Two years ago I would not have predicted that IBM would be a major player in the Enterprise 2.0 space. I thought they would be too entrenched in their 1.0 revenue stream to pay attention. Then I saw the first release of Lotus Connections. It was OK, but in my opinion, just OK. I could tell that they were thinking right and they certainly paid attention to design and usability, but I was not sure that they’d catch up to their competitors in terms of providing the integrated suite experience. I wrote a private report for the company I was working for at that time. I detailed all of each of its features, analyzed the integration capabilities, and concluded that its suitability for my company was limited. I look back and see that I did not give IBM enough credit. Or perhaps, I thought that other Enterprise 2.0 vendors would grow faster than they did. I’ve been keeping my eye on the progress that IBM is making with Lotus Connections and I’m impressed. Each release has been a substantial improvement over the previous one. And I cannot wait to see what’s next. It’s looking quite good from what I can tell.
Here’s a teaser of a new feature that will be in the 2.5 release. I came across this today on Luis Benitez’s blog. Check out his demo of the new iPhone interface for Connections 2.5. Now this tells a great story. Moreover this new feature further supports the impression that many analysts have been promoting — that the iPhone will be a corporate tool (despite Apple not really designing it for corporate use per se). I’m looking forward to see if the Blackberry gets the same treatment too. I see that this too is in the works.
IBM is providing a compelling option for companies who need integration with their other Intranet fixtures — in particular, with Sametime’s real-time collaboration tools. Although I believe that serious enterprise customers will require much more integration features than currently provided out of the box. IBM is clearly working on this (I can tell by skimming their developerworks forum and wiki). And I’m looking forward to more goodness in the 2.5 release.
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@gyehuda says “I’ve been keeping my eye on the progress that IBM is making with Lotus Connections and I’m impressed.” http://bit.ly/FrYM
@lbenitez check out my blog post: IBM takes Connections to the iPhone http://bit.ly/ynBWR Let me know if you have more 2.5 stuff to share.
Gil, glad you liked the demo!!! RIM likes our offering so much that they’ve committed their resources to provide an updated client for the BlackBerry! You can see some screenshots in this blog entry: http://www.lbenitez.com/2009/01/what-new-in-lotus-connections-v25.html. Other screenshots are also in this blog entry: http://synch.rono.us/social/blog.nsf/dx/01212009072938PMSOM2LK.htm?opendocument.
I would love to hear more about what kinds of integration you are looking for. Right now, we integrate out of the box with: Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, Windows Explorer, Lotus Notes, Lotus Sametime, WebSphere Portal, BlackBerry,etc. Which other software/tool/process should we look at integrating with ?
RT @gyehuda: Blog post: IBM takes Connections to the iPhone http://bit.ly/ynBWR
Blog post: IBM takes Connections to the iPhone http://bit.ly/ynBWR