IBM's fight over Web 2.0 will dwarf past clashes against Microsoft

Orlando – IBM/Lotus this week shifted into high gear its integration, social software and unified communications story as it prepares for a Web 2.0 scuffle that likely will dwarf its past e-mail clashes against Microsoft.

The Web 2.0 battle will encompass many foes beyond Microsoft, including Cisco, traditional telephony vendors and online giants such as Google and Yahoo, and will produce product and vendor options that are sure to test the strategic investment skills of IT executives who told Network World in 2007 that they view collaboration technologies as “important” or “somewhat important” to their future productivity goals. (Learn more about Collaboration products from our Collaboration Buyer's Guide.)

At its annual Lotusphere show, IBM/Lotus hammered away at the way it will integrate its product portfolio that includes messaging, real-time communication, and new social software and rapid application development tools.

But compared with past editions of the conference, in which Lotus seemed to be steering the course of collaboration evolution, the company now seems to be playing from behind in many areas, including messaging, Web conferencing, unified communications and software-as-a-service while Microsoft, Cisco and others are grabbing headlines.

Click to see: Chart of Lotus Connections

But IBM/Lotus has its gems as well.

The company’s move last year into social software with Lotus Connections and this year’s expansion of the platform give it perhaps the strongest set of tools built for corporate users vs. competitors who are working with adaptations of consumer products.

In addition, the delivery with Notes 8 of the company’s open client framework built on Lotus Expeditor and Eclipse, a container for executing XML-based application components, provides client integration designed for users who want to buy and run only the components they need, dictate the pace of their adoption and retain options to fill in any gaps with home-grown software.

In addition to Notes 8, the framework is the front end for Sametime 8 and Lotus Symphony productivity applications. It will eventually front every back-end server and service so users can get functionality ala carte while maintaining a single interface.
In addition, integrating those same servers with other clients, such as Microsoft Outlook and partner software such as Carestream’s imaging tools, won’t lock users into the Lotus platform and will expand IBM/Lotus’s range of potential sales.
IBM/Lotus last week also announced partnerships with SocialText and Atlassian to integrate wiki technology from each vendor into Lotus Connections.

“The most beneficial part for customers is the integration,” says Dwight Davis, an analyst with Ovum. “It’s the fact I don’t know that I am using Quickr [content management] it’s just a plug-in to my client.”
In the Carestream example, radiologists don’t know their instant messaging and voice capabilities are Sametime; they just see new functionality in a familiar application.

It’s a message that IBM/Lotus will build on, Davis says. He says the company needs to accelerate the discussion away from the “product-centric fire hose flow of information” and direct it to “looking at customer goals and showing [Lotus] can address them with integrated products.”