A companion to Lotus Connections, the new Quickr offers a higher level of integration with a variety of IBM and Microsoft applications for team access to files, blogs, and wikis.
At the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston, IBM announced new social software called IBM Lotus Quickr 8.5 for WebSphere Portal to help workers connect and adapt to information and insight, including files, blogs, and wikis in a rapidly changing business environment. The software, which offers a higher level of integration now with a variety of IBM and Microsoft offerings than the previous version, is available now.
IBM Lotus Quickr is team collaboration software that helps users share content, collaborate, and work faster online with teams, inside or outside the firewall. Lotus Quickr provides online team spaces where members can share and collaborate—use team calendars, discussion forums, Web logs—or blogs—wikis, and other collaboration tools for managing projects and creating content.
Rheinmetall AG tested the new software. “Lotus Quickr 8.5 software will help our employees cope with daily business challenges and collaborate more efficiently with coworkers, customers and suppliers,” said Markus Bentele, corporate CIO, Rheinmetall AG.
A recent study by IBM found that 98 percent of CEOs need to restructure the way their organizations work; 5.3 hours is wasted per employee per week due to inefficient processes. Two hours is spent per employee per day looking for the right information and expertise within an organization. IBM’s social software can help alleviate this problem because it helps keep global work teams better connected and more able to deliver results.
IBM Lotus Quickr helps teams create content, collaborate and work fast online together. It’s a companion product to Lotus Connections, software that empowers business professionals to develop, nurture and remain in contact with the network of their colleagues; respond quickly to business opportunities by calling upon expertise in their network; and discuss and refine new creative ideas with communities of coworkers, partners and customers.
For example, IBM’s business partner Nyherji (http://www.nyherji.is) helped the government of Iceland design a new system based on IBM WebSphere Portal software, providing access to IBM Lotus Domino email and applications as well as Lotus Quickr document management and collaboration tools. The Lotus Quickr software also provides other Web 2.0 capabilities such as blogs, wikis and discussion forums. The system allows government employees and committee members to be better informed and work more productively. Storing confidential documents in Lotus Quickr software increases the security and reduces risk of losing data.
“The combination of WebSphere Portal and Lotus Quickr is particularly valuable for our committee members. They are often not government employees, so they don’t have access to the same resources as our own staff; but at the same time, they do important government work and often deal with sensitive or confidential information,” said Gudmunder H Kjaernested, IT Manager, Government Offices of Iceland.
“The new solution gives them access to online work spaces where they can store documents and find them easily. They can also collaborate with each other online in ways that weren’t possible before. This is important because they do not work together full time, and may not see each other except at committee meetings,” added Kjaernested.
Similarly, computer services provider Digital China Holdings, Ltd. (http://www.digitalchina.com), uses a variety of IBM Lotus software including Lotus Quickr to improve collaboration among workers. The company runs more than 130 online applications on its collaboration system and has approved its agility and productivity as a result.
IBM’s new version of Lotus Quickr social software that was made available today allows community and team based collaborative capabilities to be even more tightly aligned with IBM’s portal applications, Enterprise Management Content (ECM) systems, and tools such as IBM Sametime unified communications.
A major benefit of the new software is an enhanced user interface which is now better aligned with Lotus Connections. This helps provide a smooth transition between the community collaboration of Lotus Connections and team collaboration of Lotus Quickr. For example, the navigation and layout are similar.
It also includes a new Web-based rich text editor (http://www.flickr.com/photos/34618718@N06/4691093643/) for easy editing, especially in large repositories, and improved member and role management functions for a more personalized experience. “IBM Lotus Quickr is truly looking like the Web 2.0 front end to document centric team collaboration,” said Subbu Natarajan, Gemini Systems LLC.
It also supports Windows Single Sign-on and new platforms including Windows 2008 server and Linux on zSeries.
Lotus Quickr Connectors: IBM also announced today that it is making Lotus Quickr Connectors software available for the first time as a stand-alone product. Typically designed for organizations using ECM systems, the new connectors provide desktop access to ECM information from both Microsoft and IBM products, for example, Lotus Symphony and Microsoft Office.
For more information about new Lotus Quickr, visit www.ibm.com/software/lotus. For related news today about IBM ECM visit http://www.ibm.com/software/data/content-management/filenet-content-manager/quickr.html or http://www.ibm.com/software/data/cm/cmgr/mp/edition-enterprise/quickr.html.
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