IBM Adapts Social Networking App For Mobile Devices
Connections is IBM's answer to social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter and applications like Salesforce.com's Chatter. It includes the Profiles social networking service, user communities, a wiki system, a blogging service, file-sharing capabilities, an Internet forum and other services.
Eighty-six percent of business workers currently use social media to help them make business decisions, IBM said.
IBM is now offering versions of Connections that run on the Apple iOS, BlackBerry and Android operating environments. The mobile software, which links with the server Connections app, is available as a free download from Apple, BlackBerry and Google Android app stores.
More employees are using their personal mobile devices for work and securing data on those devices is becoming a burden for IT managers, IBM noted.
The company's new, "Partial wipe for Apple iOS devices" provides a way for IT administrators to delete company data from an employee's iPhone or iPad while preserving the device owner's personal data and applications.
IBM also is expanding the capabilities of its Sametime IM and unified communication application for Android and BlackBerry devices. Sametime on Android now offers text-to-speech for reading incoming messages, the ability to send photos through Sametime chats, and the ability to automatically update location status. On BlackBerry devices users can now participate in online meetings through Sametime.
A new Lotus Notes Traveler "click-to-call" capability, currently in beta, allows IBM e-mail users to call people listed in the Android OS device calendar with a single click. And a version of LotusLive Meetings for Android-based devices is planned for later this year, IBM said.