Our eighth episode, recorded yesterday (Friday 16 July 2010). A round-table discussion of the latest news and topics of debate surrounding the Lotus brand, with a particular focus on Lotus Connections and social software this week.

Hosts

Stuart McIntyre and Darren Duke.

Guests

Mac Guidera (Twitter | Blog)

Chris Lamb (LinkedIn)

Sharon Bellamy (Twitter | Blog) Update: Lovely photo of Sharon preparing to record the podcast!

Adam Brown (Twitter | Blog | Company)

This podcast is 63MB and runs for 68 minutes at 128kps. Enjoy!

* Please note that all views expressed are the participants’ own and do not necessarily represent those of their employer(s).

 

Topics

IBM Named Worldwide Marketshare Leader in Social Platforms Software

* IDC report link

* Congratulations to all those that work on Connections and Quickr

* Why should organisations be interested in who is the market leader?

* What is Connections’ value proposition (and is this changing with time)?

* Who do Chris/Mac see as the main competitors?

* Sharepoint 2010 is with us… Making any inroads?

How will IBM address external collaboration with the Lotus portfolio?

* IBM doesn’t rank on Gartner’s “Externally facing Social Software” quadrant (led by Jive, Lithium, MS and Telligent).

* What is IBM doing in this area?

* Will Connections allow internal and external social collaboration in the future?

* Extranet license – has this been successful? Are many organisations using it?

IBM Social Software and the business partner

* The partner perspective

* 3 of us on the call are BPs and work with Connections and Quickr

* Why have we chosen to do this? What benefits do these technologies have or us, over say, Sharepoint?

* Connections is seen as being very complex, is this really the case?

* What are the opportunities for partners when working with Connections and Quickr?

* Adam’s posts on Portal integration

The customer perspective

* What do organisations gain from using Social computing such as Quickr and Connections?

* Get comments that Connections (and to some extent Quickr) can create ‘messy’ collaboration – how can organisations (and Connections admins) control this?

* Comments from Adam on type of customer’s/organisations showing interest and taking up Connections in Australia.

Connections ‘Next ‘

* What is coming in the next release?

Brief roundup of other stories

* Anyone wearing Old Spice today?

* Best Lotusphere ratings

* Bruce leaving Sharp

* OpenNTF IdeaJam

* IBM makes Firefox default browser (