IBM Lotus Sametime
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| Developer(s) | IBM |
|---|---|
| Stable release | 8.0.2 / December 2008 |
| Operating system | Cross-platform |
| Type | Instant messaging, web conferencing, unified communications |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | ibm.com/sametime |
IBM Lotus Sametime is a client-server application and middleware platform that provides real-time, unified communications and collaboration for enterprises. Those capabilities include presence information, enterprise instant messaging, web conferencing, community collaboration, and telephony capabilities and integration. It is sold by the Lotus Software division of IBM.
Because Lotus Sametime is middleware, it supports enterprise software and business process integration (Communication Enabled Business Process), either through a Lotus Sametime plugin or by surfacing Lotus Sametime capabilities through third-party applications. Sametime integrates with a wide variety of software, including Lotus collaboration products, Microsoft office productivity software, and portal and Web applications.
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[edit] Features
IBM Lotus Sametime is a client-server enterprise application that includes the Lotus Sametime Connect client for end-users and the Lotus Sametime server for control and administration. Lotus Sametime comes in 4 levels of functionality[1]:
Lotus Sametime Entry provides basic presence and instant messaging.
Lotus Sametime Standard provides additional functionality to Lotus Sametime Entry, including:
- rich presence including location awareness
- rich-media chat, including point-to-point Voice-over-IP (VoIP) and video chat, timestamps, emoticons, and chat histories
- group and multi-way chat
- web conferencing
- contact business cards
- interoperability with public IM networks via the IBM Lotus Sametime Gateway, including AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk and XMPP-based services.
- open APIs that allow integrations between Lotus Sametime and other applications
- Sametime Audio/Video Services supports audio codecs G.711, G.723.1, iSAC and one video codec - H.263+.[2]
Lotus Sametime Advanced provides additional real-time community collaboration and social networking functionality to Lotus Sametime Standard, including:
- persistent chat rooms
- broadcast tools to tap into extended expertise networks
- instant screen sharing
- geographic location services
Lotus Sametime Unified Telephony provides additional telephony functionality to Lotus Sametime Standard or Lotus Sametime Advanced, including:
- telephony presence
- softphone
- click-to-call and click-to-conference
- incoming call management
- call control with live call transfer
- connectivity to, and integration of, multiple telephone systems - both IP private branch exchange (IP-PBX) and legacy time-division multiplexing (TDM) systems
[edit] Platform support, APIs and application integration
Because Lotus Sametime is middleware, it supports application and business process integration. When within the context of real-time communications, this is often referred to as Communications Enabled Business Processes. It can do so in two ways:
- by surfacing the application into a Lotus Sametime plugin (software extension), or
- by surfacing Lotus Sametime capabilities into the target application.
Some examples of integration between Lotus Sametime and applications include:
- Lotus products including Lotus Notes, Lotus Domino applications, Lotus Connections, IBM Lotus Quickr
- Microsoft office productivity software including Microsoft Office, Microsoft Outlook, and Microsoft Sharepoint
- portal applications, including portals built with IBM WebSphere Portal
- web applications
- packaged enterprise applications
- embedded and client-server telephony applications
Lotus Sametime is built on the Eclipse platform, allowing developers familiar with the framework to easily write plug-ins for Lotus Sametime. It uses a proprietary protocol named Virtual Places, but also offers support for standard protocols, including Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), SIMPLE, T.120, XMPP, and H.323.
Lotus Sametime Connect, the client component of Lotus Sametime, is available for Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Apple Mac OS X. The Lotus Sametime server runs on Microsoft Windows, IBM AIX, i5/OS, Linux and Solaris.
[edit] History
Lotus Sametime has been an IBM product since 1998, when the product was the synthesis of technologies IBM acquired from two companies: the first, an American company called Databeam, provided the architecture to host T.120 dataconferencing (for web messaging) and H.323 Multi-Media Conferencing; the second was Ubique, an Israeli company whose software technology provided the "presence awareness" functionality that allows people to detect which of their contacts are online and available for messaging or conferencing.
In 2008, Gartner positioned IBM for the first time as a leader in their Unified Communications Magic Quadrant[3].
As of April 2009, Lotus Sametime is at version 8.0.2.
[edit] Related Blogs and External Links
- The Sametime Blog
- The Collaboration Soapbox
- IBM Lotus Sametime on ibm.com
- IBM Lotus Sametime wiki
- IBM Lotus Sametime Solutions Catalog
- THE UC VIEW
- THE VIEW
[edit] References
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