IBM Launches Beta of Its IBM Docs Cloud-Based Office Suite

Apparently, Google Docs and Office 365 will soon receive another follower and a powerful competitor. The IBM Lotus Live cloud platform has a new ability to create and edit documents online as part of the new IBM Docs project. The seriousness of IBM’s intentions in this field is evidenced by the fact that the company intends to transform and rebrand Lotus Live, which will be called IBM Smart Cloud for Social Business in the future; the latter, therefore, will be focused primarily on the corporate sector.

Like competitors, IBM Docs offers standard features for creating and editing documents, spreadsheets and presentations; in addition, you can upload existing files, share them with colleagues, track changes in them, organize them into folders and add to Favorites. Naturally, in addition to common office file formats from Microsoft, OpenDocument-format files are also supported. There are also social functions that allow you to discuss certain nuances that arise in the process of working on a file.

As a distinctive feature from competitors in IBM Docs called the ability to create tasks (LotusLive Activities) and track their progress in a team. The bottom line is that for the document, the leader can determine some areas, the creation or editing of which can be assigned to individual participants, and these tasks and their execution status are displayed in a dedicated panel that allows you to monitor them and adjust the teamwork process.

View and try IBM Docs here . The date of the official release of the platform is already called soon this year.