Five years ago IBM opened its global chain of Blue Cloud labs targeting enterprise clients, governments and universities and now meeting the needs of over 20 million end-user customers. Tomorrow, IBM  will announce the adding of another series of clients, including American Airlines, CARFAX, India First Life Insurance, Shriram Transport Finance Co., and 7-Eleven that will benefit from the latest updates for BlueWorks Live and LotusLive.

BlueWorks Live makes organizations more efficient by enabling social communities to form around a specific line of business functions, and automating simple processes that run over email in as quickly as 90 seconds. IBM’s LotusLive social collaboration services deliver easy-to-access integrated email, social networking, and third-party applications from the cloud, helping transform businesses. The latest version of BlueWorks Live is now free on a 30-day trial and will be officially announced within IBM’s Impact Conference, between the 10^th and 15^th of April in Las Vegas.

“We were looking for cloud technology that was easy to use, rapid to implement and would provide immediate, tangible benefits for our key business processes within a couple of days, if not weeks,” said Andy Kim, Director of IT Governance at MedImpact Healthcare Systems, Inc., a national pharmacy benefits management company based in San Diego.

Cloud computing is a very important area for various businesses, from finance and banking to retail and government agencies, all of which want to achieve economies of scale to optimize their return on investment with the aid of technology. The domain itself has known a great increase, and according to the IDC, $17 billion was spent on cloud-related technologies, hardware and software in 2009.  The numbers are only expected to grow, reaching an estimated $45 billion by 2013.

But IBM appreciates diversification as well, and last week it announced the company is going “social.” After joining forces with SugarCRM, Sugar6 users that will now be able to schedule and host web meetings from within their CRM platform, new connectors for IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Suite and IBM Websphere Cast Iron for SugarCRM integration platform and innovative integration solutions combining IBM’s i operating system, Power 7 servers and SugarCRM software.