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He said the IBM Lotus Connections for Partners is based on Lotus Connections, social software for businesses, which IBM debuted in January at IBM Lotusphere.The company's plan is that partners will get used to the advantages the software provides and want it for their own internal use.
"We want to make sure partners are familiar with [Lotus Connections] and actually understand the power of it by experiencing the power of it," Kounadis said.
Today's announcement is more evidence that IBM is intent on dominating the enterprise social-networking space.
In March, IBM Labs researchers demonstrated tools, upgrades and raw, experimental pieces of software spanning business intelligence, application integration, information sharing and other areas for social-networking use.
But Big Blue is not alone.
The path technology can take from consumer use to the enterprise is well-traveled.
Even a few Web 2.0 technologies have already migrated into business use.
In February, Google introduced Google Apps Premier Edition, a suite of hosted applications targeted at the same enterprise market traditionally dominated by Microsoft Office.
Many of the products in the package, such as Gmail and Google Calendar were originally introduced as intended for consumers.
Cisco Systems (Quote) is taking advantage of the trend, too.
In February, the company bought privately held social-networking vendo...
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