Lotus sets off on 'Vulcanizing' next-gen collaboration

Project Vulcan concept about analytics, integration

ORLANDO -- IBM/Lotus Monday hinted at its collaboration future by unveiling an ambitious plan called Project Vulcan that exists in concept only but is aimed at a wholesale integration of collaboration tools regardless of whether they run in the cloud or on corporate networks.

Calling Vulcan a "blueprint for the future of collaboration" rather than a product, IBM/Lotus said at the opening of its annual Lotusphere conference that it plans to begin "Vulcanizing" its Lotus software beginning in the second half of this year. The effort will start with a toolkit for developers available via LotusLive Labs, a new collaboration within IBM between Lotus Software and IBM Research. 

Lotus to set roadmap for free productivity suite 

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ORLANDO -- IBM/Lotus Monday hinted at its collaboration future by unveiling an ambitious plan called Project Vulcan that exists in concept only but is aimed at a wholesale integration of collaboration tools regardless of whether they run in the cloud or on corporate networks.

Calling Vulcan a "blueprint for the future of collaboration" rather than a product, IBM/Lotus said at the opening of its annual Lotusphere conference that it plans to begin "Vulcanizing" its Lotus software beginning in the second half of this year. The effort will start with a toolkit for developers available via LotusLive Labs, a new collaboration within IBM between Lotus Software and IBM Research. 

Lotus to set roadmap for free productivity suite 

Alistair Rennie, the new Lotus general manager, said Vulcan will focus on open programming through RESTful APIs, HTML5, Lotus Xpages technology, and widgets and mashups. Those concepts will be infused into Lotus software as it is upgraded in the coming years including LotusLive, Lotus Notes/Domino, Connections, Sametime, Quickr and WebSphere Portal.

Vulcan is aimed at capitalizing on the integration of business applications and social networks and the convergence of desktop and mobile devices, according to Lotus officials. Lotus hopes to provide a system that meshes users, content creators, presence information and other data that brings context to any collaborative effort.

A key to Vulcan is social analytics software being pioneered by IBM Research such as Vivacity, which can discover shared resources created by users and provide a "return on contribution." Another project is DUNE (Desktop Unified with Enterprise), which aggregates data from multiple applications and makes possible unified social search, personalized recommendations based on profiles and integrated collaboration views. Analytics tools such as those and other IBM Research projects relevant to Vulcan will pass through LotusLive Labs for users to test.

Lotus's idea of redefining collaboration platforms with integration and hybrid cloud/enterprise models isn't much different from grand strategies being forged by Microsoft, Google, Cisco and others. All lack clarity, but the last time IBM/Lotus floated a concept with this much implication for its collaboration future was its failed Workplace overhaul of the Notes platform.

The thought with Vulcan is that developers will use a loosely coupled architecture to build a new generation of collaborative systems that are dynamic and lean heavily on analytics.

The plan faces a number of challenges in that Lotus intends to maintain a single layer of security, directory integration and administration across the boundaries between internal and external applications and other resources.

"Policy integration is also a big deal," said Sean Poulley, vice president for cloud collaboration at IBM.

The foundational elements of Vulcan will begin appearing in Lotus software next year, according to Rennie. He said Vulcan will build upon what users already have and will be an evolutionary process.