I have previously commented on the use of IBM Connections at Bayer Material Science, a 15,000 employee part of Bayer – see Bayer Material Science to Implement Lotus Connections (November 2010), and An Update on Value and Adoption (March 2011).

What I didn’t know was the wider story about Bayer choosing SharePoint, and the resulting conflict inside that BMS’s decision to go with Connections caused. Volker set me straight, however:

“Bayer is one of Microsoft’s largest wins. The company, a long time IBM customer, is moving to the Microsoft stack. Then last year, Bayer Material Science (BMS), a small part of Bayer, started to roll out IBM Connections, joint press release with IBM, the full treatment.

As you can imagine, that lead to some discussion within Bayer. Sharepoint MySite vs. Connections. Since the strategy was to go on a Microsoft stack, the smaller renegade BMS was set up for failure. Only they did not.

I just learned last week that Connections won. It’s going to be a full rollout across the whole company.“

Interesting.