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Subscribe via EmailNow that LotusLive is, erm, live, and available for purchase, thoughts turn to costs and how to go about buying it for your organisation (assuming, of course, that it fulfills your requirements!).
As I pointed out yesterday, it isn't currently possible to buy a subscription to LotusLive online - the site offers a form to fill out for more information or a US based toll-free number to call. I think that this is a shame, as LotusLive Engage is targeted at smaller organisations and thus at the consumer end of the business market - businesses that are used to buying their IT from online retailers and their services from folks like Skype, SalesForce.com and Google, all suppliers that sell their wares directly via their websites. This e-commerce option is scheduled to be available at a later date.
However, as Collaboration Matters is a LotusLive partner, I'm very interested in how to sell the solution to my customers, so I was looking forward to the solution being available via IBM's standard Passport Advantage volume licensing agreement. Lotuslive Engage hit the PA price guide today, so we are now in a position to sell it as part of our offerings.
These are the details:
- The basic LotusLive Engage package is $58 (£37.82) per user per month for all features (web-conferences, activities, profiles/contacts, IM and 1GB of document storage) and includes the ability to host and unlimited number of web-conferences with a maximum of 14 participants per conference. There is a minimum subscription commitment of 12 months. If an organisation wishes to pay ahead for 12, 24 or 36 months then there is a discount for doing so (e.g. equivalent to $46 per user per month for 12 months).
- If a user needs to be able to host conferences with more than 14 attendees then there are options for up to 24 attendees and up to 999 attendees.
- Each user is offered a maximum of 1GB of online storage as part of the subscription - additional storage is available at additional cost.
This pricing mechanism is very similar to that for LotusLive Meetings which makes it closely aligned to other web-conferencing vendors such as WebEx and thus familiar to a number of potential customers. Hopefully the tiered price structure will not prove to be too complex for the market that IBM is targeting.
By: Stuart McIntyre - LotusLive | 2 Comments | On: 8 April 2009 21:50:14 | Tags: lotuslive engage pricing
Comments
Price seems reasonable compared to the $48 pricetag on Sametime Unyte Meetings, but I have to ask myself, what real value do I get from having my contacs online, documents online, IM and those fabled "activities", that I can't get from Google "for free"?
I really struggle to see the value proposition without LotusLive Notes or LotusLive iNotes in the package.
The ENTIRE package at $58 per user per month would really kick A$$, but I fear it will be more like $58 for Engage and $58 for Notes, in which case oh well.
While I have no real need for LotusLive, I was shocked to see that the "Buy" and "Contact Sales" are the options for purchase.
If I hit buy, I expect to buy it, then and there. Not fill out some form and wait for a call within 24 hours. If IBM are using this model, the call back should be a lot sooner than 24 hours..
And while I am at it, why is there no "Buy all", and why is Notes a different form from the rest? The whole purchasing experience looks a bit off putting.