Lotus Quickr and Connections

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by

Simon Scullion

I, like a lot of people, am following the information coming out of IBM Lotus regarding their recently announced products Lotus Quickr and Lotus Connections.

This week I had an interesting conversation with colleagues on our understanding of the products at this early stage. One point that came out was an apparent overlap, particularly on the blogging front. It raises some interesting questions. How will the products integrate? How do I base a decision whether to run blogs from Quickr or via the blogging component of Connections?

With little information so far from Lotus, it is difficult to grasp the differences. The innovation coming with these products is a big thing for the enterprise. Their successful adoption will depend in many cases on the ability of an organisation to generate a culture of open knowledge sharing. Here, IBM and its Business Partners will have a crucial role in helping companies deal with this culture shift.

Interesting times ahead.

Comments

7 responses to “Lotus Quickr and Connections”

  1. James Snell avatar
    James Snell

    The key difference between the two suites is in their respective architectures. Quickr is a much more centralized and managed environment with tight integration on the backend. Connections is made up of loosely integrated individual components that are primarily integrated “on the glass” (e.g. in the browser). With Quickr, you pretty much get everything at once; With Connections you can deploy individual components in a variety of combinations.

    Reply
  2. Simon avatar
    Simon

    Hi James, thanks for stopping by and sharing.

    I’m looking forward to seeing how all this unfolds. I like the apparent choice that is being offered, centralised and managed vs loosely integrated.

    Are we likely to see public betas for these, or will they go straight to gold?

    Reply
  3. James Snell avatar
    James Snell

    Well there is http://greenhouse.lotus.com. I’m not sure about all the details of that service but I know that the Connections components have been deployed there.

    Reply
  4. Simon avatar
    Simon

    Hi again James, I forget to mention that I have been regularly reading your blog lately, along as well as http://www.elsua.net/

    I understand I am on the “waiting list” for the greenhouse. I must admit, the suspense is starting to get to me!

    Keep the good info coming!

    Reply
  5. Luis Suarez avatar
    Luis Suarez

    Hi Simon! I have just been checking out some of the different weblog entries you have created around this very same subject of Lotus Connections and Lotus Quickr and I have found this one as well. Apart from what my colleague James has mentioned already I think I could add that the main different between the blogging component from Quickr and Connections is in the audience for which they have been created.

    The blogging capability from Quickr is actually meant for the team to have a group blog managed by the team and with the visibility of just the team. So something along the lines of providing a blogging environment for a restricted group of people and managed by that same group of people, whereas the blogging component from Connections is more down to putting together a blogging platform on an enterprise level where every knowledge worker can have their own blogs and searchable by the corporate search engine. So the scope is a lot wider with Connections than with Quickr.

    Hope that helps clarify things a bit. If not give me a shout 😉

    Reply
  6. Simon avatar
    Simon

    Luis, that is a nice clarification, thanks!

    I can now see better how this fits in with the intended purpose of each product. I like the idea of the group blogging as part of Quickr, and then the enteprise wide stuff in Connections.

    One of the obvious benefits I see is the self-contained and secure nature of Quickplace. I can see some real cases where a blog format is ideal, but where the audience is not company wide and needs to be controlled.

    For sure no-one can argue that IBM is not giving their customers choice with regard to a blogging platform, lets not forget the Domino blog template is out there too!

    Reply
  7. Luis Suarez avatar
    Luis Suarez

    Yes, that is very true, Simon, and that is the beauty about the whole thing, the fact that there are options and plenty of them! That way, it would be up to teams, communities, i.e. knowledge workers, in the end to decide which one they would want to go for that meets up their needs and requirements. And since there would be three different options to go for it just makes things a bit more interesting and worth while investigating further.

    Reply

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