The past week have been pretty difficult for me walking the IBM office in Petach Tiqva. It was a true ‘marketing’ week for Lotus, appearing twice in printed magazines, and three times in online sites – that’s excellent PR work. Thanks Joseph !
First off, I’ve been ‘posted’ at every coffee-area’s wall, with the social software article (pictured here), published at Israel BusinessWeek. The article first appeared at businessweek.com (Stephen Baker), and was picked up quickly by the Lotus community, myself included.
Since its the first issue of BusinessWeek Israel (Magazine, no website), we wanted to publish some pictures with the article – luckily I still have some connections in marcom…
The two page article is somewhat an exact translation of the English article, but we did manage to insert two pictures: the first showing me (excellent profile shot) and my cool X60, looking at My Connections visual map, and the second picture is the map itself. Since it shows some of my 42 IBM connections, I quickly got photos responses in FB. IBMers – it’s worth ‘adding me to your network’ !!
The second Lotus publication this week was at TheMarker IT and TheMarker newspaper, the leading IT/Hi-Tech news site in Israel. We translated some of the buzz surrounding Enterprise 2.0 Conference face-off last week, positioning Lotus Connections lead in the enterprise social software space. TheMarker IT published an article based on some words I wrote down, along with our PR Mgr. – the end result is not what I hoped for, but still a good presence.
Links:
TheMarker IT: IBM and Microsoft charge the enterprise portal’s space (Hebrew)
BusinessWeek Israel: Big Blue Embraces Social Media (pictures, Hebrew)
BusinessWeek.com: Big Blue Embraces Social Media (original article, by Stephen Baker)
IBM Stuff: I’ve opened up a photo album in FB, where you can see relevant Lotus PR, as they appear.
Dvir, you talk so much about Lotus Connections. It is unfortunate that you don’t review the unbelievably fantastic “Best of Breed” product which are coming to market. Yes, Connections is a suite, but do you truly believe that its wiki, blog, bookmarking, or networking ability is even 50% of the market leading Best of Bredd products?
Chuck,
It’s not about being best of breed.
It’s about lasting in the race, not burning out or being sold off within a year or 2 and being left to linger.
What makes a blog or wiki best of breed? Most of it YOU must configure, or in some casesyou are limited in that way.
You are only limited by your imagination or lack of coding skills.
Lotus has tried to offer a way forward for coprorates to maintain some security and logic to how their company is seen internally and externally.
Most companies are not at a point where they allow totally open network access, perhaps in 5-10 years we will see this more.
But how many of your best of breeds will still be in existence?
Chuck,
I write about solutions I’m familiar with and available in the local market. I refer to Sharepoint as competition, not as an analyst reviewing 2 vendors. Furthermore, working for IBM means writing mostly about IBM solutions (such as Lotus Connections), which I feel are relevant to the local market.
I was not aware of ConnectBeam solutions, nor their availability in Israel.
To continue what my LotusEvangelist colleague said, I believe businesses are looking for secure out-of-the-box solutions, that expand beyond blogs or wikis (which are spreading fast), with minimum dev or config efforts. That’s what Lotus is striving for, specifically in the Enterprise 2.0 space.