IBM Lotus Connections 3.0 Includes Social Business Features

IBM used a conference on enterprise collaboration this week to introduce Lotus Connections 3.0, an update of its enterprise collaboration platform that also includes features to help set up a social networking site to connect a company's employees, partners and customers. Despite some resistance from enterprises to engage in social networking, such as on Facebook, IBM said there are aspects of it that are helpful to business growth.

Lotus Connections 3.0 was announced at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Santa Clara, Calif, a event hosted by UBM, which publishes Network Computing. Version 3.0 includes tools to implement a social business strategy, enable leadership and skills development for employees in a social workplace, and manage governance and privacy policies in a social networking environment.

The platform also includes "pattern matching" tools to help customers access the business social network to obtain information about a company and its products, much like they would asking their Facebook friends, said Larry Bowden, vice president of portals and Web experience software for IBM.

"It's a set of analytics that comes back and recommends to you either content or people, based on what you're looking for or need more help with, so instead of you having to continue to navigate through [a site], it can make suggestions to you who would be the very best person," Bowden said.

IBM initially developed the social business platform internally on an employee portal and found that IBM workers were creating blogs, wikis and other social networking tools on their own to collaborate, he said. It then decided that if that works within IBM, it could be marketable to its customers. While Lotus Connections is an on-premise tool, IBM also introduced LotusLive Connections, which is delivered in a cloud environment.Some enterprises have resisted or even blocked use of social media on behalf of the company out of concern for liability or compliance risks or that proprietary information about the business would be revealed. But that is changing as early adopters are taking the risk and getting into social networking to build communities around them and their customers, Bowden said.

"They all of a sudden build a greater following, they start to see a brand build off of it. Then all of the competitors to that particular company begin to notice that something is going on," he said.

Acceptance of social business strategies varies by industry or corporate culture, said Bill McNee, CEO and founder of Saugatuck Technology, a tech industry market research firm. While there are companies that resist it as a security risk or don't see the business benefits, others embrace it, particularly if they employ "millennials," younger employees who grew up in the age of the Internet.

Social business is also an extension of the collaboration technologies offered by IBM, Microsoft, Cisco and others, McNee said. "The collaborative and social technologies are dramatically changing the nature of work itself, both internally as well as externally, in how companies are engaging with customers and partners," he said in an interview.