Verse is IBM’s attempt to reinvent the inbox

IBM has entered the enterprise email market with the launch of IBM Verse, a service the company claims gives enterprise customers, small businesses, and individuals a scalable, social collaboration tool that lives on the cloud and is optimized for mobile and web environments. Verse combines the various ways employees connect each day, including email, meetings, calendars, file sharing, instant messaging, social updates, video chats, and more, and is the first messaging system to feature ‘faceted search’, a technique that lets users pinpoint and retrieve specific information they’re seeking across all the various types of content within their email.

IBM on Tuesday launched Verse, a new approach to email that melds collaboration, social, analytics and compelling design, but the real importance may be as a conduit to use Watson technology. Big Blue’s Verse, which launches in limited beta Nov. 25 with general availability in early 2015, aims to use analytics to make email more productive. After all, the average worker checks the inbox 36 times an hour with only 14 percent of emails deemed critically important. IBM deployed design thinking to rethink the interface to better empathize with the end user. According to Jeff Schick, general manager of IBM Enterprise Social Solutions, says the promise of Verse is “mail that understands you.” The idea is to create software that allows large global teams to collaborate at scale like those two-pizza small teams enterprises use to actually get things done, added Phil Gilbert, general manager of IBM Design. The best way to get to that mail understanding is to deploy Watson better. Verse will have a Watson Analytics option. The option includes the ability to ask Watson a question and get an email reply with an answer. Today, Watson will be an up sell to the freemium Verse.