Was this really built by Lotus (or the Iris Associates people) ? There seems, for once, to be no "under the covers" Lotus infrastructure but instead (from the IBM link) "Lotus Connections runs on WebSphere Application Server V6.1, which provides scalability and security needed to run critical business applications."

Even better news, no rapid but hard to control Groupware apps to be concerned about.

Now, if they can get pricing right they might have a small chance of competing with Sharepoint on volumes of sales to companies (as opposed to per seat) - however, this needs careful planning - e.g. WAS needs to be installed/configured seamlessly on install as many companies do not have those skills.

I know it's targetted at large organisations who may be seduced with a bit of technology to help with Knowledge Management, but how about a free version limited to 10 accounts... if it's good get people using it to spread the word !

If you have 10 people in your company and need a search engine to know who's good at what, I don't think there is a software in the world that can help you.

... the idea is to see how good the software is, most organisations will want to do a pilot and this sort of pilot requires effort - input of skills/experience etc. Perhaps 20 or 50 might be more appropriate but beyond that it gets expensive in terms of human effort to see how good the software is...

... or you can rely on views by Gartner or Butler, who don't use the software in anger and get paid by the vendors in the first place !