IBM Launches Lotus Notes into the Cloud, Scores Hosted Email Trifecta

Event Summary

August 10 2010 - IBM announced to its channel partners the availability of LotusLive Notes, with service availability on August 24. LotusLive Notes offers enterprise-class mail, calendar, tasks and instant messaging. The service lists at USD 5/user/month, including a license for the Lotus Notes 8.5.2 client.

Quick Take

Analytical Summary

• Current Perspective: Positive on IBM's announcement that it would release IBM Lotus Notes as a full software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering via the company's LotusLive platform, because this move gives the vendor a clear way forward amid a cloud-savvy marketplace for its mature but heretofore premise-bound collaboration solution. However, its introduction also creates further complexities for an already complicated suite of cloud-savvy collaboration offerings.

• Vendor Importance: Very high to IBM, because IBM needed to establish a cloud-based messaging solution capable of bridging the gap between its newly introduced lightweight Web-mail service (LotusLive iNotes) and its high-end managed hosting rendition, Lotus Notes Hosted Messaging. The introduction of LotusLive Notes creates for IBM a three-headed monster with which it can address enterprise requirements for companies of all sizes.

• Market Impact: Very high on the collaboration platform marketplace, because the introduction of LotusLive Notes with an aggressive price tag of $5 dollars per user per month puts IBM back into the game opposite Microsoft in delivering an enterprise-grade, SaaS-based email, calendaring/scheduling and contact management solution capable of supporting hybrid cloud and premise deployments, an area where IBM has dedicated a great deal of engineering effort.

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Analytical Perspective

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