I just returned from staffing our Collaborative Application Lifecycle Management (C/ALM) pedestal at Lotusphere 2010 where we were highlighting a technical preview of the Lotus Connections integration with Rational Team Concert developed by IBM Business Partner, Mainsoft

The majority of the audience at this event normally is interested in software other than development solutions. But this year, the tie in with Lotus Connections proved to be a real draw! It allowed us to bring the collaboration benefits of Lotus Connections to software development teams using Rational Team Concert.

Attendees saw how easily development teams can engage and work with business stakeholders by creating new activity entries in Lotus Connections directly from within Team Concert. And with the new social network viewlet on the project dashboard, developers can easily find new technical and business contacts across the enterprise based on their expertise or relationships.

As an aside, I found it incredibly simple to install and configure the Lotus Connections integration with Rational Team Concert on my laptop which was running Team Concert Standard Edition and linking to the IBM Lotus Connections on our IBM intranet