IBM Federal Community Cloud to speed agency adoption of social collaboration technologies

21 Jul 2011 Washington, D.C. - IBM has new Cloud-based collaboration services to help U.S. Federal government organisations reap the benefits of social computing. The new set of social collaboration services, delivered on IBM's Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA)-compliant Federal Community Cloud, addresses the administration's drive to adopt a "Cloud-first" policy which is designed to help the government improve its overall IT efficiency and delivery of services to citizens.

IBM's new Cloud services include industry-leading social software such as wikis, microblogs, communities, staff profiles, instant messaging, web conferencing and e-mail. IDC ranked IBM first in the social platforms market share for 2009 and 2010. It also includes support for popular mobile devices including Android phones and tablets, Apple iPhone 4 and iPad, BlackBerry, and Nokia Symbian platform.

Accessing social software as a Cloud service can help federal agencies introduce new capabilities at a lower cost and in a more timely fashion. These services can be provided for staff on demand without long term commitments and help the government reduce waste and consolidate IT spend.

"The rise in Big Data and the demand for transparency and collaboration will continue to put pressure on agencies to embrace new computing environments such as Cloud to improve IT capabilities", stated Todd S. Ramsey, General Manager, IBM U.S. Federal. "IBM Cloud collaboration solutions will help agencies gain faster access to the latest technologies, increase innovation across departments and ultimately improve citizen services."

IBM's social software, which is part of the new service, has many useful productivity tools including:

• Blogs allow staff to gather and prioritize community ideas, present their own ideas and learn from others.
• Communities allow people to exchange and share information with others through a web browser, instant messaging, or e-mail software.
• File sharing and microblogs to facilitate collaboration with dynamic networks of co-workers, partners and customers.
• Instant messaging and online meetings to work seamlessly across geographies.
• Profiles allow people to find and work with others who share common interests and expertise as well as expand their social networks. Tags and social analytics technologies assist with this task.

IBM's Federal Community Cloud is specifically designed to help federal government organisations respond to technology requirements more quickly. The secure, private cloud environment is part of IBM's established and dedicated Federal Data Center that provides secure and comprehensive certified computing capabilities to federal government clients.

The new services will be ready for the required FISMA certification when they become available late this year.

IBM is experienced at providing tools for organizations to collaborate both on premise and in the Cloud. For example, the U.S. Army is already using a variety of on premise IBM collaboration tools including electronic IBM Forms which helps reduce the time, costs, and problems inherent to paper-based forms processes to help speed process automation. Additionally, several Federal government organisations use IBM services that provide Cloud and data centre capabilities to quickly build, manage, operate and analyze complex computing environments.