IBM composes social Verse

IBM has announced Verse, a social messaging solution that incorporates analytics to help users connect and communicate with the right people and information.

IBM has announced the availability of IBM Verse, a social messaging solution that incorporates built-in analytics to give people a new way to connect, communicate and find the right people and information fast.

A direct result of IBM’s $100 million investment in design innovation, IBM Verse integrates email, calendars, file sharing, instant messaging, social and more – all through a single collaborative, cloud-based environment.

IBM Verse is a natural blending of IBM’s expertise in collaboration and analytics,” said Jens Rauschen, Managing Director of Retail, Hamm-RENO Group, GmbH, one of Europe’s largest footwear retailers which has been beta testing the solution. “It understands who and what is important to me and helps me get to the heart of the most important matters quickly, so I can get back to my business.

For international marketing and communications firm, Havas Creative, design and speed are key aspects of the solution. “Right away, I was impressed with how intuitive, user-friendly, and modern Verse is,” said Jeff Marshall, CIO Havas Creative North America. Havas Creative manages an IBM Verse beta environment and plans to roll it out to more than 5,000 employees across North America, Latin America and Asia-Pacific this year.

Of particular interest to Marshall is IBM Verse’s faceted search. With faceted search, users can pinpoint and retrieve specific information across all the various types of content within their email extremely quickly.

IBM provided the following information on key features of IBM Verse:

Delivered on the SoftLayer Cloud with enterprise-grade security, IBM Verse offers organizations big or small a scalable, cloud-based social collaboration offering. In addition, IBM plans to introduce a new licensing model as part of its Bridge to Cloud program for IBM Connections Cloud that makes it easy for customers to deploy collaboration solutions to cloud, on premises or in a hybrid environment.

IBM plans to offer new native mobile apps for Verse that integrate with the IBM MobileFirst platform, including IBM MobileProtect, and starting with IBM iOS for iPhone later this month. IBM will follow that release with apps for Android and iPad in the second quarter.

IBM is also making available a free version, IBM Verse Basic, at www.ibm.com/verse.

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