San Francisco — IBM today officially plans to release an inexpensive Web-based enterprise collaboration a basic “cloud computing” email service based on its LotusLive platform, at a price that will compete with rich offerings by search engine giant Google Inc, which has recently suffered several high-profile outages.
IBM plans to take advantage of the damage that those outages have caused to Google Apps over the past year. Last month millions of business users could not access email for almost two hours.
The new IBM offering is called LotusLive iNotes as a substitute to email service Google has been promoting as part of a campaign to win businesses over to using applications hosted as services on the Internet.
“Email and other collaboration services are the right entry point for many companies to realize the promise of cloud computing,” said IBM Lotus Software general manager Bob Picciano.
“But, only if clients feel confident they are getting business-grade service from a trusted leader in enterprise services.”
This latest offering brings IBM to the fore with direct rivalry with Google, whose own cloud-based offering, Gmail, has gained widespread popularity since its launch in 2004. It also steps up Big Blue’s rivalry with Microsoft. Microsoft offers a number of Web-based e-mail products, including an online version of Outlook and the free, Windows Live Hotmail program.
The lightweight cloud-computing email service is priced at $36 per user per year, about 25 percent less than what Google charges for a more robust product. However, the price for customers choosing to pay month-to-month is $3.75 per month. IBM is also offering a free, 30-day trial period for companies that wishes to test the service before committing to a contract.
All plans offers access to Webmail, 1 GB of storage per user, mobile device support, built-in spam and antivirus protection, around the clock monitoring, and administration tools. Users can also buy an additional 100 GB of storage for an additional charge.
The new IBM LotusLive iNotes offerings is IBM’s first real penetration into a multipurpose cloud-based service, including e-mail, calendaring, and contact management all designed to work with existing on-premise e-mail or operate as a standalone solution.
Tech vendors are increasingly focusing on the Internet as a seamless delivery platform for their applications. Proponents of so-called cloud computing means low-cost, ease of administration, and the fact that users can access their information from any Web-connected device.
Under tech chief Vivek Kundra, now the federal government’s CIO, Washington, D.C.’s local government moved the bulk of its applications to the Web through Google Apps.
Cloud computing also has its detractors. Critics say it leaves organizations vulnerable to outages and other service interruptions. Gmail has had several, widely publicized crashes. Others complain about the potential for "lock-in" if it becomes difficult to move data from one vendor’s service to another’s.
The cloud approach of multi-occupancy indicates that the real cost of IT–the cost of running the applications–is reduced, bringing economies of scale to the offerings. IBM has been working on making the service secure and “enterprise ready,” Poulley said.
Software offered online as a service rather than being purchased and installed on home or office computers has been a growing trend accelerated by tough economic times because it is cheaper to “rent” than to buy software.
The iNotes cloud service allows “overburdened IT departments” to take advantage of “IBM’s leadership in enterprise collaboration,” according to the firm.
IBM, based in New York State, is playing up its reputation as a business technology veteran and launching iNotes with “aggressive” pricing of three dollars per employee per month. The cloud-based service for email, calendar and contact management will be launched on Monday, according to IBM.
Google charges businesses slightly more than four dollars per user per month for an email service with far more memory capacity than iNotes and added features like word processing and video.
IBM shares were up .90% to $118.96 in late morning trading Friday.