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Now in its 19th year, Lotusphere will once again attempt to make up the ground Lotus Notes lost as a result of shifts in strategy at IBM and changes in the market in the past few years. But with Lotus Notes facing an uphill battle, five days at "the happiest place on Earth" will have to go a long way.
The event will once again be held at Walt Disney World's Swan and Dolphin Resort in Orlando. And from Jan. 15-19, IBM will once again showcase its best practices for Lotus Notes alongside a parade of case studies, business partners, strategists, product experts, engineers and developers.
However, the difference this year will be IBM's more intense focus on the social business aspect introduced at last year's event. IBM is going so far as to launch an all-new conference alongside Lotusphere called IBM Connect at the same location Jan. 16-17 (see related story).
IBM's social business ventures will involve the use of tools normally reserved to social networking sites - such as instant messages, wikis, crowdsourcing and microblogs - within internal enterprise collaboration software. Many of these tools are found in IBM Connections, a collaboration suite designed to facilitate communications across an enterprise. At this year's conference, IBM will be launching an initiative to help customers and business partners integrate social tools into their current communications infrastructure.
Sandy Carter, Vice President, Social Business and Collaboration Solutions Sales and Evangelism, IBM, says IBM's next step into the social business field begins with Lotusphere.
"This year, now that the...