IBM unveils GMail alternative. Google is happy.

When early this year IBM released their new SaaS platform, LotusLive, they promised to add Email to its suite. Today this promise is realized: the brand new SaaS email service LotusLive iNotes is available for business-users. IBM pushes it as a new alternative to Google Apps. Why Google Apps, but not GMail? Because, except the email tools, iNotes contains calendar and contact manager. IBM reps say that Google can't understand the difference between consumer web-services and business apps, and IBM has a vast experience in creating and supporting complex enterprise systems. So, it's just a question of time, when iNotes will drive away Google Apps users, moreover it costs only $36/user/year against Google's $50.

So, IBM pr guys did a good job. But what is the real face of LotusLive iNotes? It's quite easy webmail with address book and calendar. Its functionality and usability meanwhile has no chance against GMail and Google Calendar. And we doubt as to its capability to solve the spam problem in today's crowded internet. It provides 1Gb per user account against 25Gb in free Google Apps.



Andrew Kovacs (Google spokesperson) also noted, that unlike iNotes, GMail has more advanced features for mobile devices and integrated to Outlook, Active Directory and Blackberry Enterprise Server... "In general", - he says, - "we are happy that IBM unveiled such a service, as it serves as further validation that the future of computing is in the cloud."

The only potential iNotes advantage over GMail is its reliability (especially taking into account the recent GMail outages). And even not because IBM can create more reliable cloud-computing infrastructure, than Google. But because it's much easier to support thousands of paid users, than millions of free accounts (like Google does).

See also: Top 10 Email services