Cambridge IBM facility to focus on social links

IBM Corp. is setting up a research center in Cambridge to develop better ways for businesses to use social networking software.

"It's something that can have worldwide impact," said Irene Greif, director of IBM's new Center for Social Software.

The move represents a further commitment by IBM to invest in Massachusetts, where the company already employs about 5,000 workers. An IBM spokeswoman said the company will probably hire additional workers to staff the center, but did not say how many jobs might be created.

The center will be IBM's global center for social-software research, and will host IBM scientists from labs around the world.

It will also include a corporate residency program, where participating businesses will work with IBM to develop new social software applications.

"The expectation is that we'll have people from a variety of industries in here working with us," said Bob Pic ciano, general manager of IBM's Lotus software business unit, which is based in Cambridge. The center will also collaborate with university students and faculty members and is forming relationships with Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The center will leverage the resources of IBM's Lotus software business unit, which specializes in social networking software. For example, Lotus Quickr software enables teams of workers to quickly assemble information from a variety of sources, so they can share the data while collaborating on a project. Another product, Lotus Connections, can be deployed to every worker in a company, enabling them to share information, identify colleagues with expert knowledge, and quickly form collaborative groups.

One of the first companies to participate, Thomson Reuters Healthcare in Cambridge, hopes to work with IBM on better ways to visualize and share medical information with doctors and insurance companies. "The folks at this IBM center have some very interesting tools to support collaborative views of what's going on," said Thomson-Reuters Healthcare senior vice president William Marder. "The nice part of this center is the potential to interact with some world-class smart people."

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.