eWEEK content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.
ORLANDO, Fla.-With IBM’s Lotusphere 2012 conference kicking off with JumpStart sessions on Jan. 15, IBM partners are gearing up to showcase their wares and show attendees how their products and services run on or integrate with IBM’s Lotus technology.
Lotusphere, IBM’s social, collaboration and community event that is being held here Jan. 15-19, is slated to be a social business showcase for IBM and its partners. One such partner, Perficient, an information technology consulting firm and an Associate-level sponsor and a Social Business Makeover sponsor, will present on social Web experience at the conference.
As social business gains momentum, organizations must transform the way they approach integrating social media into their business processes, analytics and communication tools while maintaining a positive experience for the end user-employees, partners and customers. Perficient experts Mike Porter, principal, Portal Solutions, and Glenn Kline, technical director, Portal Solutions, will present a session titled “Practical Approaches to Successful, Social Web Experience Solutions.” In their session, Porter and Kline will provide tips and real-world examples of delivering exceptional Web experiences with the end user in mind, allowing for a greater sense of community and more powerful collaboration.
“We’re thrilled to again contribute to Lotusphere-IBM’s premier annual event for social business and collaboration experiences,” said John Jenkins, vice president of Perficient’s IBM Business Group, in a statement. “Social business is no longer just a buzzword. As companies strive to improve worker productivity and drive innovation, more are turning to social business as a way to offer collaboration, communications and learning opportunities for their employees. Perficient partners with organizations to help navigate the social landscape, and design and implement the right technologies, whether it is CMS, portals or e-commerce solutions, to foster social interactions and realize more significant results.”
Additionally, Perficient partner and client Premier, a health care performance improvement alliance serving more than 2,500 hospitals and 80,000 additional health care sites, will discuss how social business is impacting the health care industry. Premier’s Chief Technology Officer Denise Hatzidakis will present a session titled “Saving Money and Lives: Social Business Turns Information Into Actionable Insight.”
“Today’s health care organizations are challenged with immense amounts of data and the need to make it available, insightful and actionable to the right people at the right time,” Hatzidakis said in a statement. “We’re pleased to have the opportunity to discuss how, in partnership with Perficient and IBM, we’ve developed an integrated performance platform, which leverages several IBM technologies to help providers and patients collaborate to make faster, better decisions that can save lives and reduce costs.”
During Lotusphere, Perficient experts will be on hand to discuss key technology solutions and services, including portals, collaboration, content management, business process management (BPM), service-oriented architecture (SOA)/integration, data warehouses, business analytics and enterprise content management (ECM) for major industries such as health care, financial services and retail. Visitors can also learn how Perficient’s social business solutions, which leverage IBM social and collaboration technology, help companies increase productivity by giving employees quick and easy access to the resources needed to do their jobs. In addition, Perficient will sponsor IBM’s Social Business Makeover, highlighting its innovative Social Business Bootcamp offering in the Social Business Makeover Pavilion.
Also at Lotusphere, VSee is announcing it will release a plug-in for IBM Sametime that allows for one-click Web video calling. Unlike the Skype plug-in for Facebook, VSee is secure and includes HD group video chat and application sharing features.
One of the themes of Lotusphere 2012 is using collaboration solutions to make enterprises more agile and social. VSee is a collaboration tool based on Stanford University human factors research that creates a more social customer experience and accelerates relationship building in the sales workflow. VSee is designed to convey and increase trust in teams and with customers. Enterprises can embed a simple VSee Web plug-in on their Websites, and VSee will then link with IBM Sametime on the back end.
Created by the co-author of the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) video standard, Milton Chen, VSee is a managed, secure peer-to-peer group video chat and application sharing software. It enables HD telepresence video to run over standard Windows and Mac laptops even when the network is poor. This has allowed IBM to deploy VSee globally to more than 50 countries and 5,000 users-VSee performs exceptionally well in IBM China.
“Lotusphere 2012 is the perfect venue to release VSee Web video calling. Enterprises are becoming more social, and VSee brings a live face to the sales workflow,” said Chen, who is CEO of VSee, in a statement.
