IBM Advances Web 2.0 Platform for Business

"Web 2.0 for business is about empowering users with the content, social connections and mashup tools to solve business problems," said Michael Rhodin, general manager, IBM Lotus Software. "Today's announcement illustrates the ongoing commitment of IBM to deliver innovation to our customers."

Lotusphere attendees received an early look at IBM's commercial mashup maker, IBM Lotus Mashups. Building on its leadership in the mashup space for more than two years, IBM Lotus Mashups allows non-technical users to easily create enterprise mashups. To solve real business problems with mashups, users can create ad hoc visualizations by blending enterprise and Web-based data.

IBM Lotus Mashups includes:

-- A browser-based tool that provides easy assembly of new mashups
-- A rich set of out-of-the-box, business-ready widgets
-- A catalog for finding and sharing widgets and mashups
-- A builder for the creation of widgets that access enterprise systems

In addition, IBM introduced the next release of its popular social software for business, IBM Lotus Connections. Since the announcement of Lotus Connections at Lotusphere 2007, it has been deployed by hundreds of organizations around the world. Expecting to be released in the first half of 2008, plans for Lotus Connections 2.0 include several new features such as a new homepage.

The new homepage -- based on Lotus mashup technology -- aggregates and filters social data from all five services of Lotus Connections into a customizable view. Using the widget-based homepage, users can quickly see what has changed across their professional network and easily search for the information they need to get things done. Customers or IBM Business Partners could also create widgets that link information to other social networks such as Yahoo or LinkedIn.

The community component of Lotus Connections is planned be enhanced with discussion forums and the ability to link leading wiki services from IBM Lotus Quickr, SocialText and Atlassian. Lotus Sametime can directly use Lotus Connections community membership lists to integrate unified communications with social networking.

IBM also demonstrated the new IBM Lotus Quickr 8.1, a rich collaboration environment available through the Web and desktop plug-ins, which allows teams to more effectively work together. Plans for Lotus Quickr 8.1 include content libraries, team discussion forums, blogs, wikis and other connectors that make sharing information easier. Lotus Quickr Entry is planned to be added to the Quickr family and will enable personal file sharing through a subset of traditional Lotus Quickr capabilities such as connectors.

IBM also previewed the planned capability to integrate Lotus Quickr with Enterprise Content Management Systems, such as IBM FileNet P8 and IBM Content Manager, providing the industry's most complete end-to-end content and collaboration solution from a single vendor.

IBM social software and leadership in Web 2.0 technology and governance models is helping companies unlock the knowledge within its employee base, making it faster and easier to find topic experts and bring together diverse teams around a common point of interest. In addition, IBM Global Services recently launched a new consulting offering to help clients understand how emerging technologies, such as Web 2.0, social computing, SOA, 3D internet and virtual worlds, can be used to help improve business performance and deliver tangible business value today.

For more information on IBM's Web 2.0 and Lotus Software efforts please visit: http://www.ibm.com … e/info/web20

Source: IBM