Having now returned from Lotusphere 2010 and had time to digest and reflect upon the event as a whole, I thought I would share some product related observations.
The next release of Lotus Quickr plans to deliver on IBM’s commitment to enhance and streamline user experiences. Based on customer feedback, Lotus Quickr will offer simplified use of the Lotus Quickr library, more user-friendly version control of documents and a redesigned discussion forum in addition to new features like a recycle bin and folder security.
At Lotusphere IBM also unveiled a new initiative to help clients increase the speed of business and improve results through collaboration technology and industry expertise. IBM’s Collaboration Agenda brings together IBM’s vertical industry expertise, software lab specialists and consulting services experts to help clients realize measurable returns from improving the way people interact.
Cloud: IBM is making major strides toward moving its offerings into the cloud. As has been widely reported Panasonic will be migrating 380,000 employees to LotusLive, clearly the largest cloud deployment to date. Many of Panasonic’s employees are new to email, while the rest are migrating from a combination of platforms, including Exchange. Somewhat surprisingly, Panasonic is not migrating slowly to LotusLive, but instead started migrating employees in a serious way the week after the agreement was signed. Interestingly, the primary use case for LotusLive is not replacement of on-premise infrastructure, but instead adding to the existing on-premise infrastructure of Notes deployments.
The Panasonic win is, by far, the largest cloud computing deployment ever, yet it did not receive extensive attention at Lotusphere. LotusLive now has more than 18 million seats deployed, yet this was mentioned only in passing.
During the show, IBM showcased nearly a dozen customers, many of which are using Sametime and Connections to drive business processes. Companies like Bank of NY Mellon, Celina Insurance, Colgate Palmolive, HSBC and Prudential UK are making Lotus Sametime the foundation of their unified communications, and plan to deliver users integrated communications including telephony and audio and video conferencing.
It’s also worth noting that IBM estimates that nearly one third of new Lotus Sametime customers in 2007 are Microsoft Exchange shops (the company released Sametime Entry late last year to appeal to these very users). Although it’s unlikely IBM will convert more than a few of those organizations to Notes, it should retain many of them on its Unified Communications platform, because even as Microsoft’s Office Communications Server matures, the advantage often lies with the incumbent provider.
