It’s coming, soon. Lotus GM, Bob Picciano, announced earlier this week that a hosted version of Lotus Notes will be available, for $8-$18 per user, per month. I’ll elaborate more when possible.
Such an offering would make IBM’s traditionally on-premise collaboration applications, such as Lotus Sametime instant messaging and VOIP, a threat to Microsoft Exchange Online, not to mention a number of small, independent SAAS collaboration providers that want to cater to large customer bases.
and, IBM’s differentiation play (according to eWeek, not me):
Also, because there are hundreds of SAAS collaboration plays out there, I expect IBM to integrate Lotus Connections with the hosted version of Notes, along with 3-D collaboration capabilities, such as having co-workers trigger chats between their avatars.
Interesting…
Link: IBM to offer SaaS version of Lotus Notes – eWeek
