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Connections version 2 made an appearance, with integration to public social networks such as Yahoo! Answers, Facebook and Socialtext. In addition, it will become more personally customizable, include attention management features, mobile support for the Blackberry and the ability to replicate your activities. There was no timetable announced for Connections V2.

Mash it up

One of the new product announcements is Lotus Mashups. Mashups is a lightweight browser-based environment that supports widgets (both internal Lotus-provided and external companies such as Google) and things like tagging, ratings and a mashup catalog. You can layer data together and even wire various widgets together. An example of this is taking one widget that shows an employee database, and having it link to salary information. Clicking on the one widget, reveals data in the other. These are all easily created by wizards in the browser as well as a development environment based on the submitted IWidget open specification.

Each user (or company) can customize their Mashup space however they wish. Lotus Mashups is due to go into a managed beta soon.

Lotus targets Small Business

The biggest announcements of the opening general session came in the form of long overdue support for the small to medium size business market. Several initiatives were announced that target businesses under 500 employees, and will directly compete with Microsoft Small Business Server.

The first announcement came in the form of Lotus Foundations. Foundations is a software package that includes all of the things a small business might need. There will be several different configurations of the product, but the first one released will be a collaboration server that will include Domino and pieces of Quickr and Connections.

The software can be re-sold and customized through partners to incorporate different technologies as well, and it can even be sold as a hardware appliance. Mike Rhodin, General Manager, IBM Lotus Software, even took a page out of the Steve Jobs handbook by pulling a Foundations appliance out of a overnight delivery envelope.

Foundations will include self-healing capabilities, as well as the ability for partners to remotely manage the environments. This allows SMBs to focus on their businesses rather than on IT.

The other major SMB offering is codenamed Bluehouse. Bluehouse is a software-as-a-service offering that will tie-in to Foundations to allow extranet access to company data. Users can share files, contact information, chat, activities and web meetings. If a small business needs to connect with external partners and vendors, Bluehouse will be the offering to help them out.

Both Foundations and Bluehouse will be entering managed beta soon and no pricing or availability details have been released.

Check back next week when I give you more details on today's announcements, and a summary of all of this week's highlights.

About the Author

John Roling is the Senior Groupware Administrator for a North American trade-show exhibit company and a certified Lotus Notes Administrator, Developer and all-around geek. You can keep up with him at his blog or drop him an e-mail at jroling@gmail.com.

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