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Subscribe via EmailAnother useful case study/reference for IBM LotuslIve Engage in the UK:
Azlan, the enterprise division of Tech Data Corporation, is a leading value-added distributor of enterprise technology solutions in Europe. The company employs more than 590 people, operates in 16 countries, and has developed a network of more than 8,000 resellers that sell hardware and software to businesses across Europe.More >
Business need:
Azlan, one of Europe’s premier IT distributors, wanted to build a network of resellers for IBM Lotus small business solutions. The company wanted to find an effective way to communicate information and provide training on these products.
Solution:
Azlan signed up for IBM LotusLive Engage – a cloud-based online platform that enables the rapid creation of secure, private online communities and provides file-sharing, instant messaging and virtual meeting rooms.
Benefits:
Enables Azlan to create an online community for its partner network rapidly, with no up-front investment. Avoids the need to deploy software on servers or local PCs, helping to save maintenance and support costs. Replaces occasional face-to-face meetings with regular online collaboration, helping to reduce travel expenses and building closer working relationships. Simplifies file-sharing and version control, helping to improve the accuracy of communication.
By: Stuart McIntyre | 0 Comments | On: 8 July 2010 09:53:30 | Tags: lotuslive engage reference azlan
Here's IBM's update regarding the LotusLive product-set at this year's Enterprise2.0 conference:
At this year's "Evening in the Cloud" session at Enterprise 2.0, IBM will showcase how it is helping businesses stay connected and remain competitive with tools from LotusLive, IBM's public cloud collaboration services. At last year's Enterprise 2.0, LotusLive was voted the winner of The Enterprise 2.0 Cloud Computing Technology Buyer's Choice Award in a side-by-side comparison with Google Apps, EMC and other vendors' cloud technologies. But oddly enough, the competition this year will fail to emerge.Fighting talk indeed!
Since LotusLive was honored last year, a lot has happened.
Last Fall, IBM LotusLive expanded with low-cost cloud email -- LotusLive iNotes -- for $3 per user, per month. IBM knows that most serious businesses will maintain an intellectual curiosity about the cloud but will not make hasty decisions. There have been too many high profile outages, crashes, security and privacy concerns about consumer services to ignore. A trusted name, IBM provides the assurances of security, privacy and reliability the market requires as well as the traditional and cloud-based technology to allow companies to safely test and move to the cloud.
But, IBM also realizes that businesses will never move everything to the cloud, but will look to vendors who provide a mix of both public and private clouds (a hybrid approach).
Also in the past year, IBM announced the largest enterprise cloud computing deployment to date where Panasonic is adopting IBM's LotusLive services for Web conferencing, file sharing, instant messaging and project management. The company is also implementing LotusLive Connections for business social networking between employees, partners and suppliers to find and share the right insight when needed. As part of this investment in open IBM technology, Panasonic is migrating employees from Microsoft Exchange or other collaboration software to LotusLive for email, calendaring and contact management.
IBM has also been listening very closely to its customers in order to fully understand the collaborative needs of businesses of all sizes. No matter what, businesses have told IBM that they need all of their collaboration services integrated into one service and one platform. Because of this, IBM has partnered with companies like Ariba, UPS, Salesforce.com, Skype and Silanis in order to integrate essential business services into LotusLive and into the context of the work people do every day.
It's no wonder the competition isn't showing up this year at Enterprise 2.0.
By: Stuart McIntyre | 0 Comments | On: 14 June 2010 21:37:16 | Tags: lotuslive e2conf
The latest beta of the new release of Lotus Symphony (version 3, based on OpenOffice 3 code) was released this week - it features a huge number of improvements, not least a big increase in speed.
Alongside the new beta, IBM has also issued a new Plug-in, the LotusLive Connector:
LotusLive Connector : Links you to LotusLive by simple clickFeaturing access to your LotusLive Files library, this is the first step towards seamless sharing of Symphony files in the cloud. Well worth downloading...
The IBM LotusLive Connector for Lotus Symphony plugin is a plugin which simplifies creating, updating, and sharing your LotusLive files. The IBM LotusLive Connector for Lotus Symphony includes a capabilities to launch a new meeting. This is an emerging plugin, and go under updates, and quality control.
