IBM Delivers Cloud Social Networking and Collaboration Service for Business

At the O'Reilly Web 2.0 Conference today, IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced LotusLive Engage, an integrated social networking and collaboration cloud service designed for businesses of all sizes. LotusLive Engage will become available on April 7, 2009.

In a challenging economy, companies no longer have all the resources they need. Finding ways to work with customers and partners in new ways is a matter of survival. LotusLive Engage enables companies to communicate and collaborate in new ways without increasing the resources in their IT departments.

LotusLive Engage gives any business the tools they need to work smarter with clients, partners and suppliers. It helps businesses connect and work with each other easily -- outside the firewall. Designed for business, the easy to use, security-rich services of LotusLive Engage include profile and contact management, online meetings, file sharing, instant messaging, and lightweight project management capabilities. These capabilities are tightly integrated to provide one of the richest communication and collaboration experiences available in the market today.

Integration between services is key to the design of LotusLive. The services are built using open, Web-based standards and an open business model. LotusLive services will enable "Click to Cloud" -- the seamless integration of the LotusLive online services with existing on-premise Lotus solutions. "Click to Cloud" will help customers extend the value of their existing investments by making it easy to bridge solutions inside the firewall to the cloud.

"Due to the economy, we don't travel as much. But it doesn't mean we have to stop business," said Leslie Moore, Colgate-Palmolive. "Using the collaboration tools allows us to communicate quicker, more effectively, and actually be more proficient working with our employees, and also reaching out to our customers."

Designed for business use, LotusLive Engage will be priced on a subscription model, not an advertising model. Pricing will be comparable with other offers in the market today. Businesses of every sector and every major industry, from construction to communications, have already formed their own business networks by connecting and working with clients, partners and suppliers via LotusLive.

"In a challenging economic environment, it's more valuable than ever for companies to come together in the cloud quickly and easily, using powerful communication and collaboration tools that integrate with their existing applications," said Sean Poulley, Vice President, IBM Online Collaboration & Cloud Services.

Using tools beyond simply email can help companies collaborating on a project work more smoothly and efficiently. For example, a construction company could use LotusLive Engage to work with various vendors. The developer, job site managers, architects and others could use LotusLive tools such as an online Meeting to review design changes; File Sharing to store the design documents and updates to those designs; and an Activity to keep track of various components of the project -- such as tasks associated with electrical, plumbing and landscaping. All of this information is easily accessible by anyone working on the project, at any time.