IBM adds Notes capabilities to LotusLive

IBM has upgraded its Lotuslive with additional features such as revamped emails,messaging, calendars, instant messaging and contacts. It has got an interesting set of collaboration tools which called as communities.

Communities is one of the major additions to lotuslive. Communities closely resembles with IBM's social networking software Connections, though it does not include the ability to create blogs and wikis.Anyways, Commuinities are usefull in cross-organization collabartions. Using this users can interact via discussion forums,project tracking tools ,bookmarks, filesharing and information tagging.

Users can deploy either a Web edition or thick-client software. Previously, LotusLive had offered Web-based e-mail for $3 per user per month, but the new messaging/calendaring service starts at $5 per user per month. In the new plan, each user is allotted 25 gigabytes of storage.

Coming to Lotus notes, there is no support for lotus notes provided yet But the service can be integrated with an enterprise's in-house Lotus Notes deployment, using internal LotusLive capabilities and IBM's Tivoli Directory Integrator.

IBM has integrated LotusLive with Tungle's scheduling and calendar applications allowing LotusLive users to schedule meetings across different calendaring applications and with Bricsys' software  for sharing, viewing and annotating documents, with support for more than 70 document types.

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WebSphere vs .NET: IBM and Microsoft Go Head to Head

"After carrying out a number of benchmarks, Microsoft concluded that .NET offers better performance and cost-performance ratio than WebSphere." (Shock! Surprise!)

"IBM rebutted Microsoft’s findings and carried out other tests proving that WebSphere is superior to .NET." (Shock! Surprise!)

"Microsoft responded by rejecting some of IBM’s claims as false and repeating the tests on different hardware with different results."

More details GO Here

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IBM Faces Backlash Against Pensions Proposals

IBM recently announced plans to close its final salary pension scheme in the UK, in order to maintain competitiveness and introduce greater predictability to long-term pension provision costs. Where as Unite, the UK's Largest trade union has reportedly warned IBM of a "backlash" from thousands of employees against its proposal as there are more than 5000 employees get affected with this move by IBM.

Earlier IBM said it would consult the staff from 5 Aug 09 till 60 days from then and take decision on the feedback receieved by the staff. But what made employee going against the proposal if IBM has really consulted the staff.
As of now employees are really angry with the decision of IBM Pensial proposal.

The union calculated that typically people in their mid-50s could lose up to £200,000 as a result of these changes from the retirement pension they had expected to draw before the company's announcement in July.

Peter Skyte, national officer, IT and communications, Unite, warned, "IBM is facing a backlash against its pensions proposals. These highly skilled and experienced staff were key to the company's survival and they view the company's proposals as a kick in the teeth."

He also said, "IBM is a highly profitable company with substantial revenues and cash reserves. But is using the recession as a cloak to close its pension schemes to existing members and further line the pockets of its shareholders and senior executives at the expense of its loyal workforce."

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IBM plans cloud computing services for 2009

IBM plans to launch several cloud computing services this year, taking on companies such as Amazon.com Inc, Google Inc, Microsoft Corp and Salesforce.com Inc.
Well as i was speaking about cluod computing in earlier posts as this could be hotest thing in the market as already many companies are aiming to cloud computing as it could minimise the costs to lot extent. Cloud computing systems run software and store information in remote, large-scale data centers that users and programmers access over the Internet.IBM has launched an internet based data backup and recovery services which is similar to this field

IBM is very keen at the future when looking at this new step of the company, as IBM has already entered into different areas like environmental stuff, Eco environment projects with the government and so on , it seems that it wont fall behind any sort of competetion that can be given by its competetors.speaking on the competetion, at present IBM is lagging behind companies which are youger to IBM in cloude services.Business interest in cloud computing has picked up since Amazon started offering storage and computing services over the Web about three years ago. Google and Salesforce.com are the other two early leaders.


IBM's technology was developed using some know-how obtained through a partnership with Google to develop cloud services for academic computing that dates back to 2007.The U.S. National Science Foundation announced on Thursday it has awarded about $5 million in grants to universities that are developing applications on that IBM-Google academic cloud.

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IBM confirms layoffs in North America

IBM confirms its Layoffs . The layoffs are being done in order to move the jobs from USA to India in a large portion which raised a concern even in the NY state Assembly. Well Ibm said that layoffs are being done in North America and not yet reveiled the how many people are losing their jobs or work. IBM Layoffs article which was posted last day has a bit clear picture now as IBM confirms the Layoffs.

The latest round of cuts target the company's Global Business Services unit, according to reports.Well looking at this we can say that india has become a global destination of outsourcing.India has emerged as key location for IBM and other multinational firms for the global delivery of services. IBM is estimated to have over 80,000 staffers in services delivery and sales in India.

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IBM layoffs coming back????

IBM is all set to shock the world again with next round of layoff's. Even as IBM is in talks to acuire SUN microsystems still they are expected to annouce the layoffs.Layoffs are expected in the IBM Global Business Services group and the Global Technology Services group, among possible others.

The Wall Street Journal reported on March 25 that IBM "is expected to inform a large number of U.S. employees in its Global Business Services unit that their jobs are being eliminated, with the work of many of them being transferred to IBM employees in India ..."

And according to the Alliance@IBM, an organization promoting the unionization of IBM employees, IBM is planning to cut several jobs on March 26 in locations including Denver and Hartford, Conn., particularly regarding a services contract supporting insurance company The Hartford Financial Services Group.

IBM already has laid off nearly 5,000 workers since 2008. Yet the company is reportedly in negotiations to acquire Sun, which itself has announced plans to cut its work force by up to 6,000 employees.

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