IBM delivers industry's first integrated business social networking offering

Featuring a suite of five Web 2.0-based components -- activities, communities, Dogear (bookmarking), profiles and blogs -- Lotus Connections helps people quickly connect and build new relationships based on business needs. With Lotus Connections, users can easily find subject matter experts in profiles, create and join like-minded communities, and exchange ideas and resources through blogging and shared bookmarks.

"Most businesses in the region compete with time and seek solutions that allow them to save time while being as productive as possible," said Bashar Kilani, Manager of IBM Software Business, Middle East, Egypt and Pakistan. "IBM Lotus Connections offers customers the necessary tools that allow them to become more innovative and efficient while using dynamic networks of coworkers, partners and customers."

Lotus Connections helps businesses:

•Quickly find subject matter experts: With the Profiles component of Lotus Connections, users can search for people by name, expertise or keyword. Search results provide standard name, contact information and reporting structure details, along with links to the blogs, communities, activities and bookmarks associated with the person begin searched.
• Access and share information that is deemed important by others: Dogear, the social bookmarking component of Lotus Connections, enables users to tag and share bookmarks. Pre-qualified information can then be found using key word searches or by subscribing to an expert's bookmarks, enabling users to find the information they need faster and to discover social networks regardless of organizational reporting structures.
• Bring people with common interests and assignments together: With the communities' component, users can work together with colleagues across their organization that share common interests or work objectives. Community members can discuss relevant issues, gather information and share resources. Anyone with the organization or selected partners from outside of an organization, such as customers, can join and participate in a Community.
• Organize the work and interactions associated with an activity: With Activities, users have a Web-based dashboard for managing and completing tasks with their professional network of colleagues. Within Activities, users can easily organize, share and collaborate on all files, instant messaging chats, email messages and Web links associated with a given task. This enables employees to better track to do lists and manage deadlines, while incorporating best practices and knowledge from across their organization.
• Create an interactive community with external and internal audiences: With the blogging tools in Lotus Connections, creating and posting blogs is fast and easy. Searching for information on blogs is simplified with integrated blog searching tools. In addition, users can automatically track posts from key blogs through Atom syndicated format (ATOM) feeds.

Lotus Connections integrates across the Lotus software portfolio, extending the strength of the industry's leading real-time, messaging and portal capabilities with the power of social software. For example, with IBM Lotus Notes 8 and Lotus Connections, customers can combat inbox overload by dragging and dropping email messages related to a specific project directly into the appropriate activity from within their inbox. With IBM Lotus Sametime 7.5.X and Lotus Connections, users can begin a chat session within any of the five components and then share this information by adding the chat transcript to an activity from within the Lotus Sametime chat window. The email and messages can then be easily found by everyone working on that particular activity - accelerating execution of the task at hand.