HCL Sametime offers streamlined team communication and collaboration tools essential for businesses looking to enhance productivity and connectivity in real-time environments.
| Product | Mindshare (%) |
|---|---|
| HCL Sametime | 1.6% |
| Zoom Workplace Business | 7.4% |
| Webex | 5.2% |
| Other | 85.8% |
HCL Sametime is crafted to facilitate instant messaging, video conferencing, and team collaboration, making it integral for businesses that depend on seamless internal and external communication. With its robust architecture, it supports multiple platforms and ensures a secure, scalable communication experience.
What features make HCL Sametime valuable?HCL Sametime has broad application across industries such as healthcare, finance, and education, where reliable and secure communications are critical. Financial institutions leverage secure messaging for confidential discussions, while educational bodies use video conferencing for remote learning and collaboration.
HCL Sametime was previously known as Lotus Sametime, IBM Lotus Sametime.
Connect2Cloud, Superior Group, Daifuku Co. Ltd., Seaward, The City of Fort Worth, Christian Brothers Services, Berlitz, Deutsche Notes User Group, Danske Fysioterapeuter, Slumberland, La Vacanza, Rheinmetall AG
| Author info | Rating | Review Summary |
|---|---|---|
| Kierownik Biura Informatyki at EIB SA | 4.0 | I used HCL Sametime primarily for text communication, appreciating its online status visibility and security. However, it lacks modern features like file sharing, prompting us to switch to solutions like Microsoft Teams, and plan to discontinue Sametime soon. |
| Consultant and Research Analyst (Technology) at Frost & Sullivan Asia-Pacific | 4.5 | I use Sametime for internal communications, valuing its chat and status features. However, it often hangs, has limited file sharing/meeting participants, and poor video quality. These issues are frustrating me despite its benefits. |
| Support Analyst at a tech services company with 51-200 employees | 3.5 | I've used this for over two years, finding audio/video calls and faster communication valuable. However, the interface is dated, setup was complex and expensive, and community server stability/scalability posed some issues. |
| Project Manager at a non-tech company with 10,001+ employees | 4.0 | No summary available |
| IT Administrator at a media company with 51-200 employees | 4.0 | I find this good communication and collaboration software simple, fast, and reliable, with smart auto-away status. However, I note it currently lacks telephony exchange, a key real-time communication feature. |
It was used for communication through text messages, primarily.
Being able to see who was online and communicate very fast was a good feature.
The security was quite good. However, when we tried to implement it for email at a high level, we had to use another solution, FortiMail Gateway.
I view it as part of HCL Notes and Domino, and my opinion is similar to those products.
It lacks some features compared to modern solutions. For example, it doesn't allow sending screenshots or other files. We now have better options like Microsoft Teams.
We've been using Sametime since it was on the Windows Domino server, not on Docker. We're currently ending its use.
I would rate the stability an eight out of ten. It is very stable.
Sametime was quite good in terms of scalability. It's a small solution, mainly for communication and seeing who's online in the office or work environment. It's not very complex.
Everyone who uses HCL Notes also uses Sametime in my company, so about 200.
We now have our own solution for communication and plan to stop using Sametime in a few months.
The initial setup was more complex than other HCL products. We often had problems with upgrades and similar issues.
The licensing is included in our HCL Notes license.
Overall, it was quite good.
I would rate it an eight out of ten. It's a better product than some others from HCL, but overall, I wouldn't recommend it, given the availability of superior alternatives.
I use Lotus Sametime for internal communications across regions. I'm a consultant and therefore, I need to connect with teams in the United States and the United Kingdom. With Sametime, I can connect and chat easily with my team members effortlessly.
I also use this solution for quick internal meetings and sharing files.
This solution saves time and cost in communicating with team members. We don't need to have telephone calls. It streamlines the tasks in my organization by encouraging us to chat directly with the relevant person. Sametime also encourages communication among peers that further strengthens professional relationships.
The most valuable features are:
Sametime hangs sometimes and therefore needs to get restarted. There are very limited features such as limited file size sharing (one at a time) and limited number meeting participants that can actually participate in the instant meeting.
The quality of video conferencing is needed to be improved. The video hangs too and need to exit and reenter the meeting.
Lack of emoji but we can integrate emojis from another apps into the Sametime.
I have been using this solution for more than one year.
Users are only allowed to share one file at a time.
This is a simple yet effective communication tool in multinational companies.
The interface is too colorful and looks like Windows XP.
More than two years.
Some, with the community server.
Some, with the community server.
I didn't use IBM technical support.
I didn't use a previous solution.
It was somewhat complex to configure the whole environment.
It's a little expensive.
We were an IBM partner and had to test this product.
Read the documentation. Take snapshots on virtual machines before installing.
The Lotus Sametime software provided by IBM is chat and messaging software which is widely used over email communications for faster data transfer. There are below pros and cons for this related software:-
Pros:-
1. It provides instant messaging, web conferencing, communications and collaboration for enterprises.
2. This is a client-server application that provides real time, unified communications.
3. It can be integrated with wide variety of software, so stability is high.
4. Support is available from IBM and third party companies for 24 * 7 as it is sold by Lotus Software division of IBM.
5. It provides interoperability with public IM networks via the IBM Sametime Gateway, including AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk and XMPP-based services.
6. It provides audio/video services which supports audio and video codecs.
7. It gives good quality over the Intranet for audio/video facilities.
8. It also has functionality for failover, clustering, and scalability for the IBM Sametime Gateway deployment.
Cons:-
1. It is IBM proprietary software, and not a opensource software, so licenses need to purchased from IBM.
2. There is echo or low voice quality over the communication line or throughout the conversation over the internet.
3. Development is still going on to integrate it with Mobile applications
4. Chats are saved in text format, so transferred images are not readable.
Alternate Vendors:-
AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk, MSN Messenger !!
A very good communication and real-time collaboration software. It is simple, fast, reliable, keeps history and the best feature of all is its intelligence. It can detect if a user is away from keyboard and auto changes the status to away. So in case one forgets to change his/her status, it auto changes the status to away.
It seems that the software might in the future, support the software telephony exchange but at the current time, it is not doing that and because of that one key feature of real-time communication is missing from it.
