Hyatt Corp. Standardizes on Notes & Sametime

IBM just announced that Global Hyatt Corporation will standardize on Lotus Notes and Lotus Sametime for unified communications and collaboration. The company, which operates in more than 45 countries, intends to offer the software to thousands of employees as well as all 365 managed, operated and franchised hotels."We need to enable our associates to be more collaborative and versatile with open tools that have the best return on investment. This is why we chose IBM's collaboration software," said Cliff Tamplin, vice president of IT, Infrastructure and Operations, Global Hyatt Corporation, in an IBM press release. "It is easier and faster to share documents and schedule meetings using the on-line tools from IBM."Global Hyatt is rolling out IBM Lotus Notes version 8.0 to its North American hotels now; it will expand to the international hotels next year. When fully deployed in 2009, 25,000 Global Hyatt employees will use Sametime version 8. The company will be leveraging Web 2.0 capabilities, such as composite applications; live text, which enables Lotus Notes to recognize patterns in documents and then perform actions on that information; built-in Sametime IM integration; message recall, which allows users to recall e-mails if needed; web conferencing; and ready access to team rooms, where users can store and retrieve documents through Lotus Notes.