The press coverage of the LotusLive Connections announcement is beginning to trickle through.
eWeek are first:
IBM unveils LotusLive Connections, the SAAS version of its social networking and collaboration suite for businesses, at the Enterprise 2.0 show in Boston. The IBM-hosted service will let employees work on projects together, including share data from enterprise applications.
IBM June 23 launched LotusLive Connections, porting its Lotus Connections social networking suite as a (SAAS) software as a service offering. Launched in 2007 as an enterprise collaboration suites geard to capitalize on the popularity of social networks such as Facebook, Lotus Connections includes apps for employee profiles, blogging, bookmarks and community and activities.
These tools were designed to let company employees, partners, suppliers and customers exchange information and data more efficiently across firewalls. But while Facebook lived on the Web, or the “cloud,” Lotus Connections was a suite for businesses to download and host on their own servers.
LotusLive Connections, a follow-up to the LotusLive Engage, the first SAAS social networking and collaboration app IBM introduced in April, IBM represents the latest break from that hosted software tradition.
Though he declined to provide licensing numbers, IBM Lotus General Manager Bob Picciano said the reception for Engage has been “outstanding,” spurring IBM to take Lotus Connections to the cloud to let individuals, departments and small businesses tap into the intellectual resources and capabilities that previously have only been accessible to large enterprises.
The article goes on to point out that the features within LotusLive Connections are just the start, with more assets from Lotus Connections being added later.
Other Lotus Connections apps, such as profiles and blogs, will be ported to LotusLive Connections later this year. IBM said LotusLive Connections will be available on June 30, starting at $10 per user per month.
For those that know Lotus Connections – it’s worth pointing out that LotusLive Connections is not simply “Lotus Connections social networking suite as a (SAAS) software” but is an integrated online offering that has features based on those within the on-premise product.
