January 14, 2010

OSAKA, Japan (TheStreet) -- Panasonic(PC Quote) has chosen IBM(IBM Quote) for a major IT overhaul, a job that's being touted as the biggest-ever enterprise deployment of cloud computing.

Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but Panasonic is about to begin a massive migration over to IBM's LotusLive technology. Launched in early 2009, LotusLive is hosted by IBM in its own data centers and encompasses email, social networking features and online meetings.

"This is quite probably one of the most sizable cloud collaboration deals so far in the marketplace," Sean Poulley, IBM's vice president of online collaboration, told TheStreet. "Panasonic selected LotusLive to help globally integrate its entire business."

Shifting away from Microsoft(MSFT Quote) Exchange and a number of other collaboration products, Panasonic will eventually move more than 100,000 employees onto LotusLive. The transition, which is expected to take place over the next couple of years, will eventually extend LotusLive to more than 300,000 Panasonic workers, partners and suppliers.

Cloud technology, which offers compute power, storage and other services via the Internet, has been gaining momentum recently. Companies such as Amazon(AMZN Quote), AT&T(T Quote), Microsoft and IBM are all pushing cloud as a way for firms to avoid the upfront costs of hardware and software.

LotusLive, which also competes with Google(GOOG Quote) Apps, is seen as a key weapon in IBM's armory, enabling the tech giant to tap into the trend for Web-based email. Tech research firm Gartner predicts that about 20% of U.S. firms will send at least part of their e-mail through Web browsers by 2012.

Source:-http://www.thestreet.com