When it comes to enterprise instant messaging (EIM), there are few big names in the business. Lotus Sametime from IBM Corp.'s Lotus software division is one of them.
A recent INT Media Research survey (INT Media Research and InstantMessagingPlanet are both owned by INT Media Group) showed that Lotus Sametime was installed in 15% of enterprises surveyed. Microsoft Windows Messenger was first at 33%. Lotus Sametime was used by 66% of organizations that have established an official EIM standard, according to results from an Osterman Research study -- a figure IBM Lotus has trumpeted in recent print and online ads.
Sametime is definitely not one of the new kids on the EIM block -- it was introduced in early 1999. But it is not resting on its laurels -- already, the company is planning on releasing a new version of the software at the end of this summer.
I recently spoke with Jeremy Dies, offerings manager for the Advanced Collaboration Group at Lotus Software, about Sametime and where Lotus sees EIM going in the coming years.
First off, tell me what the offerings manager for the Advanced Collaboration Group actually does for Lotus.
I'm responsible for IBM's real-time collaboration offerings, which is Sametime instant messaging and Web conferencing. So I'm responsible for monitoring the competitive space and helping the technology teams define what should be brought to market.
Please explain how Sametime works and how it fits in with Lotus' overall vision of collaboration.
Sametime has been in the market since January 1999, and it started as an instant-messaging and Web-conferencing application. Our vision of Sametime is that presence awareness is really going to fuel how people collaborate with each other. And our vision to that is anywhere you see that someone is online, you should be able to pick the method of communication that's most appropriate for that interaction. That might be a simple text message; it might be an SMS message from a mobile device. Or it could be a full online collaborative Web conference where you can share your screen, interact with documents, organize workspaces or other applications.
How is business going with Sametime, and more specifically, with new installs and business development?
It's been going exceptionally well. We're seeing a tremendous amount of demand. We've noticed that over 60 of the global Fortune 100 have already purchased Lotus Sametime and are using it for a variety of different purposes.
I think we're definitely seeing a continuum where a lot of people have implemented and installed this application for enterprise instant messaging, and then moving on to embedding it inside of applications, such as customer-service applications, and ERP (enterprise-resource planning) applications, in order to surface somebody's presence awareness through things other than a buddy list.
Where is Sametime at in terms of interoperability with the public IM networks, and what is your future strategy in that regard?
We have a client-side integration with America Online, through a contract we've had with them for several years, which allows you to log into both Sametime and the AOL community from your Sametime client. So you are, in essence, logging into your Sametime environment using your Sametime ID, and your AOL environment using your AOL ID.
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