Monday, IBM has announced that a free beta version of their social networking service named “Bluehouse” was to be launched, aiming at connecting businesses with different partners, customers and suppliers. BethAnn Cregg, director of IBM Lotus' collaboration services group, has stated that „Bluehouse” would go into beta later on this October.

IBM’s cloud computing service is currently subject to enhancement and expansion efforts that target outrunning the company’s main competitor Cisco. The latter, via their 2007 acquisition WebEx, offers users an online platform providing on-demand collaboration, web conferencing and video conferencing applications.

The major goals IBM hopes to achieve include helping customers use the cloud computing apps, offering their own cloud services to users and encouraging independent software vendors to produce cloud services also. In addition, the company has introduced a string of new software products, such as Rational Policy Tester, which is an automated scanning solution, AppScan OnDemand (that detects security breaches),  Telelogic Focal Point and Lotus Sametime Unyte. The latter two centralize and manage product information and enable users to organize online conferences, respectively.

Bluehouse also incorporates the company’s social networking features, including the Lotus Quickr file sharing app and the instant messaging system called Lotus Sametime. The aforementioned, along with Lotus Notes, which offers document sharing, workflow, group discussions and calendaring functions, are expected to be integrated into the Lotus Sametime Unyte tool.

Dave Mitchell, strategy director of IBM developer relationships, has revealed that the company’s outlook on the business lies in putting emphasis on both the cloud and the data center, adding that their efforts to expand their cloud computing services serve the purpose of becoming compliant with that exact vision that  merges  the two essential elements.