SharePoint & Lotus

This morning we had a web seminar, with Bernie Coyne from IBM Rational, introducing Mainsoft Document Management for Rational Jazz, SharePoint Edition. We are expanding the coexistence concept to the Rational brand, integrating SharePoint document libraries and workflows to Rational Jazz, the new software development collaboration platform.

 
The idea, again, is to break the barriers between software platforms coming from Microsoft and IBM, providing freedom of choice to enterprises to pick and choose products coming from different vendors without giving up on a tight integration between the products.
 
This integration of SharePoint with Rational Jazz enables the IT development staff to effectively collaborate with their marketing, legal, and finance counterparts that are not using a development environment but rather Microsoft Office and SharePoint. For example, a lead developer can get a marketing approval on a user interface design from the marketing department. The lead developer links a Sharepoint document within a Rational Work Item and the marketing person is approving the Word document from the Word user interface. This interoperability between SharePoint and Rational enables collaboration across disciplines and tool sets.
 
You can take a look at an early version of the product demo here.