Support OS: Windows, Linux and Mac
By: Stuart McIntyre | 0 Comments | On: 9 June 2010 10:53:06 | Tags: lotuslive files symphony
It's not just IBM's nomenclature that confuses folks when it comes to looking at on-premise (sorry Bob!) vs. cloud collaboration applications, it is often difficult to compare the services that are included, the licensing options (users vs. CPU for example) and the suitability for including users outside the organisation.
Phil Salm has put together a useful blog entry on the subject, comparing the options for a small business looking at rolling out social collaboration solutions to their users:
Whilst Phil's example is perhaps a little simplistic, it does cover some of the major discussion points that come up when comparing the on-premise and cloud options available. Well worth a read.LotusLive Connections is only $84 a user for an annual subscription for existing Lotus customers. Now comparing this to the premise-deployed Lotus Connections is not particularly fair because Lotus Connections has far more features than LotusLive Connections (micro-blogging, blogging, communities, wikis, dogears and more). But I would argue for many small businesses, key features they wish to deploy are activities and file sharing.
To deploy Lotus Connections on premise, a business with Notes/Domino is looking at adding a minimum of two servers, as well as needing to develop competencies in Websphere Application Server, DB2, and put in place the back-up software, monitoring tools and other operational items standard for new applications deployed within a company. None of that is required for LotusLive Connections.
Then take a look at licensing. A Lotus Connections user license is $119 a user. That is $35 more initially than a LotusLive Connections user, though in year two it will drop to $23.80 per user. BUT to license your premise Connections environment to be shared externally, you would also have to purchase a Lotus Connections Extranet license, and that costs $292 per processor value unit (PVU). Since you practically can't buy a new server that requires less than 200 PVUs, that's $58,400 year one ($19,500 year two). There is no additional charge to share files or activities outside your company with LotusLive Connections because guest accounts are free.
By: Stuart McIntyre | 0 Comments | On: 12 May 2010 08:12:24 | Tags: lotuslive connections cloud onpremise
Now this made my day...
Join a Web Conference from your iPhone!Free to download, currently in beta, this is a massive enhancement to Apple smartphone- or iPad-touting LotusLive users. Downloading now!
Use the online meeting features of LotusLive Engage right from your iPhone! Join a Web meeting, chat with attendees and view shared content - all from your iPhone! Participants with 3G or Wi-Fi coverage can experience simultaneous voice and data for a full meeting experience on the phone.
FEATURES
Attendees can:
-Listen to the audio for the meeting in the background while viewing the meeting content
-View live shared desktop content, presentations and documents
-Browse through all the slides that have been shared during a meeting
-View and participate in group and individual chats
-Get the presenter's attention by virtually raising your hand in a meeting
By: Stuart McIntyre | 0 Comments | On: 10 May 2010 12:53:58 | Tags: lotuslive meetings iphone ipod
When the LotusLive iNotes cloud-based messaging service was announced back in September 2009, it provoked significant coverage from the media and analysts. The general consensus seemed to be that the service itself was impressive, and the price was extremely competitive ($3 per user per month).
However a number of the restrictions on the base offerings held it back - specifically the 1GB storage included with each account looked a little weedy compared with the competition such as Google Apps. Extra storage was available at a additional cost, but this was in 1GB segments too.
I'm delighted to see that this storage capacity has now been increased to a whopping 25GB for every LotusLive iNotes account - and at the same low cost of $3/2.81€/£2 per user per month:
This new capacity applies to both the LotusLive iNotes and LotusLive Bundle offerings.
So, another block to considering LotusLive iNotes in any comparison against Google Apps and Microsoft's BPOS has been removed - give LotusLive iNotes a try today!
By: Stuart McIntyre - LotusLive | 0 Comments | On: 29 April 2010 04:50:15 | Tags: lotuslive inotes
Great video interview with UPS' VP of Marketing, Jordan Colletta describing why they have integrated UPS online services with IBM's LotusLive 'collaboration in the cloud' service.
(Transcript available here)
By: Stuart McIntyre - LotusLive | 0 Comments | On: 28 April 2010 19:52:47 | Tags: lotuslive ups
Are you based in Russia, or more specifically, Moscow?
Want to find out more about LotusLive? This half-day event could be just what you need:
IBM LotusLive: Smarter collaboration in the cloud
This half day briefing introduces cloud computing and explains how Software as a Service (SaaS) is part of this initiative. IBM has developed a brand called LotusLive that delivers collaboration services in the IBM cloud. We will go through the details and highlight competitive differences with other prominent cloud service providers.
