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Last fiscal year was a good one for IBM and social software. According to the company, their install base for solutions that include Lotus Quickr and Lotus Connections grew 34%. Just the added push they needed to enhance and grow their solutions.
Collaboration with Lotus Quickr
Open source enterprise content management vendor Alfresco announced the integration of their ECM solution with Lotus Quickr at the Lotusphere 2010 conference this week (thanks in part to the propsed CMIS standard). But that was only part of the news coming out the Quickr camp.
IBM previewed the next release of Lotus Quickr, which included enhancements such as an easier to use Quickr library, version control of documents that users can actually understand and a redesigned discussion forum. New features that should make users happy include folder security and a recycle bin.
An end-to-end Content Strategy
Other planned enhancements for Lotus Quickr are part of the greater IBM end-to-end content strategy, which includes implemented the proposed CMIS standard for content interoperability.
- Like EMC did with CenterStage and Documentum, IBM plans to create Lotus Quickr services for Domino. They already have Lotus Quickr services for WebSphere Portal, so integration with Domino is just another piece of the equation.
- ECM integration enhancements will include seamless integration from either IBM FileNet or IBM Content Manager, and improvements to meta data entry and search capabilities.
Lotus Connections Supports User Generated Content
Conference attendees also got a preview of the next release of Lotus Connections, IBM's social software solution. Enhancements include:
- Improvements to how user generated content is moderated
- Compliance and auditing capabilities
- Deeper integration with WebSphere Portal and SharePoint
- Expanded mobile support
The cloud version of Lotus Connections, LotusLive Connection will also get community capability this year.
IBM and Social Software
There's long been a bit of a battle between IBM and Microsoft for the lead role in collaboration software. While the original battle was between SharePoint and Lotus Quickr, it's easy to see that IBM is taking on new avenues for collaboration and social computing that will give SharePoint a run for its money.
At the same time, we still see IBM, and IBM partners, doing what they can to integrate with Microsoft SharePoint, showing that playing nice is still an important part of their overall strategy.
