The Big Blue is in talks with large Indian telecom service providers to resell its online collaboration and social networking cloud services.
In a bid to take on online giants like Google and software majors like Microsoft, IBM is in discussion with some large Indian telecom companies to help them weave cloud-based social networking, collaboration and communication tools into their applications.The telcos can then either host the applications on their applications stores — similar to the way Nokia run its Ovi stores — or they can sell them to enterprise users as a value-added service.
“This will give customers powerful new ways to solve business problems,” asserts David P Farrell, vice-president, Worldwide Sales Lotus Software IBM Corporation.
IBM uses the cloud (metaphor for the internet) computing model to offer online collaboration tools (also bunches as Web 2.0 technologies) like web conferencing, contact management and customer relationship management (CRM), business networking (as opposed to social networking), instant messaging (IM) and now email and calendaring too.
Called LotusLive, IBM’s online collaboration solution has 18 million direct subscribers worldwide in the first year alone. In India, it has deployed LotusLive offerings within conglomerates such as Bharti, Colgate, Tata Sky, Axis Bank, TCS, HDFC and UTV.
“We’re seeing a lot of companies that are looking to get a lot more remote workers or make people work in a home office as opposed to a set location. When you put them into remote work, you do need to give them some pretty easy-to-use tools that will still make them feel connected to the organisation,” reasons Farell.
Farell also notes that companies are seeing customers that may have an aging workforce. “When you have new hires come in, they need to find who those old veterans are, identify where they are, identify intellectual capital that they’ve created, that they manage or that they provide or keep in file repositories. Linking these newer workers with these older workers is really critical. Social networking has proven to be extremely valuable in helping accelerate that linkage and that knowledge transfer,” he says.
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IBM has managed to convince some large global players. Panasonic is a case in point. It recently announced it would deploy the LotusLive suite across 100,000-300,000 employees. “When fully deployed this year, it could be the largest SaaS implementation ever,” says Farell.
Software as a service (SaaS) is a software delivery method that leverages the cloud computing model. The Indian SaaS market, which was $105 million (around Rs 470 crore) in 2009, is estimated to be worth $352 million (around Rs 1,800 crore) by 2012.
Traditional software applications are slowly beginning to yield ground to SaaS applications, with 32 per cent of SaaS adopters replacing an on-premise application, according to Springboard Research.
The total cost of ownership (TCO) for this model is more than 50 per cent lower than owning assets. IBM’s Lotus users, for instance, typically pay $6-14 (around Rs 280-650) per user per month. If they move their business to the cloud with LotusLive, says Farell, the costs could come down to $2-3 (around Rs 90-130) per user per month.
According to Gartner Magic Quadrant Enterprise Content Management 2008, IBM is the largest enterprise content management (ECM) vendor based on total software revenue, with a 25 per cent market share.
IBM is not new to social networking, explains Farell, adding: “What we have done is to step up our investments in this space”.
The latest version of its collaboration suite provides a web-based file sharing library for users to upload and securely share content such as presentations and documents. Utilising social software features such as tagging, ratings, recommendations, and the ability to comment, the solution offers the ability to share, view and provide feedback on content.
A Wiki service allows designated users to create, view, edit and contribute to content that is uploaded to the intranet-style collaborative Web site. As many people may be editing a single page, the wiki has automatic versioning and a “show changes” view so that users can easily view the latest versions and edits. A tool called Atlas helps users analyse their relationships with business contacts.
However, given the security concerns over cloud-based implementations, Farell admits that many companies “may move to at least, a hybrid model of information technology that includes part on-premise IT and part cloud-based IT, depending on their requirements”.
| WHAT’S CLOUD COMPUTING? Most of us who use web-based email services like Gmail, Yahoomail or Windows Live (Hotmail), watch a video online, share snaps using photo-hosting services like flickr or snapfish, read news online or watch TV shows on the internet may not realise that we use ‘cloud computing’ services. A metaphor for the internet, cloud computing stores data and applications on the internet. Users do not have to invest in hardware (reducing costs considerably) and maintenance experts. They can simply pull up applications when needed and use them like we use utilities, for example electricity. Most players provide these services for free for individual users. For enterprise users, it’s generally a paid subscription-based model. Major global cloud computing service providers like Vmware, Sun Microsystems, IBM, Amazon, Google, Salesforce, Verizon, Microsoft and Yahoo already have a presence in India. IBM, for instance, even has a cloud computing centre in Bangalore. Oracle is getting its act together. Even Apple is now reportedly planning for cloud computing to go beyond music. Closer home, major Indian players like Wipro, HCL Technologies, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys and Patni offer cloud computing solutions as software as a service or SaaS or on-demand computing. Cloud computing, however, still faces questions within IT about security and the guarantee of uptime for companies which rely on the cloud. |