Major new deal for LotusLive

Today eWeek reported that Panasonic is switching 150,000 users away from Microsoft’s Exchange to IBM’s LotusLive.

The announcement came in a timely fashion, just as Lotusphere 2010 is about to open it’s doors. Coincidence? I think not. It sounds like a well planned marketing move.

I was actually quite surprised to read this announcement, as the email section of LotusLive (iNotes) is not only a very young product, which is pretty visible in many ways (read our review of iNotes here). It should be said though that the other parts of LotusLive are very sophisticated, and are on their conferencing tool is very solid. Perhaps Panasonic overlooked the weaknesses in iNotes (and hoping the problems will be addressed) in favor of having one provider for everything from file sharing, to email, IM and conferencing tools.

Regardless of if Panasonic’s decision to switch to LotusLive was a wise one or not, it’s a major pat in the back for IBM.