Ready to start with social software but don't want to wait to order servers, configure them, set them up, customize the environment, and add your theme/branding to it ? Perhaps you are not ready to learn about WebSphere ? Perhaps your IT department is overloaded resolving some other fires issues at this time.
That's ok. IBM Premier Business Partner Connectria has just announced their new offering. They are offering Lotus Connections as Software as a Service (SaaS). Along with their existing Lotus Hosting services, they can now host and operate your web 2.0 and social networking environment while giving you the peace of mind of a 24/7 monitored system. And yes, they can do both a pilot and production environment!
Let them worry about all the techie stuff and let's focus on the adoption strategy for your organization. To find out more, check out the IBM Lotus Connections Hosting page on the Connectria site.
By the way, in case you are wondering, yes, I have recently posted several entries on solutions created by business partners. In fact, if my math is right, in the past month, the Lotus Connections Solution Catalog has grown ~40%! I think it's a great testament that so many 3rd party vendors see the power and the value of Lotus Connections that they want to provide their solutions on top of the Lotus Connections Social Networking Platform!
And there a couple more solutions coming down the pipeline, but I can't talk about them yet. So stay tuned!
Update 10/16/2008 @ 10:26pm: I was just informed that another business partner is offering hosting solutions for Lotus Connections. In this case it's Prominic.NET and their solution was just added to the catalog. Or you can go directly to Prominic's site and view their services here.
This is great for early adoption and pilots but if you're looking for company-wide rollouts won't you run the risk of not being able to integrate into corporate LDAP, or develop in-house apps / mashups that surface the Connections functionality?
ReplyDeleteHi Jon,
ReplyDeleteBased on my talks with Connectria, they will integrate with your corporate LDAP (I'm guessing some sort of feed that's sent via a secure channel).
You should also be able to create your own mash-ups internally as the APIs would still be accessible (via the Internet)
I can't imagine that the Lotus reps are happy about this. They don't get paid for SaaS. No licensing to pay them on, which would be the benefit of SaaS.
ReplyDelete