IBM secures Panasonic as major LotusLive customer

In the latest news from IBM, Panasonic will move 100,000 to 380,000 employees to IBM’s LotusLive hosted, Web-based collaboration suite of services. This deal is noteworthy in the cloud arena for its size: it is larger than any enterprise deal inked so far by Google Apps, a highly popular platform boasting 2 million clients.

Few companies can ever hope to match IBM’s reputation and track record among enterprises. Now Big Blue is proving to be quite the cloud warrior, boldly striding into the Software as a Service fray after having accelerated its product offering with the purchase of Outblaze technology last year (Outblaze messaging assets were incorporated in the LotusLive Web-based collaboration suite).

Congratulations to IBM and Lotus from Outblaze!