IBM LotusLive becomes SmartCloud for Social Business

IBM's SaaS collaboration services under the LotusLive umbrella received a lot of good reviews and always presented in the analyst top product lists. Nevertheless they haven't been very successful in sales (compared to the competitors). "What's the problem?" - IBMers tried to figure out - "Maybe the problem in the name? Or in marketing?". And they decided to copy the model of Salesforce and to see what will happen. They decided to remove the word "Lotus", which many people associate with the heavy software from the past. And instead, wherever it's possible, they put the words "Cloud" and especially "Social". In result, LotusLive becomes SmartCloud for Social Business. In its description you'll find such words as Social, Social and Social. And on the US television the new SmartCloud cartoon commercial (reminding Salesforce Chatter ads) has appeared (watch the video).

IBM SmartCloud is now positioned as a complete set of cloud services for business - IaaS, PaaS and SaaS (like Force.com). Companies and third-party developers can build their apps on the top of this platform. And the heart of its SaaS-component (SmartCloud for Social Business) is now IBM Connections - the social network, based on activity streams (like Salesforce Chatter). It integrates all other applications, including e-mail, calendars, Web conferencing and recently introduced IBM Docs. The new IBM Connections' killer-feature is social analytics, that filters signals from co-workers and apps and provides only important and personalized information.

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