Dan Swango, Director, IBM Collaboration Solutions, and Baan Slavens, Sr Product Manager, IBM Connections presented a session at IBM ConnectED 2015 on IBM’s Mobile Strategy in the collaboration space, which includes IBM Verse, Connections, Sametime and Traveler applications.
Baan presented some market statistics:
“The average person unlocks his or her smartphone 110 times each day.”
“25% of Americans Use ONLY mobile devices to access the internet”
“Average person takes 90 seconds to respond to text vs 90 minutes for email”
“There are 5x phones to PCs.”
IBM has recognized the mobile market and is making big investments in mobile. IBM delivered over 100 updates in 2014. Here is a summary of those updates.
Connections Mobile
Focused more on user experience and changed the design of the UI. They added personalized navigation. There is one-tap access to content that matters to you. This includes a history view that shows you a list of recently viewed items that you can click on to see the item.
IBM Traveler
Traveler is the mobile client for Lotus Notes Email. Its now available for on premise and SmartCloud mail systems.
IBM Sametime
Built in a soft phone and Implemented point to point audio (iPhones) and video (iPad).
IBM Connections Meetings
Built in a soft phone, added calendar integration with Notes and Microsoft. They also delivered Secure Group Chat and Instant polls. Finally IBM integrated the Connections Meeting app with Connections Social Files and Social Cloud.
What’s coming in 2015
Dan shared the plans for 2015.
IBM Verse
New mail, calendar and contacts app for iOS based on Verse. This app organizes mail by who is important to you and analytics make suggestions for you. There is a simple and “elegant” experience that integrates photos. An Android app is coming soon. I’ve included a YouTube video of the Verse mobile application here.
Verse also includes Sametime integration, shares files with Connection and integrates with iOS Notifications.
IBM Connections
Here are plans for 2015: Continue UX enhancements. Activities support in SmartCloud. Integration with Notification Center. They are also supporting Mobileiron and Citrix.
SameTime
Adding file transfer capabilities, video chat on phones. They are integrating with Verse too. They are also supporting Mobileiron and Citrix.
Connections Meetings
Verse integration, whiteboarding. They are also supporting Mobileiron and Citrix.
