Yesterday I mentioned the announcement of Project Vulcan, and today we’ll take a closer look.
How does one describe Project Vulcan? Some initially speculated that Vulcan is like Google Wave – only done properly. However, it is apparent that the platform aims to let users share and take action on data from business applications rather than just being another collaboration application that allows real-time co-editing of documents and files……….. and Vulcan seeks to do this from one platform.
Take a look at IBM’s Lotus portfolio. From the Lotus Notes e-mail client and Domino server to Lotus Sametime for instant messaging and Web conferencing, through Quickr, there are a lot of different moving parts. IBM cross-integrates its products, providing API’s and allowing them to talk to one another. However, there is no single way to use these disparate applications from one access point. Project Vulcan aims to do that, and bring business data into the mix.
Vulcan, which IBM will open to developers through the company’s new LotusLive Labs in the second half of 2010, is still evolving.
Here’s how IBM’s Ed Brill describes the Project Vulcan concept:
“IBM Project Vulcan is not a brand-new effort. It builds on the existing capabilities, and represents the future versions of, the IBM Lotus product portfolio – including Notes. One of its key themes is social analytics and business analytics combined and applied to industry-specific scenarios – making collaboration more focused and relevant. The vision of Project Vulcan intends to deliver collaboration across company boundaries; make it easy to deploy the technology; and include developer-friendly services and APIs.”
Project Vulcan looks pretty exciting. It’s being built with the right foundation, as a platform of loosely coupled systems. As Brill says:
“This makes sense in an increasingly-expected hybrid environment, and will simplify deployment and adoption of collaboration and productivity within your organization.
As Paul Withers, my colleague from Intec said, and continuing the theme – ‘May it live long and prosper !’
