More and more companies are realizing that they need a social networking platform they can integrate into their existing applications. Without this capability social software adoption may not be as fast as desired and may deem a social software deployment useless.
As I've discussed in the past, one of the things that I like as a developer and that my customers like is how easy it is to integrate Lotus Connections into existing applications. Even Microsoft business partners see the value of Lotus Connections and have built solutions to bring Lotus Connections content into Microsoft Sharepoint. A couple of weeks ago, I talked about adding social networking capabilities to mainframe (old school) applications. Now, we have another old school application going social: CRM (sorry, but when I hear CRM, I think of Siebel, which makes me think of old school application.. 
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This week Ted Stanton, sales advocate for Lotus Connections, announced on his blog that iEnterprises and IBM have introduced a new integration capability to create Social CRM (Customer Relationship Management system). Ed Brill had also teased us about it the day before yesterday.
My favorite quote of the article was:
"It's like the virtual coffee machine chat -- where a massive information pool can be readily called upon, but here it's more targeted and therefore more purposeful," said James Mead, Royal Caribbean's Project Manager for International IT, and an iExtensions CRM customer. "We're excited about this integration; it could help us tap collective experiences and get answers faster. It also opens doors for cross departmental sharing -- so sales, finance, marketing, and call centers can swap their customer communication histories and build relationships."
The integration between the iExtensions CRM and Lotus Connections is based on a service oriented architecture (SOA) approach.
With so much stuff going on, it's hard to stop blogging for even a day!! W00t!!