Office Productivity
IBM Launches LotusLive for Online Collaboration
Published January 19th, 2009 by Jennifer LeClaire
I didn’t cover IBM’s announcement today for my traditional technology news audience, but Big Blue’s latest innovation is ripe for aBetterOffice readers. That’s because it empowers virtual offices and collaboration among mobile professionals that need tools that help them work more productively.
At its annual Lotusphere Conference this week, IBM launched LotusLive. It’s a cloud-based portfolio of social networking and collaboration services designed for the specific needs of business. Let’s explore the possibilities.
Under the Hood
IBM is positioning LotusLive.com as a single destination for all IBM Lotus online collaboration tools, including social networking, e-mail, file sharing and Web conferencing. The positioning is not just hype. LotusLive offers some valuable tools for mobile professionals, teleworkers and others.
One of those social networks is LinkedIn, complete with its 34 million business professionals. Big Blue inked a partnership with LinkedIn to integrate its functionality and networking capabilities with IBM Lotus Notes, IBM Lotus Connections and LotusLive.
What does this mean? For starters, LinkedIn members can keep track of their professional network via a Network Updates feed. Users also enjoy access to LinkedIn profiles from within their Lotus mail and applications. LotusLive users will be able to search LinkedIn’s public professional network and then collaborate with members using the LotusLive services.
Big Blue also shook hands with Salesforce.com and Skype. The Skype deal is interesting because it integrates voice and video service into LotusLive collaborative services. IBM is billing it as a seamless communications experience. In practical terms, this means LotusLive customers can call Skype contacts from within their LotusLive contacts.
Getting Micro, Getting Mobile
Lotus Connections latest iteration also takes popular features from consumer social networking sites and puts them to work for business. A new personal “posting wall” and micro-blogging capabilities aim to make it easy for people to share short, critical pieces of information.
IBM may also add a new wiki service to Lotus Connections. Wikis are Web pages that quickly and easily allow people to create and modify content in real-time.
BlackBerry fanatics everywhere can rejoice. IBM is unleashing the power of the mobile Web to let people collaborate. IBM’s Institute for Business Value predicts 1 billion mobile Web users by 2011 and a significant shift in the way the majority of people will interact with the Web over the next decade.
Addressing that market opportunity, IBM and Research In Motion (RIM) are bringing new advanced social software features to BlackBerry smartphone business users worldwide. The new features intend to help BlackBerry smartphone users find expertise, form teams, share information and stay in touch in real-time, making them more effective and productive. They will also bring mobile business users far beyond e-mail to live expertise and collective intelligence.
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Bill Brookshire January 20th, 2009 at 4:46 am
Leave it to IBM. This company has long been on the forefront of collaboration. LotusLive really takes these tools to another level for mobile professionals and distributed workforces.
And if there was any doubt that social networking is a key factor in today’s business world, IBM settled it with the LinkedIn play. What a group of partners!
Marcus Hester January 20th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
This is a really cool solution for virtual offices.
It’s got everything you could want as a mobile professional… Blackberry, LinkedIn, Salesforce.com.
This is a winning product for sure. Congratulations to IBM for making further inroads into the virtual office front for larger enterprises.
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Maggie Correta January 21st, 2009 at 4:43 pm
IBM always has some of the most advanced virtual collaboration tools on the market and I’ve been watching the company roll out products with a more of a social networking approach for the past year or so.
This one tops them all.
Integrating some of the must-have services like Skype, Salesforce.com and Blackberry is really smart business. It’s good for all the partners. Distributed workforces everywhere are probably cheering, especially if they are already Lotus users.