Leadership By Numbers :: Gartner Puts IBM Lotus in Magic Quadrant for Social Software

Category IBM/Lotus Domino
This week I was speaking with a very good friend at IBM/Lotus, who provides pre-sales technical support: he knows his stuff. "You know," he tells me, "Lotus is moving too fast. It's really hard to keep up with all the new stuff." Which is true. There has been a string of announcements over this last year, Lotus has really been chugging along.

About time.

So, perhaps all this effort has been straining internal staff on staying current, but the rest of the world is giving heed. Laren McKay of Destination CRM has summarized Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workplace '09:

Leaders:

Gartner notes that leaders are well-established vendors with solid customer bases. The report says, "Their leadership is being established through an early recognition of user needs in this market, their overall market presence, and their success in delivering user-friendly and solution-focused suites with broad capabilities." These vendors are continually investing in social support and are seeing consistent traction.

IBM: "IBM is a leader by virtue of being ahead of the market with a strong market presence," the analysts write. IBM is not only an established technology vendor, but the report points out that IBM Lotus Connections 2.5 offers a comprehensive social software suite and that the company offers many flexible deployment options. One caution is that IBM could stand to improve its usability.

Technorati Tags: Laren McKay, Lotus Connections, Gartner

Comments

2 - Mm. What ? I'm not sure what is the quantification of "right." Because Lotus Notes is a user-facing application (versus, say, prime-number hunting) it's always going to mirror the incongruity of its audience. I've been using Notes since R3--and ND8.5.1 looks Star Trek futuristic in comparison. Clearly, IBM/Lotus agrees that the product is still "buggy" and is continuing to be polished. I can tell you, first hand, that my users are extraordinarily impressed with 8.5.1.

You might want to be give an eye to CouchDB, as addressing some of your technical concerns.

Posted by Jack Dausman At 10:28:59 PM On 12/12/2009 | - Website - |

1 - I want the skills of Iris/Lotus in their products back. IBM would benefit so much more if they gave free hands to the Iris/Lotus people, instead of forcing IBM's dinosaur buggy technologies into Lotus software. Microsoft and IBM have never managed to make any single piece of software right, it's the skillful people and companies who do the good software.

Posted by Mika Heinonen At 06:08:28 AM On 12/12/2009 | - Website - |