Lotusphere 2011: Social business and the cloud top the agenda

One of the biggest themes at IBM's annual Lotusphere customer and partner event, which took place in Orlando this week, was how to make the best use of social media and collaboration tools in business, with the vendor using the show to launch several new products in this space.

The focus on social media was hardly surprising given that a recent IBM study predicted that the market for worldwide social platforms will increase by 33 per cent in 2011 to $630m, and then triple in size to $1.86bn by 2014.

In a bid to get a big slice of this action, IBM said it will bring its social software portfolio to the most successful mobile devices on the market, including RIM's BlackBerry and Playbook, the iPad, iPhone and Android devices.

Speaking to Computing's sister web site, V3.co.uk, Henry Dewing, principal analyst at Forrester Research, said: "Lotus Traveler and other native apps on mobile devices are a key strategy to drive the adoption of IBM collaboration solutions.

"Mobility is a key and growing characteristic of the information worker market, and IBM is committed to ensuring that mobile information workers are not treated like second-class citizens when accessing corporate applications and data."

As is customary with IT events these days, there was also considerable talk about the cloud. IBM launched a new version of LotusLive Symphony, a productivity suite that aims to give companies a social platform to simultaneously collaborate on documents in the cloud.

This suite enables access to documents whether you are inside or outside the company's firewall, and allows authors to either privately work on documents, or co-edit them with other people in real time. IBM anticipate this service to become available in the latter half of 2011.

Not only did IBM use Lotusphere as a platform to announce its new collaborative products, it also outlined a series of initiatives to further help partners get involved in 'social' business.

The progammes will be made available to more than 900 of IBM's partners and were outlined at Lotusphere as follows:

Social Business Authorisation - This will provide business partners that demonstrate strong social business skills an increased margin of up to 15 per cent on sales.

Industry Authorisation - Similarly, this will provide business partners with access to industry-focused resources and incentives to help their clients become social businesses.

New Sales Tools - IBM will provide assessment training and tools to help business partners express the value of social software.

New Education - Training courses will be provided free of change to help develop and integrate social business solutions for partner's clients.