As a major addition to its on-demand suite, IBM has unveiled LotusLive Connections at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference, where it won the Cloud Computing Technology Buyers’ Choice Award.
LotusLive has long revolved around Web conferencing, with other features being somewhat secondary. The real power for the enterprise came from IBM’s Lotus Connections, which is limited to on-premise deployment. But when LotusLive Connections becomes available on June 30th, all that will change.
Splitting The Difference
LotusLive Connections lies somewhere between Lotus Connections and the cloud predecessor of LotusLive Engage.
The new package doesn’t quite have the full functionality of the original Lotus Connections, and apparently will not have blogs and the Dogear bookmarking feature. What it will include is file sharing, instant messaging, and the Activities application that allows for group creation.
As compared to the rest of the LotusLive panorama, Connections lacks the focus on Web conferencing that Engage has, making it akin to more social networking and document-centered software.
A New Collaborative Powerhouse?
Though it may suffer from having no free version other than a 30-day free trial, LotusLive Connections looks to be an excellent new addition to the spectrum of cloud-based collaboration suites. By removing the rather unusual attention on conferencing and keeping a core group of social tools, it may just grow to overshadow its sister offerings in LotusLive.
