IBM expands cloud collaboration platform LotusLive

IBM has announced a technology and business expansion of its LotusLive cloud collaboration platform through a new research and development pipeline from IBM Research. It also plans to open the LotusLive suite to new partners.

LotusLive cloud services provide integrated email, web conferencing, social networking and collaboration with a focus on security, reliability and enterprise integration. IBM Research and Lotus have joined forces to create LotusLive Labs, an initiative that would work as a test bed or proving ground for advances in business-driven collaboration in the cloud. In its statement, IBM Research said it will work with Lotus to accelerate the pipeline for business-focused innovation for LotusLive.

Technology previews that are being unveiled at Lotusphere 2010 this week include:

• Slide Library, a collaborative way to build and share presentations;
• Collaborative Recorded Meetings, a service that records and instantly transcribes meeting presentations and audio/video for searching and tagging;
• Event Maps, an interactive way to visualize and interact with conference schedules; and,
• Composer, the ability to create LotusLive mashups through the combination of LotusLive services.

Expected in second quarter of 2010 via LotusLive Labs, Project Concord is a new web-based document editor for creating and sharing documents, presentations and spreadsheets.

A platform for integration
IBM has also announced the extension of the core collaboration services of LotusLive to third-party applications and business processes. Previously available only through the LotusLive Design Partner program, IBM will make application programming interfaces (APIs) for LotusLive services available to any IBM business partner in the second half of 2010. Additionally, three LotusLive design partners are scheduled to bring their solutions to market in Q2 including:

• Silanis Technology: electronic signature process management integrated with LotusLive Files and Activities
• Skype: voice and video calling integrated with LotusLive Contacts
• Prolifiq: one to one branded sales messaging platform integrated with LotusLive Contacts and Files

IBM said it is also working with new integration partners such as PGi (formerly Premiere Global Services), which provides meeting and collaboration solutions, wherein PGi will resell LotusLive Meetings, integrated with its audio conferencing platform. IBM also plans to expand the benefits for IBM business partners, including no-cost, 12-month LotusLive demo accounts as well as a number of partner programs aimed at helping partners succeed in selling LotusLive services.


Service enhancements
The next version of LotusLive Notes will provide email, calendar, contact management and instant messaging capabilities to customers in a multi-tenant environment. IBM said the LotusLive Notes service will be optimized to support hybrid on-premise and cloud deployments with standard support for directory synchronization between on-premise directories and the cloud, access to application and mail workflows that remain on-premise, and entitlement for every user to use either a browser or the Lotus Notes client to access their email. New services and options will include a reduction in the minimum number of users for a LotusLive Notes subscription from 1,000 to 25, IBM Lotus Sametime instant messaging support and a 5GB standard mailbox quota.

Sean Poulley, vice president, IBM Cloud Collaboration said Lotus knows the importance of assisting customers work with people outside and inside their companies, by easing the process for partners to weave in "cloud-based social networking, collaboration and communication tools into their applications, customers will gain powerful new ways to solve business problems."