At Lotusphere today, IBM announced Lotus Connections, the industry's first platform for business-grade social computing. Lotus Connections facilitates the gathering and exchange of information through professional networks, provides a dashboard-like view of current projects and connects users to like-minded communities. In addition, Lotus Connections removes the need for multiple social software applications, providing businesses with a single destination for building professional communities.
Lotus Connections has five Web 2.0-based components - Activities, Communities, Dogear, Profiles and Blogs - that help business people quickly connect and build new relationships based on their individual needs. These components help users save time by making information previously qualified by others easily accessible. The pace of learning increases as users easily find and exchange ideas with experts across their organization. Since they have access to the experience of others, users can avoid making mistakes and duplicating tasks, saving time and improving the quality of their work.
According to the industry analyst firm Forrester, social software tools will become so much a part of the fabric of an enterprise's collaborative environment that it will be like air - enterprises won't be able to imagine life without it. Further, according to Forrester, the demand for social software tools is growing with usage rates of social software services almost doubling between 2005 and 2006.
Lotus Connections speeds growth and unlocks the collective knowledge base within an organization. Through an integrated set of social software components, Lotus Connections delivers critical new capabilities to users while helping enterprises become more productive.
Lotus Connections helps organizations foster a sense of community, especially among geographically dispersed teams, helping employees come together to share their knowledge and collaborate on a project. "The Film Foundation works to preserve and restore a broad range of films including studio and independent features, avant-garde works, documentaries, newsreels, home movies, and films from the silent era," said Jennifer Ahn, managing director, The Film Foundation. "The Activities component of Lotus Connections will enable more timely and efficient collaboration on educational projects -- helping us to expand our Story of Movies program, which is developed by a team of people located all over the country. And it will be invaluable in our efforts to preserve more of our cinematic treasures."
All kinds of employees can benefit from Lotus Connections. For example, an investment banker requiring information about growth in the technology sector could conduct a keyword search of Profiles that would immediately produce a list of experts in the field. Within seconds, the banker would also have access to relevant bookmarks, blogs, activities and communities created by colleagues and partners from around the world with the same expertise. The banker then could join the company's "Investing in Technology" Community and by doing so, discovers a group of colleagues able to instantly share the knowledge it would typically take weeks to obtain alone. With a click of a mouse, they engage in an instant messaging chat session and brainstorm ideas. From there, the group creates an activity so they can work together to reach their goals quickly and efficiently - IBM.
Posted January 23rd, 2007 by Nymphadora
