IBM rebrands slew of solutions under Connections brand, strengthens cloud ecosystem

IBM has announced the rebranding of its mail, chat, meetings, office productivity and content capabilities, making them part of IBM’s Connections brand in 2014. As part of this effort, IBM plans to expand the Connections portfolio to include high-fidelity, high-definition video based on its Sametime 9 technology.

In addition, IBM is also announcing its new web mail experience. Planned for availability in both the cloud and on-premises, the software will use analytics to deliver powerful task-level focus and inbox management capabilities that let employees easily track the content and messages needed to do their job.

IBM also plans to introduce Domino Applications in the cloud through a ready-made platform as a service (PaaS) offering built on IBM SoftLayer. As a result, customers will be able to build on the investments they have made in custom applications and enhance them with new mobile options. Partners will also have a faster path for bringing their new Domino applications to cloud and getting them to market more quickly.

Partners will also be able to distribute IBM products to assemble and sell unique cloud offerings more easily. IBM is teaming with business partner Parallels to integrate with its cloud automation platform, allowing a telecommunications company for example to use IBM’s new plug-in to easily combine and provision its cloud offerings from IBM and other Parallels-ready vendors, such as SugarCRM. This streamlines the business process of delivering cloud services through a reseller channel. 

IBM is also introducing a new certified set of global partners that provide onboarding services that make it easier than ever for clients to deploy their mail to the cloud.

According to a 2013 IBM study of more than 800 business decision makers worldwide, organisations that use the cloud reported two and a half times higher profits than their peers. In addition, organisations that adopt cloud-based solutions are 79 percent more likely to drive increased collaboration across their organisation, and twice as likely to leverage analytics to unlock greater insight about their business.

When it comes to software as a service (SaaS) specifically, a new IBM study has found that enterprises are gaining competitive advantage through broad SaaS adoption rather than simply reducing costs. 

The global survey, conducted by the IBM Center for Applied Insights and involving more than 800 IT and business decision makers, has found that organisations which strategically and collaboratively deploy SaaS are able to execute on programmes that drive business growth better than their peers who lag with SaaS deployments.  

Princess Cruise Lines, which organises cruises in Southeast Asia among other destinations, originally turned to SaaS to save money and benefit from increased efficiencies while gaining instant access to technology resources. 

Over time, the company realised that the IBM Connections social software platform, delivered as a service through the cloud, fostered a more team-oriented environment that encouraged more innovative thinking. Princess uses this as a competitive differentiator in the market to tout its superior customer service, the net effect of a socially advanced workforce.

Nearly one in five companies that responded to IBM’s survey has deployed SaaS broadly and is now gaining competitive advantage as a result. Compared to peers that are newer or less advanced with their SaaS adoption, these "Pacesetters" are:

·        79% more likely to have increased collaboration across their organisation and ecosystem through SaaS
·        More than twice as likely to have leveraged analytics across the organisation to turn big data into insights using SaaS
·        More than twice as likely to have increased innovation using SaaS
       
“It’s common knowledge that deploying SaaS broadly has economic advantages, but the truly innovative companies have recognised that SaaS delivers real competitive advantage to fuel top-line growth, as well,” said Craig Hayman, IBM General Manager, Industry Solutions and executive sponsor of the study. 

Global spending on SaaS is expected to reach US$45.6 billion by 2017, according to industry estimates. SaaS is often used by line-of-business leaders who are looking to deploy technology to rapidly provide their teams with needed functionality, increase productivity and address new market opportunities. In fact, industry analysts estimate that by 2017, CMOs will spend more on IT than CIOs, while Forrester reports that 65 percent of business leaders have plans to buy technology for their group without involving IT at all. 


Click here for more information, or to download the full report.  

*To gain a better understanding about how leaders are unlocking competitive advantage through SaaS, the IBM Center for Applied Insights** conducted a survey of 879 IT and line-of-business decision makers in six countries globally, including Brazil, China, India, South Africa, the UK and US. Twenty-two percent of respondents are C-level executives (10% C-level IT and 12% in other C-suite roles). They work in enterprises of varying sizes, 20% with 10,000 or more employees and, at the other end of the spectrum, 40% with fewer than 2,500 employees.