IBM plans to release today its new service which brings together some of the best features offered by social networking and also by the business-collaboration tools.

Bluehouse, using the technology from IBM’s Lotus division, brings together instant messaging, Web conferencing, document sharing, profiles, directory and many other tools in order to build business networking communities.

Bluehouse offers a wide variety of communication and collaboration tools for small to medium-size businesses, and even larger. It comes as a web portal and offers all sorts of tools for hosting web conferences, sharing desktops, creating social networks with activity streams, sharing files, creating live charts from raw data and also chatting.

"Cloud computing will take off when companies can utilize data, applications and services from any device and from any location," said Willy Chiu, IBM vice president for high performance on demand solutions. He also added "We are moving our clients, the industry and even IBM itself to have a mixture of data and applications that live on the data center and on the cloud." The company’s projects for the year to come include the add-on of cloud-enabled services to all of its 13 Cloud Computing Centers and also its 40 Innovation Centers located all over the world.

Considering the fact that Bluehouse finished its private beta tests and just stepped into its open public beta phase, the service will be available for free for now. Dave Mitchell, director of strategy for IBM Developer Relations, explained that it will remain free until its official commercial rollout scheduled for later this year. In his interview with BetaNews, he also stated that the company is noticing an increased rivalry from companies such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft as a result of its efforts and progress in cloud computing. He explained that the new service will attempt to ease the implementation of cloud computing for both developers and customers.

The company announced back in August a $300 million investment plan for a series of new cloud-oriented data centers.

IBM also enlists other cloud services such as Remote Data Protection; Lotus Sametime Unyte, which focuses on Web conferencing; also Telelogic Focal Point, which is used for sharing information among project management, engineering, marketing, and other teams.

Sean Poulley, IBM's vice president, explained that IBM’s cloud services do not represent a new idea but they have been developed to include new features such as Web conferencing and document sharing, distancing themselves from the competition. He compared the offer to Apple’s iPod, which brings together the capabilities of all the other MP3 players in an elegant, easy to use way. Bluehouse allows users to own their data. "On LinkedIn, you don't own your personal identity, and, from our point of view, the network we build up for you isn't our network, it's yours," Poulley explained. "You paid for it and you own your identity." He added that without a doubt businesses will see a lot of utility in IBM’s offer.