IBM Move Adds Endorsement to Cloud Computing
IBM: only three little initials, but a huge enterprise presence. That’s why it’s recent unveiling of a cloud-based email service application is such big news.
It’s called IBM Lotus Live iNotes, and it’s the company’s “first real foray into a mass-market cloud-based service,” according to a recent story that caught my eye. The solution includes e-mail, calendaring, and contact management, and it is designed to work with existing on-premise, e-mail. Or, it can operate stand-alone. Per user pricing will start at just $3 per month.
The company’s thinking behind creating IBM Lotus Live iNotes, according to the story I read, is that it reduces the cost of running applications for companies. Also, it will reduce the burden on IT people to make it possible for people both within and beyond their organizations to share data, such as documents and files.
OK, say you don’t like Lotus Notes, or even IBM, particularly. And so what if Yahoo and Google already have such animals launched and in operation. The fact that IBM has created this app-hosted cloud is big news for cloud computing. Heck, at least I think so.