People 2008 – Saba Global Summit 2008—Washington, D.C.—October 21, 2008— Saba Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: SABA), the premier people management software and services provider, today unveiled a breakthrough enterprise social networking platform—Saba Social. Built on Saba’s unified platform, Saba Social uniquely combines a rich person profile and competency framework with real-time collaboration and comprehensive social networking tools to capture knowledge and connect people with expertise. Saba Social is designed to enable organizations to engage employees, partners and customers more effectively, build connected corporate communities, and accelerate high-quality knowledge exchange and information flow to foster innovation and increase productivity.
“In a dynamic, global workplace with a constant need for innovation and speed, organizations are looking at how they can better capture and distribute the expertise within their organizations,” said Bobby Yazdani, chairman and CEO for Saba. “By extending Saba’s proven, unified people management platform, Saba Social will facilitate the creation of meaningful knowledge networks.”
Enterprises are increasingly interested in applying key concepts that have emerged in the Web 2.0 evolution of the consumer Internet—user-generated content, collective intelligence and social networking—to extend the value of traditional people management processes already in place within their organizations. The rich information tracked in a unified people management system—skills, job experience, education and career interests—provides a necessary context for effective social networking within an enterprise. With increased visibility into people’s informal contributions, organizations can drive more informed decisions about how to manage and enable their talent.
Saba Social is designed to extend Saba’s proven collaboration solutions by making informal knowledge capture and sharing more engaging and effective, as well as by providing visibility into people’s informal contributions. By tightly integrating Saba Social with Saba Centra, real-time collaboration and Web conferencing will be linked to social networks, providing users with “always on” collaboration and presence. Saba Social will enable users to view rich profiles of session attendees, create connections and build robust knowledge networks to quickly and easily create, discover, rate and share a wide variety of content, including Saba Centra recordings. Saba Social will also offer powerful search capabilities to locate expertise as well as formal and informal learning assets located within the Saba Knowledge Base.
Saba Social is designed to uniquely combine the following features to capture knowledge and connect people to expertise:
“As an existing customer of Saba Collaboration, we are looking forward to using Saba Social to advance knowledge sharing and locate expertise across our organization,” said Andy Wooler, HR Technology Manager, Legal & General. “By combining informal collaboration in communities of practice with our existing learning processes, we have been able to increase the productivity and satisfaction of our employees. With the addition of Saba Social, we will be looking to gain business benefit by using social networking to make it easier to locate experts within our organization.”
Saba Social is planned for general availability in mid-2009. For more information, please visit www.saba.com/sabasocial
Legal Notice Regarding Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws, including, without limitation, statements regarding future releases of Saba’s products. Saba's actual results could differ materially from those expressed in any forward-looking statements. Risks and uncertainties Saba faces that could cause results to differ materially include risks associated with: Saba's dependence on growth of the markets for Saba's products, dependence on acceptance of Saba's products by customers and channel partners, fluctuation in customer spending, length of Saba's sales cycle, competition, rapid technological change, dependence on new product introductions and enhancements and potential software defects. Readers should also refer to the section entitled "Risk Factors” on pages 11 through 21 of Saba's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended May 31, 2008 and similar disclosures in subsequent Saba periodic SEC reports. The forward-looking statements and risks stated in this press release are based on information available to Saba today. Saba assumes no obligation to update them.
About Saba
Founded in 1997, Saba (NASDAQ: SABA) is the premier global provider of strategic human capital management (HCM) software and services. Saba’s people management solutions are used by more than 1,300 organizations and over 17 million end users worldwide. Saba’s solutions increase organizational performance by aligning workforce goals with organizational strategy; developing, managing and rewarding their people; and improving collaboration.
Saba product offerings address all aspects of strategic HCM and are available both on-premise and OnDemand (www.saba.com/products). To ensure long-term customer success, our global services capabilities and partnerships provide strategic consulting, comprehensive implementation services, and ongoing worldwide support.
Saba customers include ABN AMRO, Alcatel-Lucent, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, BMW, Caterpillar, CEMEX, Cisco Systems, Daimler, Dell, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, EDS, EMC Corporation, FedEx Kinko's, Insurance Australia Group, Kaiser Permanente, Lockheed Martin, Medtronic, National Australia Bank, Novartis, Petrobras, Procter & Gamble, Renault, Royal Bank of Scotland, Scotiabank, Singapore Ministry of Finance, Sprint, Standard Chartered Bank, Stanford University, Swedbank, Tata Consultancy Services, Wyndham International, Weyerhaeuser, Underwriters Laboratories, and the U.S. Army, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, U.S. Department of Treasury/Internal Revenue Service and U.S. Navy.
Headquartered in Redwood Shores, California, Saba has offices on five continents. For more information, please visit www.saba.com or call +1-877-SABA-101 or +1-650-779-2791.