MWD – Collaboration In Focus

IBM’s Lotus division’s user, developer and partner conference, Lotusphere, has long been an opportunity for the company to make lots of noise about its successes and provide some direction in terms of where the portfolio is going next. Now in its 17th year, themes in recent years have centred on social software and cloud-based services, and once again, both those topics are among the headlines. However, this year there was a distinctly different feel to the announcements; rather than being focused simply on the current Lotus products and their roadmaps for the next 12 months, there was a more strategic theme underpinning proceedings.

The first, and most high profile announcement of the event related to IBM’s “Collaboration Agenda”, a new initiative designed to leverage IBM’s varied expertise and experience in the collaboration market to help organisations develop their strategy for building a collaborative culture and subsequently driving the adoption of collaborative technologies within their organisation. The initiative, which mirrors the intent and structure of IBM’s Information Management agenda which the company launched in 2008, combines consulting services and best practice templates and tools, focusing on specific vertical industries to help CIOs connect the dots between their high level desire to improve collaboration and the practicalities of implementing a working solution. IBM is clear that the result does not necessarily mean implementing IBM’s own Lotus collaboration tools, although clearly driving awareness of IBM’s breadth of offering in this space is part of the incentive of the approach. At first glance, this strategy makes a lot of sense for IBM, which has previously failed to fully capitalise on its consulting capabilities in this area, and often forgets (in its marketing and positioning, if not in its core strategy) that collaboration is a practice rather than being about using the latest and greatest software, and tool adoption is secondary to an established collaborative culture.

The second major strategic announcement relates to IBM’s vision for collaboration software for the next decade. The company unveiled “Project Vulcan”, which brings together and builds upon the capabilities of its current Lotus portfolio in a solution that will leverage the hybrid model of on-premises and cloud services to deliver an integrated, componentised, social collaborative environment. The earliest output from this project is expected to become available later in 2010, when a beta version of some of these developments will be delivered via a new hosted “proving ground” for IBM technologies, called LotusLive Labs. I’ll be exploring both these initiatives in a forthcoming Market Insights report, so stay tuned for that.

Overall, it’s clear that IBM is finally getting some significant traction within its customer base (and to some extent beyond) with its message that Lotus is about more than Lotus Notes; the Lotus Knows campaign has been employed extensively throughout the event, and the nature of the sessions and the demographics of the delegates at the event have a much more all-round, business focused collaboration feel than was true several years ago. The company’s collaboration software portfolio is strong both in depth and breadth, and now it seems that it’s finally recognising the opportunities that come with taking a more business-oriented approach to selling collaboration software. Both the Collaboration Agenda and Project Vulcan are in the early stages of their development and delivery, but if they deliver on the promise, IBM will be a force to be reckoned with in this market, both in terms of innovation and leadership around practical implementation of collaborative practices.

You can read our Capability Summary and Overview of IBM’s collaboration software offering here. Advisory service clients can read the Full Vendor Assessment here.

For more analysis of collaboration trends and best practices, click here to download free Guest Pass reports, and click here for more on our premium collaboration advisory service.

In a social software update for analysts last week, IBM provided a preview of some of the news and updates it is planningto deliver at this year’s Lotusphere event, which takes place next week. And it was particularly interesting to see that, once again, Lotus Connections is playing a central role in the company’s efforts to emphasize that IBM Lotus is about more than just Lotus Notes.

First launched at the Lotusphere event in 2007, Lotus Connections was – and still is – an innovative piece of software which takes advantage of Web 2.0 technologies and brings social software into an enterprise setting – something which you might not expect from a huge vendor like IBM. But it is the fact that, three years on, IBM is still capitalising on this head start that is most interesting, with Microsoft’s socialised version of Sharepoint not due for release until mid-2010.

The company’s social sotware story for this year focuses on the “Social Everywhere” theme, which involves integrating Lotus Connections into business applications and systems at all levels – including IBM’s other Lotus applications, particularly Quickr and WebSphere Portal, and other non-Lotus IBM products such as WebSphere Commerce 7, Rational Team Concert and Cognos, as well as third-party products such as Microsoft Office, Exchange and Sharepoint, and SAP Portal. And it is this focus on integration which will prove a real differentiator going forward, and will shield it – at least in the medium term – from the chasing competition. As we discussed in our premium report Social software for the enterprise, a major challenge of social networking tools is that their real value will come from enterprise-wide adoption, and this will only realistically happen if the tools are part and parcel of the applications and systems that employees use on a daily basis.

Another area which IBM will be talking about at Lotusphere – and one which I am particularly interested in hearing more about – is how it intends to resolve the awkward overlap between Lotus Connections and the more established Lotus Quickr product. To date the two products overlap in several places, plus there remain some questions over if and how the two products will co-exist in the long run as the lines blur between “team workspaces” and “online communities”. New versions of both products are due out this year, although the issues above are unlikely to be fully resolved in the short term.

Lotus Connections is clearly the new poster child for IBM, outshining the Notes brand in this new social world, but  the company still has many challenges ahead in terms of both strategy and competition. That said, it looks as though it’s on the right path.

As well as the role of social software in the overall Lotus positioning, it will be interesting to see what captures the loyal Lotus fanbase’s attention and approval at Lotusphere this year – I’ll be particularly looking to gauge their reaction to IBM’s latest email venture, LotusLive iNotes, as well as seeing how successful the company’s efforts to broaden Lotus brand perception beyond Notes have been. I will be blogging (and tweeting) more on the key stories coming out of Lotusphere over the next week or so, so stay tuned.

You can read our Capability Summary and Overview of IBM’s collaboration software offering here. Advisory service clients can read the Full Vendor Assessment here.

For more analysis of collaboration trends and best practices, click here to download free Guest Pass reports, and click here for more on our premium collaboration advisory service.