SharePoint & Lotus

Today, at the Lotusphere 2010 conference in Orlando, Mainsoft announced the upcoming 2.5 release of SharePoint Integrator for Lotus Notes. The 2.5 release will pack some exciting new features, bound to turn heads. Read this post to find out the contents of the release and watch the video showing off some of the upcoming social features.

developerWorks editor Scott Laningham just posted an interview with Chris Lamb, Senior Marketing Manager for IBM Lotus Connections, and Yaacov Cohen, Mainsoft's CEO.  They talk about the benefits of integrating IBM Lotus Connections with IBM Rational Team Concert to expand communications about software deliveries to include business stakeholders and end users, in addition to technical teams worldwide.
 

Mainsoft today released a technology preview of Lotus Connections social software integration with Rational Team Concert.
 

According to a recent study conducted by Infotrends, SharePoint adoption falls far short of SharePoint deployment. Today, of the 62.2% of employees who now have access to SharePoint, only 23.8% access it at least once daily. 

With the economy picking-up, the majority of Notes enterprises are finally upgrading to Notes 8.0.2 or Notes 8.5 and, at the same time, rolling-out SharePoint to their enterprise users to improve collaboration. While these changes are a refreshing and welcomed upgrade for the IT professional; for the average enterprise user, they are a disruptive and scary change. Notes 8 introduces a totally different user interface, and SharePoint requires users to change their daily behaviour.  So how can central IT promote and execute this roll-out ?
 

Collaboration is a top IT priority and the key to enabling people to increase the effectiveness of their work while reducing the time, cost, and effort spent working together. But how can you drive mainstream user adoption of Microsoft SharePoint when your users are committed to using Lotus Notes?

A minor update to Mainsoft SharePoint Integrator for Lotus Notes has been released. SharePoint Integrator v2.0.2 introduces support for the latest Lotus Notes clients: v7.0.4 and v8.5.1. SharePoint Integrator was tested on Windows 7, although we still wait for Lotus Notes to officially support Microsoft’s latest operating system.
 

We’d like to thank Lotus Notes customers in Germany who joined Mainsoft and our partners holistic-net, and TIMETOACT Software and Consulting for today’s virtual meeting.

Some months back, I posted our plans to add enterprise social features to the software delivery process. Today, I am showing you a screencast of our progress on integrating IBM Lotus Connections with IBM Rational Jazz.

The video below shows you how Jazz users have direct access to forums, wikis, blogs, file sharing, and bookmark sharing, from within the Rational Team Concert web interface.

During today’s Virtual User Group meeting, Mainsoft Product Manager Jonas Martinsson previewed Notes integration with SharePoint Social Networking features and Beta support for Microsoft Outlook.