IBM Adapts Social Networking to Business

By Greg McNevin

December 20, 2007: IBM is having a crack at making social networking more applicable to business with the release of its new Atlas for Lotus Connections.

Instead of creating space for custom applications and mini games, Atlas will provide visualisation and analysis tools that help workers find experts on different topics and projects from among their extended colleague networks.

Atlas has four Web 2.0-based components (My Net, Find, Reach and Net) that help users identify important connections and the relationships between various groups, and to navigate their personal and corporate networks.

Out of these four components, Net provides a visual indication of the important hubs among topic experts and informal groups that have developed during projects, with users able to identify communication gaps or bottle-necks between groups, making it easier to manage skills across the organisation according to IBM.

My Net takes this capability and breaks it down for use in a user's personal network, enabling a salesperson for example to better manage and understand their social networks and ensure they have connections across the right topic areas.

Reach is IBM’s “six degrees of separation” dashboard feature, which the firm claims can help users see who connects them to a particular colleague and the shortest path to reach a particular specialist.

Finally the Find component takes searches beyond the corporate directory to include results based on social data such as reporting structures, blogs and communities. Results are sorted and refined based on user parameters and the collaborative ranking assigned to a topic expert.

“When you apply social software to business processes, it's critical to see and understand the relationships between groups, people and information,” said Jeff Schick, vice president of social software for IBM Lotus. “Atlas helps workers navigate their social networks and use these relationships to rally around ideas and projects instead of using organisation charts. This speeds decision making and improves efficiency.”

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