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Brian M O'Curran

 
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Thoughts on Lotus Connections versus Microsoft Sharepoint... #LotusKnows

Brian M O’Curran  November 19 2009 10:00:00 AM
I'm preparing some follow up for a client and I'm reviewing some of the info on Lotus Connections before I send it over.  This
is some god stuff, so, wihile it's top of mind, I'm going to just harvest out some of the highlights.  The first thing that grabs me is
"IBM productized research assets on a new platform that was designed from the beginning to be open, provide a rich user
experience and support extensibility."  I use Connections everyday internally, every single day.  I've been using the forerunner
of Profiles for 10 years. Bluepages is just part of the dial-tone of working at IBM.  I've been more and more active using LotusLive
(certainly the Files portion) to share files with my customers.  Actually, all the follow ups I'm planning are going into a LotusLive
Activity - now and  forever going forward.

A couple other thoughts.  One is this graphic.  Aside from it being pretty busy, it occurred to me that Lotus Connections is VERY
dense in functionality.  How many vendors would you (the IT pro) have to weave together to provide this functionality to your
business?  Who would end up having to integrate it all?  Do you have on premise and cloud alternatives?  Does it integrate with
anything else you've got running in your IT shop?  Even Gartner cautions going down the Microsoft path and creating a multi-vendor
ecosystem.  There's also function gaps in the Microsoft offering.  Hit the Gartner link above and read for yourself.

Image:Thoughts on Lotus Connections versus Microsoft Sharepoint... #LotusKnows

IBM – A Proven Leader in Social Software (some Highlights)
  • IBM Lotus Collaboration is built on WebSphere Application Server for scalability and supports REST/ATOM standards for easy extensibility
  • Out of the box plug-ins for your existing collaboration products increasing adoption
  • We’ve made a multi-million dollar commitment to ongoing social software  development and created the first center for social software
  • IBM & award winning partners have the skills  to customize a unique solution for your company
  • Tens of Millions using on-premise, hosted, appliance, and SaaS solutions making it the fasted growing software product ever at IBM

E2.0 2008 – SharePoint vs Lotus Connections
IBM coverage "IBM was the clear winner across the board."  link
CIO coverage "Enterprise 2.0 Faceoff: Microsoft Lags Behind IBM in Social Software"  link
Enterprise 2.0 coverage "IBM trounced Microsoft in the head-to-head competition" link

Top 10 Reasons Why Lotus Connections
  • Enhanced Profile (micro blogging, wall, vCard, LinkedIn widget) that can plug-in to any rich client or web application (including Outlook)
  • Social Bookmarking to improve search and information discovery
  • Standardized Widget framework to support external applications inside of Connections (including SharePoint and Google Gadgets)
  • Built on the top rated application server for security, scalability, flexibility, and extensibility
  • Enterprise tagging (including tag cloud) and rating for people, website, documents, and artifacts
  • Aggregated Homepage for each service (Profiles, Blogs, Bookmarks, Wiki, Files, Communities)
  • Mobile access with support for Blackberry, Nokia, and iPhone
  • Profile directory integrator that supports multiple HR, ERP, CRM, LDAP, and Virtual Communities (including 2-way synchronisation)
  • Social Network Modeling & Visualization including Global Privacy Laws
  • Personalized enterprise social search and recommendation engine

So, there ya have it!  Lotus Connections ROCKS!  








Comments

1Ulrich Gander  11/19/2009 11:57:33 AM  Thoughts on Lotus Connections versus Microsoft Sharepoint... #LotusKnows

So what are your thoughts on Jive Software. I was surprise to see the ahead of IBM in the latest Gartner report, as I have not heard of them before.

Seem like a solid product, you think?

2Brian M O’Curran  11/19/2009 3:18:28 PM  Thoughts on Lotus Connections versus Microsoft Sharepoint... #LotusKnows

It's a very solid product, nice UI, some interesting integration. There's also a lot of ex-Loti over there. Their offering certainly lacks the robustness of Lotus Connections. IBM has lots of integrations to the places I work all day long, the Notes client.. my inbox has really evolved into being a collaboration dashboard. I wish I'd invented "collaboration dashboard" but I swiped it from John Allessio... but, it doesn't make it any less relevant.

-- Brian

3tonyo  11/20/2009 12:06:37 PM  Thoughts on Lotus Connections versus Microsoft Sharepoint... #LotusKnows

have a look at the 2010 offerings.

probably the biggest reason to go to Sharepoint is that's it's overall an integrated platform for information management, search, collaboration and ECM. to get that from IBM, you need multiple, mis matched products. :)

4Brian M O’Curran  11/22/2009 8:43:10 PM  Thoughts on Lotus Connections versus Microsoft Sharepoint... #LotusKnows

Check out the 2010 offerings? OK, when are they going to be available? I need to do something NOW... Oh, yeah, and I need to run it on Linux. Is that going to be supported. I've had a look around the Microsoft website and it looks like you've "leveraged" alot of our marketing material around Connections. I guess when you're copying the innovations by others it's quicker to do that. So, actually, I've changed my mind, I'm not going to wait, I'm not going to buy-into a full Microsoft stack. I prefer to talk to people about an open solution. A solution that will run on whatever they've got in the data center without the need for your latest propriety version of desktop productivity products... while I'm sure the UI and functionality is going to be nice, it's not worth dragging all the Microsoft baggage to get it all working.

Work Smart Tonyo! Be Free!

-- Brian

5goran  11/25/2009 5:32:33 PM  Thoughts on Lotus Connections versus Microsoft Sharepoint... #LotusKnows

@tonyo: I wouldn say that sharepoint is "search". This is the biggest problem there. And yes... you need additional licences in order to get advanced one, which is not currently very advanced after a more deeper review!

Information management? Common! What is that? An SQL engine? Be more specific?

At the end out of the departmental use Sharepoint has no real expertise in global corporation appoach!

The products are simply not comparable!

6soalrtech  4/7/2010 3:31:32 PM  Thoughts on Lotus Connections versus Microsoft Sharepoint... #LotusKnows

yes it is really important to use

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