IBM Targets SMBs with Web 2.0 buy

IBM was busy this week. At VoiceCon in San Francisco, IBM Lotus General Manager Mike Rhodin announced the company's acquisition of WebDialog, a web conferencing service provider. In so doing, IBM is locking horns with Cisco (which this summer bought Webex) in an effort to tightly integrate Web 2.0-style multimedia collaborative tools into enterprise offerings. Along with the acquisition, IBM plans to offer three versions of Lotus Sametime and a telephony integration module for Sametime. It's all part of IBM's plan to break into the coveted small and medium-sized business space. IBM joins the growing mob of vendors who are tailoring large enterprise offerings to make inroads with the SMB crowd. Lotus Sametime Standard Edition, due out in the fall, will include on-premise Web conferencing, mobile clients, enterprise and public instant messaging federation and an open programming model. Its Advanced Edition, due next year, will include real-time social networking tools, instant screen share and dynamic location services for more complex location-based applications. The WebDialogs Web conferencing addition brings IBM some ready-made customers; the company already has some 500,000 users through the various service providers that use its platform, eWeek reports.

In a separate development, IBM is partnering with business intelligence software developer Cognos to build a package of software and hardware for the financial services industry. Called the Cognos-IBM Risk Adjusted Profitability Blueprint, the offering helps banks better integrate risk information with revenue and expense planning data. This is the first time the two have worked together on a BI offering.

For more on IBM and the WebDialog's acquisition:
- read the article in eWeek

For more on IBM and Cognos:
- see the article in eWeek