Well, I’ve finally dragged myself across to Gartner to see what they made of Lotusphere, and so here are their pearls of wisdom for your digestion.

Significant updates to Lotus Notes and Quickplace, as well as the introduction of some compelling new products, were the reason that IBM’s Lotusphere 2007 was buzzing with positive feedback from IBM customers and partners.

Perhaps the best news coming from Lotusphere is the near-disappearance of the bewildering “Workplace” name. The folding of Workplace into WebSphere Portal has helped to reduce the confusion regarding its strategy, messaging and products. While Workplace was, in Gartner’s view, a failed marketing effort, its underlying concepts embracing the Web have provided a critical foundation for Notes 8, Quickr, Connections and Sametime — which are all built on Eclipse with the Expeditor tool. Combined with the recently added representational state transfer (REST) application programming interfaces, Atom syndication capabilities and “mashability,” these concepts serve as a strategic architecture for all future Lotus products.

IBM hopes Lotusphere 2007 will launch an updated, more competitive and appealing Lotus. The demonstrations and product sessions have been successful among the Lotus users who come to these events. However, several challenges persist. The relationship of Quickr to existing products like Domino Document Manager, DB2 Content Manager and new document-oriented clients remains murky. While the mashups and possibilities of social software are promising, the lack of consumer-focused or Web 2.0 software-as-a-service offerings limits penetration.

Fairly-dos then. Not entirely sure that IBM have offered ‘consumer-focused’ software for a considerable length of time now. They tend to leave that to Apple and Microsoft, but there you go.

Posted: February 4th, 2007 under Collaboration Tools, Information Management, Lotusphere.
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