IBM Expands Its SaaS Offerings With LotusLive Connections
As a major addition to its on-demand suite, IBM has unveiled LotusLive Connections at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference, where it won the Cloud Computing Technology Buyers' Choice Award.
LotusLive has long revolved around Web conferencing, with other features being somewhat secondary. The real power for the enterprise came from IBM's Lotus Connections, which is limited to on-premise deployment. But when LotusLive Connections becomes available on June 30th, all that will change.
Splitting The Difference
LotusLive Connections lies somewhere between Lotus Connections and the cloud predecessor of LotusLive Engage.The new package doesn't quite have the full functionality of the original Lotus Connections, and apparently will not have blogs and the Dogear bookmarking feature. What it will include is file sharing, instant messaging, and the Activities application that allows for group creation.
As compared to the rest of the LotusLive panorama, Connections lacks the focus on Web conferencing that Engage has, making it akin to more social networking and document-centered software.
A New Collaborative Powerhouse?
Though it may suffer from having no free version other than a 30-day free trial, LotusLive Connections looks to be an excellent new addition to the spectrum of cloud-based collaboration suites. By removing the rather unusual attention on conferencing and keeping a core group of social tools, it may just grow to overshadow its sister offerings in LotusLive.
Share
Facebook
Sponsored by
-
Are The Fortune 100 Now Beginning To Embrace Social Media Tools?
February 24, 2010 / 9 Comments -
Is the Relational Database Doomed?
February 12, 2009 / 139 Comments -
Yammer Opens Up Its Microblog Network To a Much Broader Community
February 25, 2010 / 5 Comments -
4 Ways Companies Use Twitter for Business
March 26, 2009 / 58 Comments -
SaaS Report: Is Salesforce.com Over or Under Valued?
February 26, 2010 / 7 Comments
-
A Growing Acceptance of Social Networking in the Workplace
July 2, 2009 / 8 Comments -
The Next Step For Full Collaboration in the Enterprise: Socialcast Goes Hybrid
March 2, 2010 / 1 Comments -
SaaS Report: Is Salesforce.com Over or Under Valued?
February 26, 2010 / 7 Comments -
Despite Recession, More Than 50% of Marketers Increase Spending on Social Media
March 16, 2009 / 38 Comments -
The Elevator Pitch for Enterprise 2.0
January 25, 2010 / 10 Comments
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all ReadWriteEnterprise posts
It is pretty interesting to see IBM trying to compete in this space along with the likes of Google and other smaller players.
Thank you for your sharing.!
Great analysis, Boris. Very practical set of recommendations. To me, BI SaaS is where e-commerce was in the late 1990s: everyone thought the security risks were too great for it to ever catch on. Phooey then, phooey now! The only real obstacle is transferring large data volumes over a thin internet wire and unamortized investments in existing private data centers and premises-based applications.