IBM has announced the beta launch of Bluehouse, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) product that delivers a suite of collaboration tools including Web conferencing, document sharing, business communities, and instant messaging delivered via a cloud platform.
This is not your average professional networking forum. Bluehouse has added a number of interesting features, including Live Charts, a service that helps users develop a dynamic visualization created from spreadsheets or sales figures, for example.
In the Activities portal, users can introduce new projects, track a meeting to-do list, or brainstorm new solutions.
Bluehouse also has a “Forms” section that guides you through creating and publishing surveys and forms for your business.
With all these added features, it’s clear that IBM is taking professional forums to the next level by combining networking with more extensive communications and collaboration. It will be interesting to see is Bluehouse is able to attract some of competitor LinkedIn’s 27 million members.
Bluehouse is free for now, but a subscription-based model will be set into place in the near future.
October 6th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
They should not be nervous
October 6th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
Maybe I’m missing something here, but I do not see any similarity between LinkedIn and Bluehouse. If anything, this seems to be a stab at Microsoft’s corporate collaboration package-Sharepoint.
October 7th, 2008 at 6:45 am
I don’t see the connection between the two services, one is a collaboration play and one is a social network. The only connection is that it targets business professionals. I would think Bluehouse would compete more with Microsoft’s collaboration tools as also pointed out above or perhaps in the SMB market, 37 Signals.
October 7th, 2008 at 11:06 am
I’m too don’t see the comparison between this and LinkedIn. And futhermore, I don’t see why I should use Bluehouse over SharePoint. But then again, it’s only beta. So only time will tell.
October 7th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
They are both marketed as business networking platforms, but that’s where much of the comparison stops. But each enables users to connect with each other, although Bluehouse is mainly a collaboration platform for SMBs.
What I was saying is that LinkedIn users, many of who work in SMBs, may see the value of utilizing Bluehouse over a social networking site that lacks these kinds of features.
For more on how Bluehouse fits into this niche (among many competitors) check out these articles:
http://www.ovum.com/news/euronews.asp?id=7397
http://industry.bnet.com/technology/1000440/ibm-beta-tests-bluehouse-a-business-facebook/
http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=T&ct=us/2-0&fd=R&url=http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,1000000567,10009477o-2000561249b,00.htm&cid=0&ei=N2nrSNynG436lQTam8j5CA&usg=AFQjCNHM0BQnftTsZl4geadlPdaw2CUXDg
October 8th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
How about Google Apps…can we throw that into the mix here?