Integrated Social Media for Business

IBM recently introduced a new social messaging platform that integrates email, file sharing, instant messaging, social media, calendar functions and more in a single cloud-based, collaborative environment. Called IBM Verse, it takes advantage of the company’s expertise in collaboration, analytics and security to create a social networking environment that is more responsive to the needs of business users.

For example, Verse can learn which emails are most important to a particular user and automatically prioritize them. It can also perform a “faceted” search across all types of content within an email account to pinpoint and retrieve specific information quickly.

Social file sharing enables full life-cycle management of files and documents so that all users have access to the latest version as opposed to the version that was originally attached to an email. Files can be synchronized to desktops as well as mobile devices in a secure and encrypted environment. Currently delivered on their SoftLayer Cloud, IBM also plans to offer a licensed version that may be deployed in on-premises, cloud or hybrid environments. There are also plans to offer native mobile apps for both iOS and Android devices which will integrate Verse with the MobileFirst Platform. A free version, called Verse Basic, is available at www.ibm.com/verse.