The company has announced a combined middleware and collaboration stack around WebSphere and Lotus with blueprints and services for customers in vertical sectors, to help install personal productivity software across different devices.
IBM said it would deliver Workplace Services Express 2.0, WebSphere Portal 5.1 and Lotus Web Conferencing Service later this month and during December.
Additionally, IBM announced plans for 17 so-called Workplace Solutions to help tailor Workplace to needs of 30 individual job functions and employee roles. The first set of Workplace Solutions cover retail, electronics, manufacturing, finance, telecoms, government, life sciences, health and automotive.
Also launched was Workplace for Business Controls and Reporting 2.5, to manage internal controls and manage financial reporting practices.
Workplace is an IBM strategy to provide organizations with client desktop productivity and collaboration software, which serves-up data held in existing back-office systems to end-users running on PCs, handhelds and browser-based devices.
IBM is wrapping up functionality from Lotus, Tivoli and its WebSphere middleware software units to deliver an architecture comprising client access and security over the web.
Workplace, though, apparently represents an attempt by IBM to challenge Microsoft. In recent years, Microsoft integrated its Office desktop suite with servers, such as BizTalk Server, to provide access to more business and personal productivity data and services.
Additionally, the next version of Microsoft’s Exchange Server is expected to feature a single data store, breaking down barriers to retrieving information.
A crucial part of IBMs strategy is to let customers access data and business information without the need to install new PCs or rollout expensive new copies of Office. Ambuj Goyal, Workplace, portal and collaboration software general manager, said in a statement IBM can deliver ‘significant business velocity, by moving beyond the time-consuming and expensive rollouts of PC-centric business software.
An important part of the announcement is the Lotus Web Conferencing Service, which is available on a pay-per-use and subscription plan, and which includes audio and web conferencing. Final pricing has yet to be determined.
Workplace Services Express 2.0 features team collaboration, document management, web forms, task lists and templates that can be customized to create composite services. Additional features, that potentially further challenge Microsoft software, include access to users’ existing e-mail, calendar and address book. Again, pricing has yet to be announced. Also planned is WebSpere Portal 5.1, which IBM said would feature a limited use version of Lotus Workplace Web Content Management that combined with WebSphere Portal would help add value to portals by allowing users to rapidly respond to customer requests.
