IBM Lotus Introduces LotusLive for Cloud Computing

IBM has announced LotusLive, a cloud-based portfolio of social networking and collaboration services designed for business. LotusLive will extend customers' current investments and link to everyday business services. LotusLive.com is the place to find all of Lotus' cloud solutions, including email, collaboration and Web conferencing services.

LotusLive is designed to help companies work smarter by making it easy for them to connect and work together with an emphasis on simplicity. LotusLive's online services give businesses of all sizes access to Lotus' rich collaboration tools without requiring an up-front investment in IT support resources or infrastructure.

LotusLive is built using open Web-based standards and an open business model allowing it to integrate with third party applications. "Click to Cloud" is the ability to link on-premise solutions with LotusLive services. "Click to Cloud" aims to bridge solutions inside the firewall to the cloud.

 

IBM also announced partnerships with LinkedIn, Salesforce.com and Skype.

LinkedIn will work with IBM to connect the LinkedIn network with LotusLive. LotusLive users will be able to search LinkedIn's public professional network and then collaborate with them using LotusLive services.

Salesforce.com will be integrating LotusLive services within its CRM solutions. Businesses will be able to extend the customer and opportunity management work done in the Salesforce CRM application with the collaborative capability of LotusLive.

Skype has announced plans to integrate its voice and video with LotusLive to create a communications experience. This integration will allow LotusLive customers to call Skype contacts from within their LotusLive contacts.