Just How Does The Channel Fit Into LotusLive?

Lotus finds itself in much the same position Microsoft was in during its Worldwide Partner Conference last year—explaining to partners just how they fit into an evolving "cloud computing" strategy. Other software-as-a-service vendors have given mixed signals about their desire to work with solution providers.

"I think it's noteworthy the SaaS industry hasn't figured out how to work with the channel," said Sean Poulley, Lotus online collaboration service vice president, during a Lotusphere press conference this week.

He's right. So just what do we know? Right now LotusLive is basically the Web conferencing service and hosted Notes e-mail (the latter launched under the name Lotus Notes Hosted Messaging last October) the company already offers. Later this quarter it will switch on LotusLive Engage, until now known as "Bluehouse," a collection of on-demand applications (contacts and profiles, file sharing and storage, activities, online meetings, instant messaging, forms and charts) geared toward helping businesses collaborate with partners, suppliers, customers and others outside the organization.

Through the year Lotus will expand the LotusLive portfolio with other individual SaaS applications and bundles geared toward specific types of users or companies.

IBM Lotus is still developing its channel plans for LotusLive. But here's where things stand: Lotus will be looking for channel partners that can resell the LotusLive services as an IBM product or as a private-label service, earning margins (yet to be determined) in the process, according to Bethann Cregg, a product management director at Lotus. There will also be opportunities for solution providers to develop services around LotusLive to integrate multiple LotusLive services, link them with other Lotus on-premise applications, and integrate them with third-party applications and services.

"We believe there will be a hybrid model," Cregg said of the debate over whether on-premise or SaaS applications will be predominant in the future.

Key to this strategy is IBM's acquisition earlier this month of the assets of Outblaze, a Hong Kong-based developer of online messaging and collaboration services. The Outblaze deal is significant for channel partners because the company's "multi-administration" architecture allowed it to offer its on-demand applications directly to customers while simultaneously letting channel partners private-label the service. Lotus intends to incorporate that technology into LotusLive, Poulley and Cregg said.

IBM intends to handle all the hosting chores for LotusLive, unlike Microsoft, which offers channel partners the option of hosting the Dynamics CRM Online SaaS application.

Lotus executives, including IBM Lotus General Manager Bob Picciano and Marketing and Channels Vice President Kristen Lauria, both promoted to those posts in the year since Lotusphere 2008, said all the right things about counting on channel partners to achieve the company's goals and promising solution providers the resources they need.

Kevin Cavanaugh, messaging and collaboration vice president, drew cheers during his portion of the opening session when he announced that IBM Smart Market, a Web site for solution providers to promote, distribute and support their solutions, is now open to all Lotus partners. "These are tough economic times," Cavanaugh said. "Helping our partners prosper is a key Lotus value."

Throughout the conference Lotus executives also made lots of promises of improved "air cover" (advertising and marketing support) and other channel programs.

But with solution providers struggling to figure out just how they fit into the whole software-as-a-service world, fulfilling the promise of making channel partners a key element of the LotusLive initiative could be the vendor's biggest contribution to the future success of both Lotus and its partners.