IBM/Lotus Enterprise Microblogging Debuts: What about Microsoft?

Is IBM onto something here, ahead of Microsoft? Indeed, Lotus-based organizations should see benefit from the secure enterprise microblogging as described below. Seems organizations based on Exchange would similarly benefit, if the upcoming Exchange 2010 release would include these "publish/subscribe dialogues" within the enterprise, similar to Twitter (but no indication of that from the Exchange 2010 Beta so far). Exchange's unified messaging since Exchange 2007 may be useful and have significant benefits, but IMHO not as simple and easy to use as a Twitter-like service could/should be, if integrated intelligently into the enterprise architecture. Here's further information courtesy of IBM Enterprise Microblogging Debuts - Technology For Change:

"Lotus Connections now boasts a Twitter-like service that lets employees establish and maintain publish/subscribe dialogues within their organizations.

At its Center for Social Software symposium being held this week in Cambridge, Mass., IBM announced the release of a microblogging and file-sharing facility bolstering the Lotus Connections suite of enterprise social networking tools. The Twitter-like service enables employees to establish and maintain publish/subscribe dialogues within their organizations.
Additional features added to Lotus Connections include support for iPhone and Nokia S60 mobile devices, including microbrowser access to Profiles, Activities and the Lotus Connections blogging tool..."

MS Exchange2007/WinServer2008 compatibility issues

Seems that waiting for Exchange Server 2010 - rather than upgrading now to Exchange Server 2007 - may make sense for many organizations currently running Exchange Server 2003 [or earlier]. Although this seems somewhat inconvenient, I expect many organizations can deal with this successfully in several ways, given sufficient planning. This sort of constraint reminds me of the situation approximately 4 years ago, when some Microsoft shops wanted to wait until MS SQL Server 2005 became available for purchase, rather than immediately purchasing a SQL Server 2000 license. In fact, the Software Assurance up-front purchase (to purchase SQL Server 2000 with SA that would include upgrade to SQL Server 2005) might have seemed logical at the time for many organizations.... But of course, evaluating the full TCO of a subsequent upgrade to SQL Server 2005 would have involved more than the initial hard cost of purchasing Software Assurance. So perhaps the best decision (then and now) as to whether to invest in Software Assurance depends on the particular upgrade and change management capabilities for the specific organization.

The recent Exchange2007/WinServer2008 issue was explained in the recent Microsoft Exchange Team blog posting explaining that Exchange Server 2007 won't run on upcoming Windows Server 2008 R2. Further insights available from SearchITChannel.com: Dilemma: Exchange Server 2007 won't run on next Windows Server:

"...Customers upgrading to Windows Server 2008 R2, due later this year, will have to upgrade to Exchange Server 2010, which is also due this year. This news, disclosed in the fourth bullet point in a July 17 Microsoft Exchange Team Blog post, means Microsoft partners have to sell Exchange Server 2007 without the promise of support on future OSes and without Windows Server 2008 R2 interoperability with Exchange Server 2007... said Planet Technologies lead infrastructure engineer Mike Crowley: "If people stick with Exchange 2007 on Windows 2008 because 'it works,' I wouldn't expect them to want to upgrade the underlying OS just because a new one is available."

Major Exchange/Outlook Deficiency addressed by "Add Tags to Your Outlook Email Messages, Just Like GMail Labels at Digital Inspiration"

I do not have experience with the specific solution mentioned below. But I certainly see how classic MS Outlook lacks the multiple-tags-per-message feature (and how valuable that can be...)

[Any MS bloggers out there care to comment about how the go-forward on Exchange Server 2007 may or may not help with this? The 15-second scan of the key ES2007 improvements athttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Exchange_Server#Key_improvements did not even hint at tagging :-)]

Add Tags to Your Outlook Email Messages, Just Like GMail Labels at Digital Inspiration : "Gmail use the term 'Labels' while del.icio.us, YouTube and other web 2.0 websites prefer to say 'tags' but the basic idea is same - tags (or labels or categories) make it easy for you to filter or search content. Like Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail, Microsoft Outlook uses the concept of folders to organize email messages - the problem with the folder approach is that an email message, task or contact can be stored only in one folder at a time unlike Gmail where you can place an email into any number of virtual folders (aka Labels). Also read: Is Your GMail Inbox Full ? If you are missing tags in Outlook, get Taglocity. It's a Microsoft Outlook add-in that adds tagging feature to your Outlook interface. You can assign multiple tags to your emails messages and quickly filter content in folders based on tag names. Similar to del.icio.us, you can create a tag cloud of your email messages where the varying font sizes help you visualize the number of messages under that tag. Taglocity is available for Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007 on Windows XP and Windows Vista. There is a free version of Taglocity for Personal Use though it imposes a limit on the number of tags..."