Corporate social networking is name of game with Lotus Connections

Stan Beer
Wednesday, 24 January 2007 16:13

Your IT - Home IT

While Microsoft has been trying to win Web 2.0 corporate hearts and minds with Sharepoint Server, IBM threatens to steal the show with a new corporate tested offering called Lotus Connections.

Web 2.0 in the consumer space is all about social networking as exemplified by sites such as MySpace, YouTube and FaceBook. Users of these sites with common interests can network, share ideas and provide each other with information that builds upon their mutual knowledge base.

Likewise in the corporate world, workers within an organization share common interests, needs to access information and requirements to collaborate for their mutual benefit.

Enter Lotus Connections which is comprised of five key modules: employee blogs, employee profiles, activities or projects, communities of like minded employees, and a bookmarks function for sharing information such as websites and documents.

This is all Web 2.0 stuff distilled down to the corporate space, allowing employees to interact with each other in a similar way as members of a social networking site. However, instead of sharing information about movie stars, music genres and cool websites, users share information about work related matters, such as projects and staff skill sets.

The latest offering from IBM's Lotus division has already received rave reviews and threatens to steal the thunder from Microsoft which has been jockeying to gain a prominent position in this space.

An advantage that IBM has over Microsoft and most other companies is that it has been able test its offering in a fully fledged corporate strength environment. With nearly 350,000 staff, IBM is a true global scale company. The word is that Lotus Connections has come up trumps and is ready for commercial deployment.

With an estimated installed base of about 150 million Lotus Notes users, IBM would appear to have a solid base upon which to launch its Lotus Connections platform.