Software

IBM Lotus Connection 2.5 is selected to promote collaboration and social networking within the Sogeti Group worldwide.

"Lotus Connections allows employees to easily communicate, cooperate, collaborate and connect to and with each other. It's invaluable for our organisation" - e-office

"2.5 is a big improvement over previous versions and the new functionality has exceeded expectations of what users were asking for." - Cardiff University

"Connections 2.5 is a very strong release of Connections with social networking features that are desired in the marketplace. As an IBM Business Partner we are very excited to take this product to market. We have been providing many customer demo's of Connections 2.5 and have received alot of positive feedback from our customers." - Ascendent Technology

"Love the new features across the board - status updates, customisable communities, dedicated search and new mobile access. A great job on the new functionality."
"The River of News, Files, and Wikis will take Connections to the level of a true collaboration suite."
"Great way to share information across departments and business units, very addictive."
Source: beta participants answers to "Describe the most valuable features of Lotus Connections 2.5."

The company has been pushing its social networking tools as a way to trump Microsoft, which has been playing from behind in that arena … With 2.5, the major addition is micro-blogging features in Connections's Profiles service. The micro-blogging capabilities let users create a Twitter-like environment of status updates and conversations. – Network World

"We have been using it internally at IBM," says Lotus GM Bob Picciano. "Especially at the end of the business quarter it is amazing how much value it is to me personally. I keep my finger on the pulse of the IBM organization; who is meeting with who and how those meetings go. It is like having a stream of conscience throughout the organization." - Network World

"There is not an answer from Microsoft for these capabilities," said Picciano. He pointed to last week's announcement that U.S. Bank was replacing Microsoft's SharePoint platform by standardizing on the Notes 8.5 client and would roll out Connections, Sametime and Lotus Quickr, which is IBM's alternative to SharePoint. - Network World

"For us, 2.5 is a watershed release," said Scott Hooks, executive vice president with Lotus 911, an IBM Lotus channel partner based in Canton, Ga. His view is that IBM has looked at what Facebook and Twitter are providing in terms of business value and has added it to the new software. – ChannelWeb/CRN

Microsoft's toughest competitor in business collaboration, IBM Lotus beat Microsoft to adding social networking features with its Lotus Connections suite, which enables companies to create corporate profiles, blogs, wikis, bookmarking services and community forums. IBM also recently added Twitter-like microblogging tools to Connections 2.5. – eWeek

The Lotus Connections 2.5 launch corresponds with the one-year anniversary of IBM's Center for Social Software, which company officials celebrated in a symposium at the center in Cambridge, Mass., today. The launch is fitting as Lotus Connections developed under the aegis of IBM Research and harbors many of the kinds of technologies IBM expects to cultivate in the Center for Social Software. – eWeek

Big Blue jumped on the enterprise social networking bandwagon early. The company’s Lotus Connection 2.5 debut comes amid a collaboration summit in Cambridge, Mass. – ZDNet