At IBM Connect, Sametime has barely had any mention on the main stage. Furthermore, as one looks at the show program, there are only a couple of sessions on Sametime.
Yet, in some of the demos, the ability to see presence, send an instant message, or have an instant meeting was demoed or at least referenced as key parts of the solution functionality. It almost seems that in the minds of IBM's executives and managers, Sametime's capabilities have become part of the enterprise infrastructure fabric - almost a given that they are there.
Yet, in spite of the lack of executive mind share, the Sametime group still has revenue targets it must meet, which indeed must be challenging given the sales and marketing emphasis on other products, including IBM's social software solution, Connections, and its big data and analytics products.
In one of the few sessions about Sametime, the Sametime roadmap was discussed within the context of Social Communications. In fact, the session title was "Social Collaboration Strategy and the IBM Sametime Roadmap". The presenter, who leads the Sametime group started the session with these words, "Communications is more powerful in a social business context."
Thus, it appears that collaboration and communications, while important building blocks, are becoming part of the fabric of the enterprise: always available, integrated with and within other solutions. This trend was predicted back in 2009 in an article on NoJitter.com in which I wrote, "It is clear that ... the table stakes now include some form of a UC client that includes integration with the PBX for click-to-call/click-to-conference, directory integration, presence/IM, and usually video. The more sophisticated UC solutions include integration with the email system, integration with standard office desktop software, and a much richer presence engine... UC concepts will ultimately become so commonplace in the market that people will cease to talk about it."
Another trend that may further hasten the inclusion of UC in general and Sametime in particular into the infrastructure fabric is WebRTC. WebRTC is a capability that introduces audio and video communications natively within HTML5 browsers. One can imagine in the very near future when every browser, whether it is running on a PC, smartphone, or tablet, is fully communications enabled. (I am co-chairing a full day conference-within-a-conference at Enterprise Connect 2013 on WebRTC.)
IBM has announced Sametime version 9.0 scheduled for release in mid-2013. Could this be the last "version" of Sametime as a separate product?
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