IBM buys email company to boost Bluehouse
Outblaze set to enhance messaging services.
By Chris Kanaracus, IDG News Service | Published: 08:33, 19 January 2009
IBM is set to buy Outblaze, a large Hong Kong application service provider, to help beef up its Bluehouse social-networking and collaboration platform.
Outblaze is privately held and claims to supports more than 76 million users across 480,000 domains with its white label e-mail, social-networking and collaboration services.
Combined, the Outblaze and Bluehouse technology will enable enterprise customers to tap IBM for "all their messaging needs, whether on-premise or online," and smaller companies will get a "simple to acquire" and integrated bundle of tools, IBM said in a statement.
IBM spokesman Mike Azzi said that the company planned to reveal more details about how Outblaze's software will fit into Bluehouse at this week's Lotusphere conference in Orlando.
Bluehouse, which is now in beta, focuses on making online meetings, networking and file sharing easier and more effective. The platform is part of IBM's overall push toward delivering services from the cloud to customers.
