IBM Extends and Simplifies Collaboration

Instead of having to execute a complicated set of procedures to set up a conference, end user simply click on any online conference room that they have been granted access to on their Lotus SameTime 8.5 client, said John Del Pizzo, senior offering manager for IBM’s unified communication products. Users can then invite other users to that conference by dragging and dropping their name on to the conference, or extend an invite to user outside of the company via zero-download Web client. All end user authentication related to who has access to what meeting is managed by the SameTime server.

According to Del Pizzo, IBM rebuilt the SameTime meeting engine to create a more seamless conferencing experience while also adding support for industry standard Web service protocols that now make it possible to embed the SameTime client as a widget inside other applications. IBM has also revamped the SIP implementation in SameTime to better integrate with high-definition audio and video conferencing systems, he said.

IBM has also signaled its intention to create a hybrid computing environment for collaboration software under a Project Vulcan effort that will private and public cloud computing platforms. Details of Project Vulcan are sparse at the moment, but IBM officials did say that the basic goal is to create a set of loosely coupled distributed services around IBM collaboration software. Earlier this week IBM also announced a revamp to its Lotus Live application service for the cloud, as well.