Lotus Turns Activity Streams Up to 11

Event Summary

January 31, 2011 -- IBM announced a new initiative to help organizations become social businesses with the broadest support for smartphones and cloud delivery models; new software and services to help businesses embrace the social business models through cloud computing, including a technology preview of IBM's cloud-based office productivity suite; and the plans for the next release of IBM's social software portfolio to enable social business, including a social business framework for software developers.

Quick Take

Analytical Summary

• Current Perspective: Positive on IBM's series of announcements at its annual Lotus user and partner conference, Lotusphere 2011, because the company has tackled a number of key customer requirements such as broad mobility support, cloud-based application execution services, developer frameworks, and rich activity streams. Slowly but surely, IBM is building a cohesive collaboration portfolio that is extensible, compatible, and focused on business outcomes. Unfortunately, the company was not able to deliver many tangible proof points in terms of both product releases and customer momentum.

• Vendor Importance: Very high to IBM, because the company needed to show substantive progress on its portfolio-wide initiative – Project Vulcan – which was announced at the previous Lotusphere conference in 2010 and is now being marketed as a portfolio-wide series of product updates, labeled Lotus "Next." Though this project is still very much a work in progress, IBM previewed numerous upcoming product releases surrounding embedded rich experiences within activity streams, and it released a long-awaited cross-product developer toolkit. These efforts point toward a collaboration portfolio that will be capable of both drawing from external solutions and socializing a wide array of business processes.

• Market Impact: Moderate on the collaboration platform marketplace, because with due dates reaching well into 2012 for the product updates supporting the above-mentioned features, IBM cannot yet deliver on the promise of project Vulcan/Next. However, with a full-fledged development toolkit in the wild, IBM will be able to begin building a third-party ecosystem capable of attracting partners anxious to capitalize upon the vendor's substantial portfolio and its innovative work in creating an extensible activity stream. In addition, with LotusLive Symphony on the near horizon, IBM will be able to market heavily against rivals Google, Oracle, and Microsoft in the race to bring productivity to the Web.

CLIENTS ONLY

Competitive Strengths and Weaknesses

Response & Recommendations

Buyer Actions

Analytical Perspective

| Client access - Full report in Collaboration Platforms | More information

Top

Top