Ready to start with social software but don't want to wait to order servers, configure them, set them up, customize the environment, and add your theme/branding to it ? Perhaps you are not ready to learn about WebSphere ? Perhaps your IT department is overloaded resolving some other fires issues at this time.
That's ok. IBM Premier Business Partner Connectria has just announced their new offering. They are offering Lotus Connections as Software as a Service (SaaS). Along with their existing Lotus Hosting services, they can now host and operate your web 2.0 and social networking environment while giving you the peace of mind of a 24/7 monitored system. And yes, they can do both a pilot and production environment!
Let them worry about all the techie stuff and let's focus on the adoption strategy for your organization. To find out more, check out the IBM Lotus Connections Hosting page on the Connectria site.
By the way, in case you are wondering, yes, I have recently posted several entries on solutions created by business partners. In fact, if my math is right, in the past month, the Lotus Connections Solution Catalog has grown ~40%! I think it's a great testament that so many 3rd party vendors see the power and the value of Lotus Connections that they want to provide their solutions on top of the Lotus Connections Social Networking Platform!
And there a couple more solutions coming down the pipeline, but I can't talk about them yet. So stay tuned!
Update 10/16/2008 @ 10:26pm: I was just informed that another business partner is offering hosting solutions for Lotus Connections. In this case it's Prominic.NET and their solution was just added to the catalog. Or you can go directly to Prominic's site and view their services here.