VSee is free for commercial and government use without support. Supported VSee starts at $10 per user per month. VSee customers include the U.S. Congress, Navy SEALs and NASA; investors include Salesforce.com.
IBM Partners Push Social Business
Meanwhile, GSX Solutions, a maker of solutions for the proactive, consolidated monitoring and reporting of enterprise collaboration environments, including Lotus Notes, Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint and BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES), said it will be showcasing its new GSX Monitor & Analyzer release at Lotusphere. This newest release is even more powerful, giving managers and decision makers the functionality they need to improve forecasting and responsiveness.
The latest GSX Monitor & Analyzer release provides a new set of features that meet the management challenges of enterprises using Notes, Sametime, Traveler or Quickr for critical business services, the company said. Major new features of the solution include plug-and-play ease of use, including a global server configuration wizard with multiple time zone support; a new Change Monitoring Module that tracks every change in a distributed IT environment and assures audit-verifiable policy compliance; and automated GSX Analyzer IT forecasting that identifies emerging issues, helps users identify potential future issues and anticipate them before they happen, as well as bringing value-added quantifiable metrics that are crucial for capacity planning.
“This new release reflects our philosophy to put the user experience at the center of development and deliver services in an intuitive way,” said Antoine Leboyer, CEO of GSX, in a statement. “We invest a huge effort to go beyond server tracking to proactively address potential issues for our thousands of loyal customers throughout the world.”
ClearOne, a global communications and entertainment solutions company, said it will showcase its unified communications portfolio at Lotusphere. The company will feature several of its IBM Sametime-compatible products, as well as its recently released CHAT headsets.
“As businesses are seeking new ways to become more social, ClearOne has expanded its UC product line to offer the only complete suite of hands-free audio solutions in the market, from the open-office or cubicle environment to the executive office, boardroom or auditorium,” said Chris Wildfoerster, vice president of business development at ClearOne, in a statement. “For IBM Sametime users, ClearOne delivers an enriched UC experience which enables businesses to improve the way they collaborate and share information in any environment.”
Visitors to the ClearOne booth will get a first-hand look at ClearOne’s new CHAT headsets, which will make their Lotusphere debut. These headsets round out ClearOne’s UC product portfolio, which includes the CHAT speakerphones, the INTERACT-AT installed audio systems and the COLLABORATE all-in-one video conferencing and collaboration system.
In addition, e-SignLive powered by Silanis, a maker of electronic signature solutions, will have a voice at Lotusphere. Silanis senior technical lead for e-SignLive, Bogdan Chifor, will give a specialized technical presentation during Lotusphere’s Best Practices track. The session will provide tools and insights to companies that plan on integrating their software with IBM LotusLive.
“We are highlighting six customer success stories this year to show how customers have leveraged the collaboration capabilities of LotusLive while negotiating and reviewing contracts and agreements across various industry sectors including legal, commercial real estate, mortgage and taxes,” said Robert Al-Jaar, executive vice president of Online E-Signature Services at Silanis, in a statement. “Being able to hold a live meeting and review the documents as well as answer questions in real time keeps the deal moving. Many of our clients are now using this ability in LotusLive as the central repository to manage their projects.”
At Lotusphere 2011, Silanis was awarded the IBM Lotus Award in the “Business Transformation Through Cloud Computing” category for its e-SignLive signature-as-a-service software. e-SignLive was also a finalist in the “Banking Industry Solution Providing Business Value” category. In addition, when it was launched at Lotusphere 2010, e-SignLive won the IBM CTO Innovation award, which recognizes innovation in exploiting the capabilities of LotusLive.
At a time when the mortgage market had hit an all-time low, lender Signature Mortgage dramatically expanded its business thanks to the ease and cost-effectiveness of e-SignLive. Today, 90 percent of the company’s loans are signed online. In addition, Gunster, an established law firm in Florida, has been able to get legal documents signed faster while radically cutting paper and courier fees, while Canderel, a large Canadian real estate firm, has slashed the costs associated with cross-country meetings by using e-SignLive to negotiate and secure financing online. More recently, Tax Armory, a small tax resolution firm based in Florida, grew its company threefold in just two months thanks to e-SignLive’s collaboration and e-signing tools, company officials said.