By Matt Hines
Thursday, July 14 2005 11:41 AM
URL: http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/software/0,39044164,39243140,00.htm

IBM plans to add blogging capabilities to the next version of its Workplace collaboration and development software, the company said on Wednesday.

The company offered the details of its blog-related plans as part of a preview into the upgrades that will arrive sometime in August, when the company is expected to release its Workplace 2.5 and Workplace Designer 2.5 offerings. IBM said the addition of the blogs to the collaboration and software development tools is a concession to the growing popularity of the Web pages among its corporate clients.

Ed Brill, business unit executive with IBM's Lotus division, pointed out that the company has had a stake in "social software" for years and said it is now embracing blogging as the medium becomes an increasingly popular and vital tool within its business software customer base.

"The kind of things that people do in blogs today are the sort of things that people have done in Lotus Notes and Domino for years," Brill said. "Where we're seeing the growth in interest is in the internal use of blogging; people are increasingly using it as a conceptual way to communicate within organizations, so we need for it to be part of the platform for both (end users) and designers."

Blogs, the shortened term for Web logs, are most frequently used by corporate workers to share information regarding projects they're working on, according to the company. By adding blogs to Workplace, IBM is simply adding another communication format for workers to use, in particular when developing collaborative applications using Big Blue's Workplace Designer software, company officials said.