IBM Lotus released Sametime 7.5.1 last week. I’m not sure how I missed this in the prior release, but I just noticed that Sametime now supports integration with the Microsoft Office suite.

This feature was first mentioned last summer with the pre-announcement of Sametime 7.5 amongst a slew of many other important enhancements to the product, including the gateway to public IM networks.

Perhaps one of the reasons that I may have missed this before is the fact that the integration option is not part of the default installer. You must actually read the release notes to find the specific installation instructions. Why IBM chose to exclude this feature from the standard installer is a mystery to me.

Once installed, Sametime offers integration with Word, Excel and the likes through Smart Tags. User can easily initiate chats within a document or spreadsheet if a name matches a corresponding Sametime user. What’s even more interesting though is the inclusion of a Sametime toolbar within Outlook. The toolbar integrates presence and instant chat capabilities right into email, contacts and calendaring.

Why do I think that this is a big deal? For one, MS-Office is ubiquitous in the enterprise and integrating Sametime is simply a requirement to effectively compete against Microsoft’s own LCS. Secondly, many companies are running Notes/Domino and Exchange/Outlook side by side. The integration with Outlook enables them to stay with one IM solution as users share the presence and awareness capabilities across both email clients. Lastly, Sametime is currently the most robust and complete enterprise IM and collaboration platform on the market. The wealth of new features that IBM managed to add into the 7.5.x releases helps in maintaining this leadership position.

Technorati Tags: Sametime, Lotus Notes, Outlook, Ms-Office

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