Much of the Bluehouse technology that comes from I.B.M. Lotus line of products includes popular e-mail plus contact and calendar applications that are used by large corporations.

The firm has bundled the same software with applications for instant messaging, Web conferencing, document sharing as well as team management. All this comes into a single collection accessed via the Web. I.B.M. walked select tech journalists through an early demo of the new Bluehouse software. It seemed to work well. In fact, as a journalist narrates an online meeting took off quickly without needing any software downloads onto the laptop, and they were able to see an I.B.M. engineer moving between various projects. They shared quite a wide range of presentations and documents with different contact groups based on the permission settings to view such files.

I.B.M.’s big pitch is that it knows ‘how to help people get important work done.’ Sean Poulley, a vice president there, said: “There is a clear business customer segment that does not want their personal identification or data used as a means to serve up adverts. And from a business point of view, we want people to feel comfortable that their data is safe. So, we are making business class tools available online.”