IBM Advances LotusLive Cloud Agenda

Event Summary

January 18, 2010 – IBM announced the technology and business expansion of its LotusLive cloud collaboration platform, which provides integrated e-mail, Web conferencing, and social networking. The company is opening up a new R&D pipeline from IBM Research, and it also plans to open the LotusLive suite to new partners through application programming interfaces (APIs). Project Concord, a new Web-based document editor for creating and sharing documents, presentations, and spreadsheets, is expected in Q2 2010 via LotusLive Labs.

Analytical Summary

• Current Perspective: Positive on IBM’s efforts to position its LotusLive online collaboration suite as an anchor for cloud-based applications, because by opening up its APIs to all of its third-party partners and introducing LotusLive Labs to allow business customers to test out new application features, the IT services provider encourages the development of new cloud-based LotusLive applications and opens up a direct line of communication between the end customer and IBM developers.

• Vendor Importance: Moderate to IBM, because by introducing the LotusLive Labs and extending its APIs to all of its business partners, the IT services provider will strengthen customer and channel affinity for the LotusLive suite. Fostering close customer and partner relationships around LotusLive is crucial for IBM at this juncture in order to compete effectively against rivals Microsoft and Google, which are making similar plays to capitalize on increasing demand from business customers for cloud-based messaging and collaboration applications.

• Market Impact: Moderate on the cloud-based collaboration services space, because by pitching LotusLive as an integration platform rather than simply an online application suite, IBM will help drive development of more new complementary on-demand applications, which in turn could significantly increase uptake of the suite. This will make IBM an even bigger threat to rival providers of the cloud-based messaging and collaboration services, including Google, Microsoft, and their respective third-party network and hosting provider partners.

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