IBM Bluehouse brings buzzwords; baffles brains

In Tuesday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches IBM launch social-networking-in-the-cloud/software-as-a-service tools for business-unified-messaging-and-collaboration (phew). Not to mention the video-game election...

Patrick Thibodeau reports:

IBM will today open the online door to a service that merges some of the best features of social networking with business-collaboration tools.
...
Bluehouse combines a familiar pallet of collaboration tools, including instant messaging, Web conferencing, document sharing, profiles, directory and tools to build business networking communities -- all delivered via a cloud platform.

Facebook is used by some firms for business collaboration today. Like Facebook, Bluehouse will allow people to quickly create a collaborative space, but unlike Facebook, it has management features to ensure that privacy and other controls that businesses wan.

Ashlee Vance adds:

Much of the Bluehouse technology comes from I.B.M.’s Lotus line of products, which include popular e-mail, contact and calendar applications used by large corporations. I.B.M. has now bundled this software along with applications for Web conferencing, instant messaging, document sharing and team management into a single collection that is accessed via the Web.
...
I.B.M. walked me through an early demonstration of the Bluehouse software, and it seemed to work well. An online meeting started quickly without requiring any software downloads onto my laptop, and I was able to watch as an I.B.M. engineer moved between various projects, sharing a wide range of documents and presentations with different groups of contacts based on their permission settings to see such files.

But Joshua S. Hill has a subtle dig:

Other applications that IBM are hoping will make them a presence on the cloud-scape, but probably won’t, include Rational Policy Tester OnDemand and Rational AppScan OnDemand. .

Nick O'Neill knows his memes:

Whether you are using the word “collaboration”, “social”, or the phrase “Enterprise 2.0″, it is all describing the same thing. There is a huge shift towards services which integrate communication and productivity tools making it easier for employees to access information and improving the organization’s overall productivity.
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[It] includes a web-based meeting tool, a social network, a document sharing tool which includes tagging for quick access, a task management solution, a forms wizard, a charting tool, and a chat application. Ultimately the product isn’t revolutionary but it adds a lot of features that many enterprise software products don’t include.

The most important takeaway from today’s Bluehouse announcement is simply that the shift toward enterprise social software is continuing and rapidly gaining momentum. If there was a major opportunity for web developers building social applications, this would most definitely be it. The best part of enterprise software is that companies pay for it!

Timothy Prickett Morgan is... quite a mouthful: [Watch it -Ed.]

If there was an index for how many times a vendor hops onto a new buzzword and tried to slap it on every product in their catalog, then it is probably safe to say that IBM would be the most actively traded stock on the Cloud Computing Exchange.

Today, as part of its ongoing effort to explain what cloud computing is and why we need it, Big Blue launched a set of services to help application software developers get with the (marketing) program and figure out how to make their software cloudy. Presumably, these will allow all those dev types to sell their wares to customers with diminishing IT budgets.

The launch of the cloud services initiative ... includes of a bunch of cloud services (what you and I might call software running on someone else's computer and accessed through the Internet). Plus there's a set of "real" services to help software houses figure out how to design, build, deliver, and sell cloudy variants of software packages that run on their own IT infrastructure or iron owned by IBM or one of its hosting partners.

What's it all about, John M. Willis? [Wait, what? -Ed.]

After a quick glance it looks like provisioning on steroids using the Tivoli portfolio.  That’s not a bad thing it is just very different from what companies like Amazon, Mosso, Flexiscale and Google are doing.
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As usual the details are still a bit cloudy ... what was the “Blue Cloud” announced last year?  Is this the delivery of “Blue Cloud” or was that just a stop gap?

Graham Dodge drives the point home: [You're fired -Ed.]

Bluehouse offers social networking tools including web conferencing, instant messaging, document sharing, directory and profiles, all delivered via the web. That sounds a lot like Facebook... so why should you pay for something you can get for free?

Reminds me of the (possibly apocryphal) story about how one of the Big Four Banks in Australia encouraged its corporate sales teams to become involved in Facebook to facilitate their interaction at work. The sales team was enthusiastic adopters of this new technology and this year-long team building exercise culminated in the annual sales awards followed by the inevitable discussions on their Facebook Forums. Unfortunately for the Bank, four of the top five sales performers were immediately offered (and subsequently accepted) jobs with the Bank's competitors who had been devotedly monitoring the Sales Team's Facebooks throughout the year.

Ouch!

And finally, the video-game election...

• Kung-Fu Election
• What if Sarah Palin Was In... [hat tip: Digg]

Buffer overflow:

• Official Google Blog: The VP debate: Candidates, questions, and queries
• Mitchell Ashley: Microsoft Cozies Up To Open Source
• Educated Guesswork: Do we need hardware random number generators?
• Schneier on Security: Clickjacking
• Jim Clausing: Day 6 - Network-based Intrusion Detection Systems
• Erick Schonfeld: Tech Stocks Take It On The Chin As Market Continues To Freefall

Other Computerworld bloggers:

• John Brandon: Firefox Mobile: A new role model for the desktop
• Seth Weintraub: iPhone is hot, picking off rival carriers' customers and smartphones
• SJVN: Vista R.I.P.
• Preston Gralla: Has Microsoft given up on Vista?
• Mitch Betts: Cloud computing: Gauging the benefits, barriers, hype and reality
• John Brandon: Google Chrome = Dead, Google Search = Hot
• Mike Elgan: Why you'll never own a 3D cell phone
• Douglas Schweitzer: A 'gem' of an approach to staying competitive
• Shark Tank: The best defense is a make-believe offense

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Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/adviser/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and spam. A 22 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. You can follow him on Twitter, pretend to be Richi's friend on Facebook, or just use boring old email: blogwatch@richi.co.uk.

Previously in IT Blogwatch:

• Apple brick riddle resolved: laser beams?
• EXTRA: ISO an ex-standards-body? (Norwegian blues: beautiful plumage...)
• Skype caught in Chinese PR SNAFU