IBM: Middle East enterprises must embrace Web 2.0

Both feature a mix of new capabilities that blend IBM's expertise in business software with the Web 2.0 capabilities popular in consumer social networking Web sites.

The newest version of IBM Lotus Connections -- successor to the fastest growing new IBM software product -- is taking a cue from public social networks. Now people can quickly grow their professional network of contacts by adding colleagues. This business equivalent of "friending" helps people effectively manage their network and find the right expertise across an organization quickly and effectively.

"Most businesses in the region and indeed globally compete against time as they try to improve time-to-market and speed up their reaction times whilst 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."

The new home page streams news feeds from various components of Lotus Connections to show people what is happening within their network. Widgets then let people customize the main page and add links to external communities such as Facebook or custom business applications that may be used within the organization.

Drawing on its experience in enterprise collaboration, IBM is expanding the tagging abilities of Lotus Connections to include people tagging to allow people to tag themselves or others based on key topics or areas of expertise. This allows individuals to instantly identify and retrieve live intellect on any given topic and tap into the collective wisdom of a larger group or pinpoint rare, niche expertise from the general population. Tag clouds are displayed on a person's profile and throughout communities, making it easy to associate people with areas of expertise.

Additional new features in Lotus Connections include the ability to send or receive notifications to others about interesting social bookmarks, discussion forums and integration with wiki providers; Atlassian and Social Text.

As a complimentary offering to Lotus Connections, Atlas is a corporate social networking visualization and analysis tool. Atlas has four Web 2.0-based components - My Net, Find, Reach and Net. These components help users spot the important connections and the relationships between various groups and navigate their personal and corporate networks.

"Social networking has indeed seen huge uptake on an individual basis, however the new frontier in business collaboration is really beginning to take off as enterprises find innovative solutions to share throughout their organisations," said Takreem El Tohamy, General Manager, IBM Middle East and North Africa. "From the business-minded projects of IBM Researchers, to our expertise in Web 2.0, Lotus Connections is the perfect blend of business-ready tools and Web 2.0 innovations."

The latest version includes several new features that help people find the right experts, while being able to quickly get a sense of activity within their network. New Atlas widgets can be added to a person's home page to show them how they are linked to someone, or suggest communities or blogs that people like them are participating in.

This discovery process helps foster the exchange of ideas that leads to the creation of new products and services for customers.