The intended audience for this briefing is business leaders, business analysts and architects who want to learn more about cloud and SaaS and who want to investigate the collaborative services offered by LotusLive.
To enroll, select the desired date and location. There is no charge to attend.
12 May 2010 , Moscow, Russia
By: Stuart McIntyre - LotusLive | 0 Comments | On: 28 April 2010 14:58:24 | Tags: lotuslive russia events
The LotusLive Bundle - Webmail and collaboration tools you need to get work done - all in one easy bundle.
More details available at http://lotuslive.com/bundle - prices start at just $7 per user per month.
By: Stuart McIntyre - LotusLive | 1 Comments | On: 28 April 2010 05:17:39 | Tags: lotuslive bundle youtube
LotusLive, a cloud-based portfolio of social networking and collaboration services designed for business, now includes a new LotusLive Plus offering based on LotusLive iNotes and LotusLive Connections.So first up we have a combined LotusLive iNotes and Lotuslive Connections suite, named LotusLive Plus:
This new offering is perfect for companies who need collaboration and messaging capabilities such as:
- File sharing
- Instant messaging
- Activities (project management)
- Surveys and charts
IBM is also offering new LotusLive Engage for Enterprise Deployment and LotusLive Meetings for Enterprise Deployment at competitive price points for clients who would like to conduct Web conferences for up to 200 attendees and plan on using LotusLive services company-wide.
This new solution includes powerful collaboration tools such as file sharing, activities, instant messaging, and social networking for business along with IBM's new LotusLive iNotes e-mail service. LotusLive iNotes is a business-class Web-based messaging solution for everyone in an organization. With LotusLive iNotes, employees will have real-time e-mail access from a Web browser and Internet connection. Also, all e-mail accounts are enabled with POP, authenticated SMTP, and IMAP capabilities for use with e-mail clients such as Lotus Notes or Microsoft Outlook.This makes perfect sense, as the two solutions were always intended to work side-by-side, and for many smaller businesses (including startups and the self-employed) email is still the core requirement even if the leadership or end users realise that true collaboration goes beyond messaging. Competitors such as Microsoft BPOS and Google Apps both have combined messaging/collaboration offerings so IBM needed to match this. The pricing has yet to be made available for LotusLive Plus but will be interesting to see - cloud-based collaboration is now a very competitive marketplace, and LotusLive iNotes stole a march on other vendors based on its very low entry-point - will LotusLive Plus continue this trend? Clearly IBM has Google in its sights - this line is included in the announcement letter:
LotusLive Plus with LotusLive iNotes and LotusLive Connections is a great fit for companies who need both collaboration tools and messaging, thereby giving companies the ability to choose the right LotusLive offering for their business needs, whether it be a single service or a combined solution.
LotusLive services were also built for business, not for advertising, so an individual or company's identity is protected, not exploited.
Also announced today are two new offerings for companies that plan on using LotusLive across their organisation:
LotusLive Engage for Enterprise Deployment and LotusLive Meetings for Enterprise Deployment are solutions that provide subscribers the ability to collaborate through LotusLive with anyone outside of their organization and with LotusLive subscribers inside of their organization for a lower, competitive price. Both of these offerings are sold as authorized user subscriptions and allow Web conferences of up to 200 attendees.Once again, pricing seems to be key in these on-premise vs. cloud discussions, particularly in larger corporations, so IBM is clearly doing all it can to make the case for LotusLive as an alternative to organisations running collaboration services in-house.
Overall, I like the direction that IBM is taking with LotusLive and they really do seem to be listening to both customers and partners regarding requirements for cloud-based collaboration. I think the LotusLive Plus with LotusLive iNotes and LotusLive Connections offering will be very popular. However, my worry (which is a long-term concern with almost all IBM products to be fair) is the proliferation of offerings, options, bundles and pricing/licensing methodologies that are now in use for LotusLive. If it's difficult for partners and IBMers to follow along then it can't help but confuse poor customers evaluating LotusLive against the opposition. I'm hoping that the LotusLive 'Compare Services' page will be updated to make the options clear.
*UPDATE* Price of LotusLive Bundle has been confirmed as $7 US list price (i.e. Band BL Passport Advantage pricing), according to ZDNet. Interestingly they term the bundle 'LotusLive Essentials'. The LotusLive website doesn't use either name!
By: Stuart McIntyre - LotusLive | 4 Comments | On: 13 April 2010 06:57:42 | Tags: lotuslive plus