clear: Saba is as much about Social and Real-time Collaboration as it is about Learning and Talent. Check back at Aragon Research for our First Cuts on the product announcements.