LotusLive online services….

… uniquely integrates through open standards with existing, on-premise customer solutions

… access through a familiar web 2.0 user interface

… makes it easy for customers to extend collaborative capability to the cloud

LotusLive is IBM Lotus’ portfolio of solutions that offer Software as a Service (SaaS) for organizations to leverage in the cloud. In addition, LotusLive Solutions can extend your on premise investments to the cloud.

SaaS became a well used word in 2009. Organizations found that they needed to find ways that they could cut IT costs, simplify end user connectivity, managing help desks and streamline costs associated with upgrades. Software as a Service offers a cloud model of delivering software, on demand, managed by an outside source. It is very structured and controlled, with Service Level Agreements (SLAs) being offered and just enough capabilities. Business are finding that while this is an attractive offering, once getting down to the realities of it, there are limitations. There are challenges with an all-inclusive approach. It would be difficult to deliver all the services that a customer needs to run their business including business applications, telecom, help desk all in one place. There are many concerns regarding volumes of existing information, data migration, mobile access, all or nothing solutions, integration with their internal applications and security models, let alone having someone else manage all of your content.

IBM has recognized this. In talking to our customers regarding their needs, IBM has found that not one size fits all. In the LotusLive Portfolio, IBM offers technical delivery solutions that can help to bridge the needs of the end users, the requirements of the business, and balance some of the financial relief that the business is looking to solve. In the LotusLive offerings we have a portfolio that allows for a hybrid model which extends On-premise investments to, hosted and cloud solutions.

The rich portfolio of service offerings of LotusLive that make collaborating across boundaries easy for business of all sizes.

There are some basic common needs, but we all know that the requirements for communication is not the same for everyone in your organization. Corporate Directors and C-Level executives have very different needs from the needs of the janitor.  That is an easy one.  However, there are more gradient levels and companies need to figure out how to profile their user communities.

IBM understands this. We have reviewed the user communities of customers, IBM internally and worked with analysts, and have defined three primary categories based on their business and collaborative requirements. The following three categories cover the distinctions – however there are also gradients inside of these categories as well.

• Knowledge Workers – requiring the most sophisticated messaging and collaboration
• Task Workers – these needs vary by function, some need full collaboration, others over-served
• Boundary Workers – clearly need just the essentials for email and calendaring

This approach of profiling the users, offers the customer the ability to determine what level of capabilities are needed and how to deliver these the abilities, all the while being able to leverage the capabilities of the SaaS model. By understanding the needs of the users, and the business, this is where you build the strongest case for Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Leveraging costs across the organization, based on end-user requirements, provides the best overall TCO

IBM offers two different workshops to help customers:

User Segmentation Workshop

IBM helps to define the collaboration culture in your organization. We then conduct an exercise to help develop corporate personas. Once these personas are identified, we analyze their categories based on their social networks and sub networks. Once these have been outlined, use cases are built to help define vision and approach to delivering email and collaborative tools to the business.

TCO Value Workshop

In this workshop, IBM works with the customer focusing on data specific to their environment to review existing options. In evaluating all the delivery options available, we are able to help the customer build distinctions to provide a complete TCO view of each of the delivery models. We compare these options side by side regardless of whether it is SaaS, on premise, a hybrid implementation with on premise and SaaS, on premise with appliances, or all three.

So when you think of SaaS, consider the bigger picture, and be sure to engage IBM to assist you in examining the options. Remember that IBM has the experience in running efficient, reliable, secure and large scaled computing environments. The flexibility of options for delivery models. The innovation of Enterprise Web 2.0 based social computing paradigm that will allow more effective collaboration among employees, customers, and partners. All of this while leveraging our internal resources to partner with customers to develop cloud strategies and implementation plan that’s the right fit.

For more information please see http://www.lotuslive.com or contact me directly and I can get you in touch with someone that can help you.