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ORLANDO, FL -- IBM Lotus kicked off its annual Lotusphere user conference on Monday with a theme of Resonance. Lotus focused on making all of the Lotus portfolio interoperate or "resonate" within each other. And Lotus took a swipe at rival Microsoft by having a resonate frequency shatter a "window." This disruptive theme was prevalent throughout Lotusphere's first day.

Lotus Notes itself turned 20 years old this week, and Lotus is positioning Lotus as a hip 20 year old college student. Some of the announcements and partnerships seem to bear that out.

Social Networking gets stronger

That hip web 2.0 vibe was prevalent in the announcements surrounding Connections 2.5. Connections is IBM Lotus' enterprise social software product, and is looking to get a refresh by Q3 of this year. That refresh will add a Twitter-like microblogging feature, more integration with widgets, a totally revamped Wiki product, and integration with new partners such as business networking site LinkedIn.

Sticking to the resonating theme, Connections will add new capabilities that will allow access to its data from companion products like Quickr and Lotus Notes itself. Side shelves and widgets will allow users access to Connections data throughout the Lotus portfolio of products, and the new Wiki functionality will be shared between Connections and Quickr.

In fact, one goal that Lotus has stated is to make many components as common as possible throughout products. Examples such as the Wiki and widgets come to mind immediately.

Sametime evolves

Sametime 8.5 was also announced, and should really solidify its status in the enterprise meeting space. Upcoming features include a modernized web browser experience that no longer relies upon Java applet downloads, more full featured support across platforms such as Mac and Linux, much better video and audio quality, the ability to record meetings in industry standard formats, connectivity over the standard HTTP port by default, and persistent meeting rooms.

In the instant messaging side of Sametime, More social features have been included within the Sametime Connect client including connectivity to profiles within Connections, pictures from your contacts in Lotus Notes, and more ease of use in creating online meetings. There is also a brand new web browser IM client that relies on AJAX instead of any type of software install.

Lotus also announced Sametime Unified Telephony. This product ties Sametime into your local phone systems and allows a user to set up rules that state which number to call depending on particular situations. Individuals only need to know one phone number for a user, but depending on various factors, any number of phone numbers could be connected behind the scenes.

For example, if you are in a meeting, the call could go directly to voicemail. If you are listed as Away, the system could ring your mobile phone, and if your location is shown as Home, it could ring your home number. It's fully configurable and should make tracking down individuals much easier.

Inroads were also made in the mobile space, announcing full client access to RIM Blackberry devices, as well as work on microbrowsers in devices such as Nokia based units and Apple's iPhone.

Mobile connectivity was a big theme throughout day one of Lotusphere with several significant announcements from RIM.

Blackberry wants to connect everywhere

RIM and IBM announced several products and partnerships including a full featured meeting client for Sametime 8.5, XPages support, full support for the entire Connections 2.5 product, and native support for Lotus Symphony documents.

In the Sametime meeting arena, a demo was shown on a Blackberry Storm in which the user watched slides from a live Sametime meeting (complete with live pointers on the screen) while listening to the meeting on a Bluetooth headset. Your executives can now be a part of Sametime meetings from anywhere, and still get an excellent user experience.

In addition for the Connections shops, there are now native Blackberry applications for the entire feature set of Connections, not just the two that were previously supported. The support continued as plug-ins for Domino Designer will allow Domino developers to create applications with XPages that will support Blackberry handhelds out of the box.

Lastly, RIM announced the next version of Blackberry Enterprise Server will support Domino 8.5. BES upgrades have tended to lag behind Domino versions in the past, so to see support within 10 days of the release of Domino 8.5 is a huge and welcome change.

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