IBM Beefs Up

IBM is unveiling a new version of its Connections enterprise social networking (ESN) software, which businesses use to give their employees social media capabilities adapted for workplace collaboration, such as employee profiles and blogging.

Enhancements in IBM Connections 4.0 include a more interactive activity stream, broader support for mobile devices, more granular usage analytics and integration with email and calendar systems, according to Heidi Ambler, director of product management for IBM Social Software. It is available immediately.

“This new release helps customers grasp the power of social analytics, gives them anytime-anywhere access to the software and provides cutting-edge capabilities,” she said.

Instead of a list-like news feed, the new software has an activity stream in employee profiles that users can filter for relevance, as well as act on the notifications right from the Connections interface.

For example, users can trigger pop-up boxes from the activity stream notifications and see the latest comments made about a file, see who posted the latest version of it and add tags to it.

An integration with IBM’s own Lotus Notes-Domino and with Microsoft’s Outlook-Exchange email and calendar systems lets users manage email messages through Connections.

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IBM Goes Social

Responding to increased use of tablets within business settings, IBM will launch on Wednesday several mobile applications designed to let employees use IBM enterprise social collaboration software with iPads and other mobile devices.

The new applications, free to customers with active licenses of the IBM software, have been built specifically for tablet interfaces and have security, IT management and compliance features.

“The apps are very lightweight and talk directly back in a secure manner to the enterprise systems that people who don’t have these devices are using inside the company,” said Rob Ingram, senior manager of IBM’s Mobile Collaboration Strategy.

One of the applications lets employees use IBM Connections via iPads, while another one is for LotusLive Meeting users to participate in online meetings using iPhones or Android, BlackBerry or iPad tablets.

For IBM Sametime, another application lets employees engage in one-on-one or group instant messaging sessions on iPad and Android tablets. There is also one application for Lotus Symphony Viewer that lets users view ODF-based files, including documents, spreadsheets and presentations, on iPads, iPhones or Android devices.

There are also applications for managing telephony tasks within IBM Sametime from tablets and for Android device users to add widgets to home screens as shortcuts to their Lotus Notes mail and calendar.

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