IBM/Lotus recently announced at the Lotusphere show that Version 2 of Lotus Connections will be released in June. Its new enterprise social-networking software comes with integration and unified communication plans with which IBM/Lotus can compete for email marketshare. Competitors include Microsoft, Cisco, Google and Yahoo!. In 2007, IT executives reported collaboration technologies are at least 'somewhat important' to future achievement. At the show, IBM/Lotus explained how it will integrate its product portfolio of messaging, real-time communication, social software and rapid application development tools for corporate users. The new Notes 8 client comes with open client framework built on Lotus Expeditor and Eclipse for XML-based application components. Client integration has been designed for users to pick and choose the components they will buy and run. Users will fill in any gaps with their own software. The framework is front-end for Sametime 8 and Lotus Symphony. It will eventually reside on every back-end server and service, and result in a la carte functionality through a single interface. Users are not locked into the Lotus platform by integrating the open-client-framework servers with clients such as Microsoft Outlook, or with software partner Carestream's imaging tools. So, the framework increases the potential sales range. IBM/Lotus also recently announced partnerships with wiki technology vendors SocialText and Atlassian to integrate their social networking technology into Lotus Connections. Users will only notice new functionality in a familiar application. IBM/Lotus wants to present its integrated products as solutions for enterprise customer goals. Experts believe Microsoft's Sharepoint Server 2007 is foundational for collaboration, real-time communications, and entry to social networking blogs and wikis. IBM/Lotus' integration efforts are driven by Microsoft's success throughout the industry with Sharepoint. One analyst believes IBM's social networking tools are 'arguably superior' to Sharepoint. IBM/Lotus will add replication to Connections later in the year, and release two new versions of Sametime.