IBM Blue Spruce Hints at Future of Web Collaboration (
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IBM demonstrates for eWEEK a new Web collaboration project called Blue Spruce. This coup in application development lets multiple users work together through what look like shared screens and communicate via telepresence. Though only at a proof-of-concept stage, the IBM Blue Spruce messaging and collaboration solution could be a big step toward more collaborative Web services. Questions remain: Will Blue Spruce appear in Lotus or WebSphere? Will Microsoft respond via Silverlight or Adobe via Flash?When the subject turns to browser-based innovation, you'd be forgiven if IBM didn't immediately pop up in the conversation alongside
vendors such as Google, Mozilla and Yahoo.
That may change with the eventual arrival of Blue Spruce, a Web browser
application platform IBM is working on to allow simultaneous multiuser
interactions enabled by AJAX and other standard technologies through the Web
browser.
David Boloker, CTO of IBM's Emerging Internet Technologies group, met with
eWEEK recently to show off Blue Spruce, a mashup that combines Web conferencing
with voice and video and other data forms to let people share content.
The project is IBM's solution to the
classic one-window, one-user limitation of current Web browsers. Boloker summed
it up:
Blue Spruce is really about, How do I
take existing apps, enable them for audio and video and also add the ability to
start sharing things using existing Web widgets, Web pages and building on top
of that?
Calling Blue Spruce Web collaboration "on steroids," Boloker said
the platform is geared for impromptu meetings and next-generation telepresence
that products such as IBM's own Lotus
Sametime wouldn't be able to adequately support. The market probably needs this
technology now given the harsh reality of the current recession.
In the first demo, Boloker logged into the Blue Spruce client to show how a
real estate investment meeting might work using the Zillow real estate
application.
Using a MacBook, he opened a session window supported by the open-source WebKit
browser to engage a colleague named Bill, posing as his real estate broker.
Through a small Web conferencing window on the left of the screen, Boloker
and Bill could see and hear each other as with Lotus Sametime Unyte, although
the feature was created specifically for Blue Spruce.
Boloker and Bill were then able to move their respective mouse pointers around
the screen to click and make changes on the Zillow application, with the
platform enabling concurrent interactions through the browser without
disruptions. Yet this appearance is somewhat deceiving.
Application Development 
