EWEEK senior writer Clint Boulton chats with Charlie Hill, distinguished engineer and CTO of IBM's Lotus software group, who shows off IBM's experimental new Project Vulcan collaboration platform. Vulcan, which will be released to developers in the second half of this year through IBM LotusLabs, comprises a blend of existing IBM software, including IBM Lotus Notes, Sametime, Connections, with IBM's Cognos business intelligence applications. Equal parts Google Wave, Facebook and BI, Vulcan is geared to help customers unlock business data from its CRP and ERP silos and share it with IBM's messaging and collaboration products. In this video, Hill shows how he can share content with users through Vulcan, access calendars, search for users in the IBM network, and mash up Connections profile information with business analytics reports. Should this platform come to fruition, it could give IBM a competitive advantage over Microsoft, Google Apps, and even Salesforce.com, which has added collaboration software to its portfolio. Hill said IBM plans to add real-time co-editing tools to Vulcan via Project Concord. Expect Vulcan to hit the market in 2010.
