OGS - Part 9
LotusLive
The old "BlueHouse" is now "LotusLive Engage". But LotusLive is more than just that. It's the best of Lotus, put online, and made available to anyone. File sharing, social networking, email, and all.
LotusLive Engage is "much more than just a meeting service". Activities, Files, Forms (surveys etc), Profiles.
Demo time ...
The main thing here is that this is all cloud stuff. Feature-wise this looks like bits of Connections, bits of Quickr, and Sametime Unyte, all thrown into a pot and gently boiled. But the cloud-based architecture means that this is open to all to use at low cost.
Quite where this fits into the partner model is open to question. It will be possible to integrate existing products into LotusLive ... but how many partners will really want to do that? It probably only makes sense for partners that have products with a large target market in the 'S' end of 'SMB'. Somebody needs to explain to the wider business partner community where this fits into the partnering model. Especially as IBM traditionally relies on BP's to do it's marketing for it: how is this going to get to market if there's no clear revenue stream for most BPs? Or am I just being thick? Answers on a postcard please.
Impressive bit of demo: webmeeting client for the Blackberry - impressive stuff. Didn't catch whether that's a core feature or a partner offering.
Annoucment of partnerships with salesforce.com, LinkedIn and Skype. LotusLive users will be able to search for and collaborate with LinkedIn and Skype users. Okay, to some extent I take it back! This is a smart way to market: maybe IBM is finally getting "viral" after all?!
