Lotusphere 2012: The future of mail is social
January 16 2012
This morning at Lotusphere in Orlando, IBM is announcing the evolution of messaging as a social business tool. During the Lotusphere opening general session, IBM announced and demonstrated Lotus Notes and Domino Social Edition, the next feature release of the messaging and collaboration platform, along with IBM Connections Mail, where social networking meets work for more personal interactions. Both new releases are expected in 2012, with beta releases coming later this quarter. Together, Notes/Domino Social Edition and Connections Mail embrace the notion of a reinvented inbox, incorporating social analytics, contextual delivery, embedded experiences, and progressive disclosure. Fundamentally, we are evolving email and messaging into social mail -- the contextual component that the industry has dreamed of for nearly a decade, in solutions for both our existing messaging customers as well as for those with other email back-ends.
Yes, I know - buzzword bingo there. Sorry. It's cool stuff.
I will talk more about Notes/Domino Social Edition in another post, but this feature release is focused on the blueprint we've been following for the last couple of years -- innovation, integration, convergence. For the messaging user, the Notes client will feature additional social mail capabilities designed to improve consumability and adoption. In both Notes and iNotes, a core new feature is embedded experiences, the ability to use Open Social 2.0 to play application logic inside the document container. This release features additional focus on web and mobile interfaces, recognition of the increasing preference for a choice between client deployment and lightweight user experience. Of course, since it's Notes, all your existing applications continue to run, with no architectural changes required.
IBM Connections Mail was announced conceptually at Lotusphere 2011. The new component of IBM Connections will provide end-users the direct ability to access their Domino or Microsoft Exchange mailbox in the context of Connections. However, this isn't simply a widget or container. Connections Mail embraces all the concepts of social mail -- for example, progressive disclosure to show only the most important information during initial triage, with the flexibility to access additional data as needed. Over time, Connections Mail will leverage social analytics, so that instead of an inbox concept, only relevant email is displayed to users at any given time.
IBM Connections Mail and Notes/Domino Social Edition build upon the entitlement that IBM provided to all Lotus Notes/Domino customers with the release of version 8.5.3 three months ago, where Notes customers can use IBM Connections Files and Profiles at no additional charge. The tight integration in the Notes 8.5 sidebar to IBM Connections makes the process of unifying email and social a seamless one. The next releases of these products obviously takes that one step further.
As we are demonstrating here at Lotusphere this morning, these solutions are designed to lead the industry away from email overload and whack-a-mole inboxes and towards a more focused, relevant and yes, social communication...regardless of your infrastructure today, IBM will help you get the most value from it.
Over the last few months, I've watched our industry navel gaze a bit as to what email means for the future. Here's our answer -- social mail capabilities are that future, in beta soon and shipping this year.
Post a Comment
- 2 Deleted | 1/16/2012 9:00:47 AM
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Randall Shimizu | 1/16/2012 9:42:06 AM
Sounds cool. Now IBM needs to articulate and market this in a clear way to customers.
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Alexey Zimarev http://alexeyzimarev.blogspot.com | 1/16/2012 11:14:51 AM
Interesting news and exciting to follow #ls12 search tag but I am still unsure how Notes/Domino Social, Connections and Quickr will be positioned, will this be more overlap than before? Especially I am unsure about Quickr, looking forward to the session on 18th...
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Joerg Michael | 1/16/2012 11:47:19 AM
Randall, no, please, not the M-word. SCNR.
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Pete McPhedran http://www.corefusion.com | 1/16/2012 2:39:10 PM
Ed,
Would it be accurate to say that IBM Connections Mail essentially "filters" your existing inbox in the context of where you are within Connections? i.e. I am interacting with 3 people on a particular toopic in Connections and so I see messages from those people as well as messages about that topic? If so, that sounds pretty awesome as it reduces the clutter, yet maintains the entire inbox in the native mail client/server.
--Pete
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Victor Toal http://www.toalsys.com | 1/16/2012 5:04:49 PM
Seriously cool stuff, I can even forgive the buzzword bingo. Mail has been the bane of users for some time now, this might just be a way out of that corner. Looking forward to implementing it at many client sites!
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Brendan Long | 1/16/2012 6:42:53 PM
Very cool, but I must say I'm surprised that mail didn't just pop up as another item in the activity stream.
I had a picture in my head where mail would just be included along with all the other sources and the smart analytics would hopefully moderate things so that it fell off the top of the list fairly quickly if it wasn't important.
Maybe I'm just the only guy left in the world who doesn't hate email? :)
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Rick MacGuigan | 1/17/2012 10:07:42 AM
Will there finally be convergence of the Notes / Outlook calendar ?
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Adrian Reason http://www.sunandson.com | 1/19/2012 10:08:15 AM
The Business made Social Message is spot on - and the adoption rate through the Domino 8.5.3 entitlement should be RAPID (if not something is wrong in the messaging. The TD Bank Group reference is excellent for why Connections is needed by Companies now - It's pain driven - and the IBM solution works credibly on top of Sharepoint as well. For a clear message on what Connections is (and entitlements) this home page is excellent { Link } Connections should drive customers to finally clearly see Domino as a Collaborative platform - and should put Microsoft and Google on the back foot. Sun & Son will be extending the work we have been doing with the CIO office on the Notes data Modeler and Relational Data Bridge so that Social and Collaborative Xpage/Domino processes can be added to structured relational apps simply and easily - with absolute transparency at the Data Management level - so there are no barriers to what should be a New dawn for Notes developers - as part of this work we will integrate a New Notes JDBC driver that handles multi value fields on the fly.... Notes developers can get a Free developer copy of the Data Modeler by emailing RHS@sunandson.com
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Adrian Reason http://www.sunandson.com | 1/19/2012 10:44:45 AM
The Pain that will drive the adoption of Connections (and related appreciation of Domino as a Collaborative & Social platform) is the pervasiveness of SMART phones and Social software like Twitter and facebook that mean that even if companies like TD Bank Group (that are basically conservative and worried about the implications of Social software and mobile devices on security, and compliance) want to ignore what is happening - they realise they can't because if they don't put in place a Social Business Strategy & Solution then employees will go ahead and use what is already available to them - with all the negative problems related to security, regulation and governance - IBM is unique in being able to offer the experience, expertise and solution to their problems - and for those customers with Domino The 8.53 entitlement is an obvious first step.... Even better for the Lotus community, we can see at this LotusPhere that Lotus solutions are absolutely central to an integrated IBM strategy..... fantastic (At last....)
Really great news, I want it now