IBM Sametime To Talk To AOL, Yahoo, Google IM
Mike Rhodin, general manager of IBM's Workplace Portal and Collaboration group announced the news Monday morning at Lotusphere 2006 in Orlando. Sametime will also work with Apple iChat.
Ironically, IBM/Lotus was the first to offer AIM integration several years ago, but that pact faded. More recently, Microsoft has stolen a march, last year announcing interoperability between its Live Communications Server and AOL, Yahoo and MSN public IM networks.
There was no mention of interoperability between Sametime and Microsoft instant messaging.
Sametime 7.5 will provide this connectivity with no additional charge, said Craig Hayman, vice president of development and technical support for Lotus Software. Microsoft charges for its IM interop gateway.
The new Sametime, due this summer, will also offer spell check, type-ahead lookup quickfind feature and other perks, Hayman said.
Other breakthroughs will include bouncing GIFs and smiley faces, Hayman said, apparently only partly in jest.
The feature that got the biggest applause was ability to embed graphs and charts into IM messages. That enables a user to discuss a spreadsheet or chart with his or her buddy. The company demonstrated a multi-party chat between Mac, Windows and Linux users, which also garnered big applause. Sametime 7.5 is the first version to support Macintosh and Linux desktops. A new "VoiceJam" feature connects sametime via VoIP technology.
"Sametime has been a strong performing platform within IBM's ecology, but it's been a puzzle why it has not been well-extended beyond. This begins to clear that up and is overdue," said Dana Gardner, principal analyst with Interarbor Solutions, a Gilford, N.H., researcher.
"At the same time, Microsoft has not done well at extending its Communications Platform, nee Greenwich, so IBM has an opening here," Gardner said.
In other news, IBM/Lotus promised to extend integration between its Notes client and SAP backoffice applications. Now users can generate billable hours information from their Notes calendar and easily convert that into a billable hours task within SAP, IBM said.
And, as CRN first reported last week, IBM also announced updated Mac support in the form of Notes 7 For Macintosh and pledged support for new Intel-based Macintosh machines.