I have managed to spend a little time thinking about the big announcements of the week and where they leave us. Of course this is all personal opinion, I have nothing to base this on other than my own experience. Of the two new products I think Quickr is the most likely to succeed. My reasoning comes from two directions, firstly it's free and presumably will be available at the user's desktop rather than requiring central IT departments to do anything to roll it out. I would imagine it will take some time to filter out into the general population but the benefit to users is going to be so obvious that I can't see why it wouldn't be used. My suspicion is that actually it won't be used by teams to start with but by individuals as an electronic briefcase, but as it grows the paid-for version will be used for more formal teamwork. The thought of being able to ditch shared network drives alone should be enough to convince people.

http://www.11tmr.com/11tmr.nsf/d6plinks/MWHE-6XUTZ3

<< Another new Lotus collaboration application, similar to Microsoft's SharePoint, is Quickr, a repository and portal where teams share documents and information. It supports wikis, team and individual blogging, document tagging, and social bookmarks, and has its roots in QuickPlace, IBM's current team workspace application. Facility services company Unicco, a QuickPlace customer, is interested in Quickr's integration with Sametime IM, the ability to see networked Quickr files as if they resided on the computer's hard drive, and the possibility of using wikis and blogs to improve worker productivity, says Bill Jenkins, the company's director of IT.

But Quickr introduces yet another team collaboration and document management platform into IBM's portfolio; there's also QuickPlace. And Quickr serves as an application development platform, as does Domino. It could be more than an IT team wants to support. "There's an enormous amount of redundancy right now," Forrester's Driver says. >>

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=197001060

With a big press campaign, articles in Business week, Wall street journal, New York Times,  Reuters, Boston.com (The Boston Globe), Lotus IBM announces Lotus Connection and Lotus Quickr.

LotusConnectionsQuickr.doc (1 MB)

QuickR.pdf (1,35 MB)

http://www.sdownes.co.uk/2007/01/23/reactions-to-lotusphere-keynote-blogs/trackback/

http://sts.labs.live.com/

See the attached excel file.

PRO & CON:

- WSS3.0 much more extensive

- QuickPlace easier to learn (less concepts)

Windows CardSpace? This seems to push WEB SSO one steap forward. ID providers are lacking as standrads.

When Banks are going to be ID providers?

This beast is quite a hudge one!