As I mentioned in a previous post, with your Notes and Domino licenses, you are entitled to receive IBM Connections Files and Profiles for all of your current users at no additional charge. I started talking to our customers about this entitlement last month and I kept getting the same feedback. Customers are excited about the new entitlement, but they are not sure how to deploy and support the Connections environment.
For those of you that are not familiar with IBM Connections, it is a Java based solution built on Websphere Application Server. This requires different skills than supporting your traditional Lotus Domino environment. It also requires additional hardware that our customers may or may not have.
Based on the feedback I received, I reached out to Phase 2 (http://www.phase2.com/hosted-lotus-connections-overview.aspx) to see if they would be interested in hosting the Profiles and Files entitlements. They already offer IBM Connections as a hosted solution, or as a SaaS model. it would only require limiting the services to the two entitlements.
After several discussions, Phase 2 came back with a price to host the two entitlements. The monthly charge will be $5.99 per/user, per/month. After discussions with a few IBMers, this is within the license framework that allows companies to have another provider host the license. This can also be done for international clients as well.
For more information, please give me a shout. I would love to discuss this with you.
Have any Lotus related questions?
Tom's happy to give you advice on your Lotus related questions. Whether it be a "how-to", something related to the product line, or just the most interesting people at Lotusphere, he's happy to help
