Sametime Unyte

Today IBM has announced they are expanding into the Cloud computing market with Lotus Sametime Unyte.  It can be best likened to Meeting Place or other web conferencing service where users create a meeting and then log on to view a presentation.  The difference with LSU (sorry I hate typing out the full name) is that it is more like sharing a desktop instead of just viewing a presentation.

LSU can be used by anyone with an Internet connection and no need to download software (at least that’s what they say).   Whether a user will require a plugin to access the features of LSU  is not known yet.  Sites such as Meeting Place require a plugin to work correctly and are not entirely browser friendly.  A surprising feature of LSU is the ability to share with up to 999 people.  That is one seriously big meeting destined to drag out forever.

The competition has a strong following with large corporations but the addition of the Lotus suite of applications in a Cloud format might be enough to give IBM an edge in the marketplace.  With LSU coming to the Cloud OS market it is really going to help push the competition to work harder to stand a chance against the big dogs like AMD, IBM and Microsoft.

So now that Cloud computing has the backing of the big names in computing and several other smaller companies when are we going to really start seeing this show up in retail locations?  Or will it’s primary location just be in niche markets and big corporations?  Is this something you would use?  Or is it just a glorified data storage solution?

Check It Out> IBM Press Release, Lotus Sametime Unyte,