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ORLANDO, FL
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22 Jan 2008:
LOTUSPHERE - IBM (NYSE: IBM) today made big advances into the rapidly growing unified communications market by unveiling a range of large client adoptions and major OEM (original equipment manufacturer) embedded software and reseller agreements expanding IBM Lotus Sametime to millions of new users.
Large-scale client in-house adoption of IBM's unified communications and collaboration (UC2) platform continues to grow. Bank of NY, Celina Insurance, Colgate Palmolive, HSBC and Prudential UK, have selected Lotus Sametime to deliver integrated communications capabilities such as telephony and audio and video conferencing with critical collaboration features such as instant messaging, group chat and Web conferencing to their employees. In addition, in 2007, IBM estimates that nearly one third of new Lotus Sametime customers were Microsoft Exchange shops.
With today's announcement, IBM is enabling a new set of channel partners, making it easier for businesses around the world to purchase and use IBM's UC2 platform -- Lotus Sametime. Agreements with leaders in unified communications and in health care include:
- Cisco - As part of their ongoing relationship, Cisco and IBM have integrated their unified communications strengths to expand go-to-market activities, including Cisco's plans to sell Lotus Sametime directly and through its UC Advanced Specialized partner channel of more than 1,200 global organizations. Cisco is also developing additional plug-ins that integrate UC capabilities with Lotus Sametime that will be demonstrated at Lotusphere. Cisco and IBM provides customers with a complete solution that integrates Lotus Sametime with Cisco's open unified communications portfolio.
- Nortel - Nortel will sell and integrate Lotus Sametime as part of its enterprise unified communications solutions. This will deliver advanced Nortel features such as IP telephony, presence, and click-to-conference for customers around the world through Nortel and its authorized channel partners.
- Carestream Health - Carestream Health, the leading provider of imaging technology to radiology departments worldwide, will integrate and sell Lotus Sametime software within their radiology solutions, facilitating rapid communication with instant messaging and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) interactions between radiologists and other medical professionals.
These agreements represent the OEM part of IBM's aggressive UC2 strategy and are designed to extend the reach of IBM software exponentially to new and expanding markets.
Leading telephony vendors from around the world are investing in Lotus Sametime through product and service integration. New additions to the Lotus Sametime Business Partner community include:
- Ericsson - Ericsson will work with IBM to provide the business user with a complete unified communications and collaboration experience, including mobility and telephony. The first step is to integrate Ericsson's voice platform, MX-ONE, with IBM's Lotus Sametime, that will enable users to click on a name in Lotus Sametime to start a call and then decide how they would like to manage the call either via VoIP, conference call, mobile or office phone. Additionally, Ericsson will provide phone presence information, allowing users to see if a contact is present within their Lotus Sametime client.
- NEC - NEC, a global market leader in enterprise telephony equipment, will integrate their PBX telephony system with Lotus Sametime. NEC's UNIVERGE gateway module for IBM Lotus Sametime will allow users to see a contact's telephone presence and click to being a call from within a Lotus Sametime instant message, Web conference, or IBM Lotus Notes email message.
- Nortel - Nortel and IBM are working together on a Unified Communications solution that provides a simple and cost-effective way for small-and-medium sized businesses and branch offices to deploy IP telephony and advanced multimedia and collaboration services. The Nortel-IBM System i Unified Communications solution makes the move to IP telephony and unified communications as easy and cost-effective as a software upgrade, combining Nortel's VoIP and multimedia collaboration capabilities with Lotus Sametime onto a single, robust and highly-scalable System i platform.
"When users are exposed to the integration of collaboration, data and voice, people are more productive and business moves faster -- that's exactly what we are seeing with Lotus Sametime," said Bruce Morse, vice president, unified communications and collaboration, IBM Lotus software. "Today's announcement reflects a dramatic increase in our ability to deliver unified communications to millions of users worldwide."
At Lotusphere, IBM also demonstrated the newest members of the Lotus Sametime family of products -- Lotus Sametime Advanced and Lotus Sametime Unified Telephony.
Planned for availability in the first half of 2008, Lotus Sametime Advanced software features the industry's first suite of real-time community tools that will make it easier to find information and share expertise in real time with groups of people. Now, instead of spending time trying to figure out who can help solve a problem, users can reach out to a community of people instantly. By unlocking the constraints of a user's contact list, Lotus Sametime Advanced will help people create new communities and contacts.
Plans for Lotus Sametime Advanced also feature sophisticated collaboration features such as persistent chat, enabling users to keep a continuous chat discussion running on a specific topic with a related community of people. The instant sharing capabilities of Lotus Sametime Advanced let users start a screen or application sharing session and allow other participants to "drive" and make changes to documents. Additionally, users will be able to save time and effort by having the location of colleagues pre-populated highlighting where users are located and the last known location of off-line contacts.
Planned for availability later this year, Lotus Sametime Unified Telephony helps users manage telephone calls from within Lotus Sametime. With Lotus Sametime Unified Telephony users can route calls to various devices and set rules on how to handle calls based on their status. For example, a user could select to have all calls routed to a mobile device when their calendar shows they are in a meeting.
Building a unified communications environment can be a complex task. Utilizing IBM Global Technology Services expertise in deploying IP Telephony and conferencing solutions, Lotus Sametime Unified Telephony can allow businesses to integrate their existing telephony and audio-conferencing systems into Sametime while maintaining a consistent end-user experience. In addition, Lotus Sametime Unified Telephony works with a wide range of PBX systems, giving organizations the flexibility to select telephony systems based on need and not vendor lock-in.
For more information visit www.ibm.com/press/lotusphere.
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