IBM moves into enterprise blogging

IBM is launching itself into territory popularized by the likes of Google -- the Weblog. IBM last week announced two blogging tools, taking advantage of a practice increasingly prevalent in the enterprise.

Weblog Preview provides the basic functionality usually expected of personal weblogs. For instance, Weblog Preview supports the posting of content in a journal format, emphasizing a personal point of view. The weblogs are public by default; that is, any authenticated Workplace user can read the blog. In addition, all authenticated users can comment on or link to the posts via "permalinks." The weblog owners, however, can restrict access to their blogs via the Workplace membership portlet, just as with any Workplace component.

Weblog Preview also allows bloggers to have a public list of favorite weblogs (that is, a blogroll) on their blog so that readers can see what the blogger finds of interest. Bloggers can put links to either external or internal blogs in their blogroll. In addition, Weblog Preview provides both an Atom and an RSS syndication feed format so that readers can subscribe to their favorite blogs in the feed reader of their choice.

How does it work?

Weblog Preview provides basic weblog functionality, but it is also a Workplace Business Component -- that is, it takes advantage of Workplace infrastructure. This gives the weblogs consistency with other Workplace components for a number of features important to the enterprise, such as

• security
• integrated search
• awareness
• roles and community
• administration and policy
• application templates

This preview requires IBM Workplace Collaboration Services 2.5.