IBM Goes After Google Apps Premier

IBM is announcing the general availability of LotusLive iNotes, a cloud email, calendar and contact management service, for $36 a year per user. Google Apps Premier runs $50 per user a year.Basically a subscription to LotusLive iNotes comes at $3 per month, per user on a yearly basis, with month-to-month payment options weighing in at $3.75 per month. A free 30-day trial period is also available to companies that want to test drive the service before signing on the  dotted line.

All plans come with access to webmail, 1 GB of storage per user( Google offers 25GB) with the option of going in for 100GB for an extra charge. , mobile device support, built-in spam and antivirus protection, round the clock monitoring and administration tools.

The scheduled launch is to be  Monday, according to ZDNet. Vice president of IBM’s online collaboration and cloud services, Poulley says that

the idea behind LotusLive iNotes is to bring more security, reliability and privacy to enterprises that want Webmail. “These things matter a lot to the customer,” ,

Poulley  described Google’s Gmail as a

consumer grade service.We’re bringing business class services and support with mission critical reliability at a price lower than the competition.

Actually, LotusLive iNotes site has been live for several days now.We will be anxious to see how this works out as Google Apps has already taken a chunk of  business, educational and government customers. It may be difficult to migrate to a new service even if this cloud is more appealing.