In The Next Version

It's 8:00am Monday morning and I'm surrounded by thousands of friends in a ballroom at the Dolphin hotel in Orlando. The lights dim and BAM we're acoustically assaulted by the blaring sounds of OK Go performing Here It Goes Again as they kick off Lotusphere 2012. From that opening salvo to the final remarks some two hours later we were treated to one of the best overall Lotusphere opening sessions.

Below are some highlights of the event followed by my observations and feedback.

First up was Alistair Rennie, General Manager IBM Collaboration Solutions. Alistair established the pace of this year's event (short segments) by spending just a few minutes on opening highlights, including announcing that 750 university students were in attendance representing 20 different educational institutes. He then introduced this year's special guest speaker, Michael J. Fox. Michael's presentation focused on living in the moment and how this enables you to do things you never could accomplish if you over-think it. He tied his talk into the Lotusphere theme by explaining how important the online community was to him when we was diagnosed with Parkinson's, and how he established The Michael J. Fox Foundation to be an service where people could share their stories, learn from each other and know that they are not alone.

Over the next 90 minutes a parade of executive speeches, product demonstrations and customer stories combined to paint a very compelling picture of IBM's vision of Social Business. Some of the morning's product announcements included:

• IBM Connections Embedded Experiences - Via industry standards including OpenSocial and activitystrea.ms, IBM has taken activity streams to the next level by going beyond mere status updates and link sharing to offer integration with core business systems. For example, an order in SAP could be displayed as a post in the stream, then filled out and approved right inline, eliminating the need to switch back and forth between multiple applications. I'll be covering this in more detail in a separate blog post.
• IBM Connections Mail - In the next version of Connections people will be able to access their Lotus Domino or Microsoft Exchange based email and calendar right within Connections. This is not a new email system nor a native messaging application such as the one found in Facebook.
  
  

• Two announcements were made around Lotus Notes. The first is that next version of Lotus Notes, named Social Edition (bleh!) will include a new Home Page featuring the same activity stream that is available to Connections users on the web. This new feature will require an IBM Connection server, but the pricing and licensing for that has not yet been announced. Second, a new web browser plugin will allow people to access Domino applications via the web instead of requiring a full Notes client. The initial beta will be for IE and FF on Windows. When I get more details on the plugin's features, limitations and requirements I'll post about it.
• LotusLive is being rebranded IBM Smart Cloud for Social Business and will become a more integrated part of the larger IBM initiative around Smart Cloud.
• IBM Docs - Provides online document editing similar to Google Docs, where people can work together in real time to co-author content. Authors can even assign specific sections for colleagues to work on.

• IBM Customer Experience - this impressive package is used by companies to infuse their brand's web presence with social features, drag and drop content, videos and more.
• Mobile applications of all shapes and sizes where shown, including a prototype of the next Connections mobile app for iPad that has a Flipboard like experience.

The closing story was presented by Dr. Jeffery Burns of Children's Hospital Boston. It was a heart warming tale of how they are using IBM Connections to redefine the way doctors are educated, share information, work together and ultimately save children's lives. I'd love to see this as a TEDTalk.

My Point Of View

A few weeks ago I wrote about how the big software vendors are catching up to and even passing the startups when it comes to social software. I'm sticking with that statement and this week IBM did a lot to support my case.

• The keynote was informative, engaging and even inspirational. The pace was excellent and I was quite surprised how quickly 2 hours went by. I do feel the demos repeated too much from last year though. Embedded experiences, online editors, customer experience web sites... we saw this all last year. The difference is this year more of the code is "real". So while I am being critical of that, I will say the demos were excellent. Hopefully next year they will show different things, perhaps focused on a few specific (vertical) business use-cases.
• While IBM may not be the first to market, the least expensive nor the easiest to install/configure/manage, one thing they certainly do well is articulate the business value of social business. Every marketing message, product demo and customer case study is focused on why and how organizations need to transform themselves into a social business to remain competitive. My mantra for a while now has been to stop talking about "being social" and to instead focus on "getting work done" and IBM appears to be on that path.
• IBM is reducing the friction caused by their own internal politics. The IBM social software platform involves technology and people from all across the company, not just a single brand. It's been interesting to meet IBMer's this week who work in every corner of the company. Lotusphere is no longer just Lotus employees. This is a really good thing for customers as they are now truly buying from IBM, not just one small division.
• I like the rebranding of LotusLive. While IBM Smart Cloud for Social Business does not exactly roll off the tonge, it does provide a great proof point of my previous comment.
• Mobile access is a first class player, not an after thought. Almost all the IBM collaboration tools are available on a wide variety of mobile devices.
• IBM is doing a great job of thinking about how analytics can transform business processes. While they are talking about cliché use-cases such as brand sentiment in social media, they are also looking at quite innovative uses of analytics in areas like improving employee retention.
• IBM is improving the commitment and recognition of business partners. During the keynote partner products were included in demos, awards were presented in several categories, the OpenNTF community was mentioned and the IBM Champion program was highlighted including having a partner come onto the main stage to kick off the demos. I understand that on Business Development day the partners were educated on several new incentive models designed to put more money in their pockets, with less red-tape and instant payments. (ex: revenue model for selling cloud offerings)
• The overall collaboration portfolio is still rather confusing. For example, when should a customer go with a hosted version of Connections vs. LotusLive? (I mean IBM Smart Cloud for Social Business) With Microsoft the message is simple, there is SharePoint, available on-premises or hosted. With IBM you have Connections, Quickr, Portal, Customer Experience Suite, LotusLive, etc., etc. Many of the partners, customers and even IBMers I've spoken with would like to see a simplification of the portfolio.
• I'm curious to know who IBM considers their largest competitor. Microsoft? Google? Best of breed combinations?
• Finally, the customer reference stories are excellent. Toronto Dominion Bank (TD), Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), Children's Hospital Boston... these and many more are wonderful case studies on companies who have dramatically improved their organizations by becoming a social business.

Overall I'm quite impressed by both the technology and the messages IBM is sending. It's great to see the entire company working together to create platforms that can help transform organizations.

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