This is an important announcement for two quick reasons – firstly the outblaze technology can bring added functionality to IBM’s Bluehouse platform, and secondly it signifies that IBM is pretty committed to investing in its  “big play” in the online collaboration space.

I reckon 2009 and 2010 are going to be busy years in terms of acquisitions – Steve Mills (the chap who runs IBM’s software business) has a track record of smart purchases, and while I don’t expect him to go crazy with the corporate credit card, I reckon there’ll be a few bargains that he just won’t be able to pass up in the coming two years.

I’m expecting to hear lots and lots on Bluehouse from IBM at the upcoming Lotusphere 2009. It’s very much something to watch…

What is Bluehouse?

Bluehouse (which is from the Lotus guys in IBM’s Software Group) is an online collaboration platform – that allows people to connect to eachother, share documents and form groups. It has a lot in common with Google’s “Apps”, and with other companies like Huddle.

Bluehouse was announced more or less a year ago at the 2008 LotuSphere event, and at the time I reckoned it was the most exciting announcement at the event. I signed up there and then for the beta program and have been a fairly regular visitor ever since.

Is it any good?

It will be.

At the time it was first announced I thought that Bluehouse had the potential to offer organisations an “enterprise quality” alternative to Google Apps and Facebook. That potential remains, but so far Bluehouse has been something of a “slow burn”. In order to get people excited about signing up to “yet another collaboration platform” you have to offer them something special, and BlueHouse isn’t quite there… yet.

At the moment, it feels a little like an empty Cathedral – Beautiful, Well built… but somehow “waiting”.

Bluehouse integrated with a slew of Lotus products (although I’d like the integration to be slicker)… and there’s a really good opportunity for IBM to deliver something that will provide a reliable, trusted, SaaS alternative to Microsoft’s small business server.

I’m off to Lotusphere 2009 in a couple of weeks… and I hope I’ll have a LOT more to say on the topic of Bluehouse then.

That said – The opening session (which was introduced by the Orlando symphony orchestra – and a superb and very fetching solo violinist) was full of news.

The guest speaker was Bob Costas, an American Sports commentator – I was a teensy bit disappointed, given that in the past they’ve had Neil Armstrong and Walter Cronkite – Bob was a relatively entertaining speaker – but very very US-centric in his outlook and message. I’ve no doubt he’s well known and loved by many of the US attendees – but he’s more or less unknown outside the states.

The formal session was opened by Mike Rhodin, the GM of Lotus who took on the job in 2005, he’s a savvy experienced exec who really does know what he’s talking about – and what’s going on in his business.

The keynote began with a little bit of justified bragging – IBM made a series of product promises at last year’s event – then delivered them early – So early that they announced a “mini-roadmap” update in the third quarter to deliver even more.

There were a bunch of announcements aimed largely at the Lotus faithful, all good and important stuff. But there were also a number of announcements that were very interesting…

// Caveat – This is all pretty fresh, so if I praise or criticise I reserve the right to completely change my point of view when I’ve had more time to mull it over… //

The guys at Lotus have done a very impressive job of componentising the different parts of Lotus, and in integrating many of the Lotus assets with non Lotus IBM software products – Like WebSphere portal. The work they’ve done on making it very (and I mean very) easy to mix and combine components and assets within the Mashup designer is extremely impressive. IBM’s portfolio of products is huge – and the challenge that integrating them represents is equally big – the fact that they’ve achieved this much integration is impressive to say the least.

IBM is continuing to invest a lot in Symphony, IBM’s open office suite which is a very close cousin to Open Office – the product is largely developed in Beijing – and the work is moving apace – Internally there’s a new release every five or so weeks – For a project of that scale that’s noteworthy too. I had a few discussions about how I think Symphony is great… but that I haven’t been sufficiently motivated to break the habit of opening documents using Open Office. There’s a level of inertia when it comes to transition – which means that the alternative can’t just be “better” but has to be dramatically so before someone will really change their habits. Interestingly, the consistent response from a number of IBM’ers was “That’s ok… we just want you to be using the Open Document Format”… which is a pretty smart reaction.

The two announcements that really chime with me were the unveiling of the Lotus Appliance – Now this is memorable because Rhodin pulled a tiny Lotus appliance out of a brown padded envelope – In a reprise of Steve Jobs’s unveiling of the Mac Air… Mac can build a notebook that fits in an envelope – IBM can build a server that does! In truth, while I think a Lotus appliance is a great idea – It was the showmanship that really puts it at “top of mind” – I’ll mull the impact of a Lotus appliance a little more before producing a considered opinion.

Like Rhodin, I’m saving the best till last… The last and by far and away the most important announcement in my view was “IBM BlueHouse” – a hosted Web 2.0 environment for collaboration, communication,email, asset sharing (documents, images, files etc etc), asset creation (editing etc), forums… the list goes on. BlueHouse is still in beta… (rolling out over the next few months) and lots of things still have to be figured out (pricing, go to market etc etc)… but this is ROCKING in terms of its potential. It’s an offering that IBM will be targeting at smaller businesses (and I hope consumers too….).

I’ll be writing about the “open” aspects of the various announcements (mashups, and IBM’s work on an open standard for mashable widgets are two in particular), and about where BlueHouse might go in the next week or so… but for now… Keep an eye out for BlueHouse… it has the potential to be game changing.