IBM LotusLive Adds Business Services

IBM on Wednesday said that it has integrated several business products and services from Salesforce.com, Silanis, Skype, and UPS into its LotusLive hosted messaging service.

In conjunction with the new services, IBM is offering a cloud service package that weds social networking and e-mail, starting at $7 per user per month.

The package is essentially a combination of LotusLive iNotes and LotusLive Connections, providing e-mail, file storage and sharing, activity management, instant messaging and social networking capabilities.

"Our strategy is really around delivering a set of services that simplify and improve business interactions, and really provide the essential business services that every group would need," said Brendan Crotty, director of LotusLive at IBM, in a phone interview.

These services include making UPS shipping information available and more useful to LotusLive users, e-signing capabilities for electronic documents, VoIP telephony, and integration with Salesforce.com.

Jordan Colletta, VP of UPS customer technology marketing, says that demand for business process improvements related to basic work flow is rising around the globe. Integrating UPS shipping information and improving visibility into the process, he says, addresses customer needs.

Similarly, integration with Skype will allow LotusLive users to initiate VoIP calls with less friction and work flow disruption.

Crotty says that LotusLive extends new capabilities to users, but does so under the control of IT administrators.

"The administrator has the power to turn these on for everyone or individuals," he said, "so users don't get exposed to technology that the administrator doesn't want them to have."

IBM also said that it has added support for four more languages in LotusLive -- Danish, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish -- bringing the total number supported to 15.

Update: Corrected price error.