If you haven't been reading the latest technology trade rags, IBM just launched a new application called Lotus Connections, a social networking product. We've known about it for awhile (it's been called the Ventura project), but it's finally seeing the light of day. We're excited to add another company to the field of players.
Who are the Players Now?
1. Microsoft Sharepoint: Taking a very file system centric view to collaboration, but building a lot of similar functionality for 2007. However, it's a behemoth of an application with a lot of moving pieces and integration code. Not much room for innovation.
2. SuiteTwo: A project with Intel, SpikeSource and a host of other companies providing best-of-breed point solutions. Deep features because of all the individual products, but very difficult to connect the applications in any meaningful way. What Sam here at Jive calls a " Franken-suite".
3. Lotus Connections: It's similar to Clearspace in a lot of respects, but it leans on the social networking over the content creation. Connections has some tools we don't have yet like tasks and social bookmarking. And like the other products, "Connections" is a result of bringing together formerly disconnected tools (described in the Reuters article as " stitched together") as opposed to being built from the ground up as a single product on one architecture.
How does Clearspace fit in?
The unified architecture is one of the most important elements. It has been built from the ground up with this type of collaboration in mind, so it's easy to use, customize, integrate, grow and to support deep collaboration. Other big differentiators include:
An "external edition" for customers and partners (coming soon)
Deep discussion and blogging functionality
User-friendly wiki documents
Flexible workflow
Transporting content from one tool to another
Plug-in architecture
Available source code
Real-time editing of documents
Reward system
Integrated real-time messaging
That's just a quick cursory list. But still, this Connections the closest product we've seen to what Clearspace is doing and it's a fantastic validation of our approach. It may be competitive in some engagements, but IBM will be a lot more focused on MSFT than Jive. And the more important point is that this means there's hundreds of millions of marketing dollars behind the space -- a large wave whose wake we are more than happy to ride. Given the differentiators above, I'm thrilled about the move.
First to Market!
One of the other nice differentiators is that all these products have made big announcements, but nothing has hit the market yet...and probably won't for awhile. In fact, you'll be able to download the Clearspace beta this week.
IBM is a big customers of ours, and have become good friends along the way. They were even an advisory contributor to the development of Clearspace. They've got some really smart people and this is a very promising move on their part. I couldn't be happier to add them to the list.
Comments
This post has 4 comments. We encourage you to please post your own!
sam_lawrence
Jan 26, 2007 at 7:56:01 AM
http://mikeg.typepad.com/perceptions/2007/01/postscript_from_1.html
Relevant mention from Mike Gotta.
Nco
Jan 28, 2007 at 5:30:15 AM
It would be nice and bright to have a featureset that help migration from MS Office formats to OpenDocument open standard... I would preferably call it a killer featureset...
Gia Lyons
Jun 24, 2007 at 5:03:22 PM
Not quite sure how Lotus Connections could be considered "stitched together" when the entire suite was developed at the same time. The components were based on separate IBM Research projects, true, but the code we ship on June 29, 2007 is a cohesive solution, built one of the leading J2EE servers in the marketplace. So, it is "built from the ground up as a single product on one architecture." The nice thing is that it has been deployed inside IBM for a couple of years now, and has been proven as a valuable (and scalable) collaboration accelerator.
That being said, I think Clearspace offers an interesting approach to collaboration, and could complement Connections (and vice versa) in many respects. One main difference, however, is that Connections offers a RESTful APP API for integration with other applications, and Clearspace offers the Web service approach (WSDLs and SOAP) for integration. The two together satisfies a spectrum of development skills.
Another difference is that Connections offers the ability to implement however many components you want - none of them rely on the other. So, if you only want to deploy Activities, Communities, and Dogear, you can. Does Clearspace offer the ability to deploy only forums, or spaces, or just blogs?
djhersh
Jun 25, 2007 at 5:25:48 AM
Gia, thanks for a great comment. As for your first point, yes, I was referring to the fact that the components stemmed from different projects (including Roller). So I should have used better language. IBM has done a great job with the application and I was happy to see it come out.
I would love nothing more than to work on integration between Connections and Clearspace. I'm sure we'll have shared customers...but true integration requires a deeper partnership, and that's IBM's decision to make, not ours :). I've tried for years to build a relationship with Lotus, and will continue trying. Hopefully getting some combined customers will help that along.
And yes, in Clearspace you can pick which components (blogs, wikis, forums, etc.) you want to use in any given space. Glad to see Connections offers that too.