Blogger: Bill Pray
As has been stated in the previous CCS blog entries, Lotusphere 2009 is possibly a make-or-break opportunity for IBM. IBM's theme this year is "Resonance."
During the opening keynote, the Blue Man Group was entertaining and Dan Ackroyd was delightfully loquacious. However, the announcements from Monday were not make-or-break:
IBM Lotus Introduces New Portfolio of Integrated Cloud Services
Bluehouse, announced last year at Lotusphere, now becomes a product as LotusLive. Note that in the announcement it states that e-mail will be included, which has not been part of Bluehouse to this point. This relates back to last Thursday's announcement of IBM's intent to acquire Outblaze - an online messaging and collaboration services provider. While today's announcement is interesting, and not unexpected given last year's announcement, there are still many details yet to be provided (e.g. licensing, pricing, channel).
At Lotusphere IBM and SAP Announce Alloy, First Jointly Developed Software Product
This announcement should be well received by the Lotus faithful, but this integration should have happened a couple of years ago. The good news is that Lotus customers don't have much longer to wait (targeting a March release).
IBM, RIM Mobilize Business With Lotus Software and Developer Tools for the BlackBerry Platform
On the Lotus manifest of things to be done, IBM can check this one off for Lotus. This announcement resonates well with the Lotus faithful, but is not make-or-break. This effort probably means more to RIM than to IBM, as RIM is getting pressure from Apple's iPhone in the enterprise mobile device market.
IBM Helps Businesses Build a Smarter Workforce Through Communities in the Cloud
This announcement encompasses all three of the above plus adds information about partnerships integrating LinkedIn, Salesforce.com, and Skype. These partnerships demonstrate IBM's understanding that the collaboration environment consists of many tools and solutions that extend beyond the IBM platform. However, it will be interesting to see how the IBM works out the details regarding the issues that Mike Gotta surfaces in his blog "When Work And Social Worlds Collide."
Other interesting tidbits include a declaration of 12,000 plus new Lotus 8 customers, an impressive demonstration of Sametime Unified Telephony (with a little help from the Blue Man Group), and customer testimonials from Coca-Cola, NetJets, and HSBC.
In sum, nothing make-or-break yet.
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