During the Opening General Session (OGS) there was no new “wow” product this year, which was a little surprising. However, as the session progressed, I was happy to see that Lotus is focusing on the integration of all the existing products in their portfolio. I was especially excited about the integration of the social media tools with feeds from other IBM applications, and external sources.
One topic that was highlighted through the OGS was the “Hybrid World.” Companies are not looking to move all of their applications to the cloud, but want to be selective in which ones they do. E-mail makes sense for those boundary workers, but may not for the employee who’s email contains sensitive information, like credit card info, or health information.
A surprise presenter was Panasonic. Panasonic has decided to move its entire employee base from Mocrosoft Exchange to the cloud-based LotusLive solution. They will be taking advantage of the Social Software components, web conferencing, and file sharing. This one company will add 300,000 users to the LotusLive community.
The final act was the unveiling of Project Vulcan, which was appropriate because William Shatner provided the keynote. Project Vulcan is the name of the next iteration of Lotus Notes. It looks like they are positioning this head on with Google Wave. It will be the federation of not just your email, contacts, and calendar, but also your social networks, to do lists, and other tools. It is designed to be smart, giving you recommendations on colleagues and communities.
It looks like Lotus is focusing on the right objectives in 2010. Users can start to see how the Lotus collaboration strategy is coming together.
Have any Lotus related questions?
Tom's happy to give you advice on your Lotus related questions. Whether it be a "how-to", something related to the product line, or just the most interesting people at Lotusphere, he's happy to help
