Lotus Foundations REACH adds Instant Messaging, VOIP & More!
IBM Lotus Foundations Reach brings VOIP, instant messaging, presence and several more messaging and collaboration tools to its Lotus Foundations Start appliance. The offerings are aimed at Microsoft’s Office, Small Business Server and Office Communications Server suites. IBM also created widgets to let users access LinkedIn and TripIt from Lotus Notes. – eWeek
What can you say? We are on FIRE. Lotus Foundations Reach borrows features from IBM’s Lotus Sametime UCC (unified communications and collaboration) suite. These include rich text, time stamps, spell check, emoticons, point-to-point video, integrated chat histories, location awareness, contact list with type-ahead and search, and contact business cards. These tools complement the synchronous VOIP, instant messaging and presence tools leveraged from Sametime, IBM Lotus General Manager Bob Picciano told eWEEK. “For companies that are looking at ways to manage their office costs, IP-based telephony is an interesting value proposition.”
Lotus Foundations partners currently include such companies as Envision, NextiraOne Mexico, ShoreTel and Speech Design.
While he declined to say how many companies are using Lotus Foundations or how many Foundations servers IBM has sold, Picciano said more than 1,000 Microsoft partners have signed up to resell Lotus Foundations in 2009. The reason? A more cost-effective solution at a time of financial distress.
It costs companies $5,260 to run Lotus Foundations Reach on top of Foundations Start for 23 users, the average seat count for a Foundations contract. That compares with $17,551 it costs businesses to run Microsoft Office Communication Server, Microsoft Small Business Server and Microsoft Office for 23 users.
We also introduced two new Lotus Notes software widgets to let users tap into the LinkedIn enterprise social network and TripIt travel management applications that so many business workers use on a daily basis. This is a big convenience for Lotus Notes users, who will find value in being able to access popular business tools without leaving the Notes app.
For example, a Notes user who has added the widget to his Notes client will see a contact’s name as a live link in a calendar entry. Right-clicking on the name will let him look up the contact in LinkedIn.
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