Carl Tyler's Blog :: Sametime Entry, Standard and Advanced

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IBM to turn Sametime IM into a family of products

Mike Rhodin, general manager of IBM's Lotus division, will announce plans for three new Sametime products on Wednesday during a keynote address at the VoiceCon conference in San Francisco.

The next release of IBM's current Sametime software, which follows on from Sametime 7.5.1, will be known as Sametime Standard 8.0 and is due out towards the end of this year, according to Bruce Morse, IBM's vice president for unified communications software. The new version includes support for Microsoft's Office 2007 desktop suite and the ability to run Sametime server in VMware's virtual environment. Sametime Entry 8.0 and Sametime Advanced 8.0 debut in the first calendar quarter of 2008.

Also interesting to see that IBM is copying another of Instant's products, first it was Outlook/Office integration, now it's persistent chat.

We wait to see if all these versions work well together, or whether this is Workplace IM under a different name, chatting between themselves with the lowest common denominator gateway.

Comments

1 - No, this isn't going to be Workplace IM under a different name. While some of the new capabilities in Sametime Advanced will require a WAS server, none of the capabilities will be coming from Workplace IM.

Posted by Adam Gartenberg At 01:51:18 PM On 08/21/2007 | - Website - |

2 - @1 So we can expect all features in standard to work seamlessly with a client connected to Advanced. If so that's great and a big relief for customers.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 02:38:58 PM On 08/21/2007 | - Website - |