IBM this week announced the general availability of both the consumer and business editions of IBM Verse, the email service that it is delivering via the IBM SoftLayer cloud.

As part of the general shift towards all things cloud, IBM clearly sees an opportunity to revitalize a software category where IBM has been overshadowed by Microsoft (MSFT) for the better part of two decades.

Based on an implementation of the IBM Domino software that IBM has sold on premise for years, IBM Verse adds a new wrinkle to email in that it includes a set of analytics that help organizations transform the way they work.

For example, users can apply analytics to not only identify what messages are most important, but also which ones are associated with a particular business process.

Scott Souder, program director and senior product manager for IBM Verse, said that while the consumer edition called IBM Verse Basic will continue to be available for free the company will charge a relatively nominal fee per user per month for the business edition of IBM Verse.

Beyond that IBM does plan to make an edition of IBM Verse available on premise. Souter said that in all probability there will be opportunities to create hybrid cloud computing solutions around IBM Verse.

In addition, Souder said IBM plans to expose application programming interface around IBM Verse that will enable developers to create applications that run on top of IBM Verse.

Souder said IBM expects to gain market share in the email/collaboration space at a time when the category leader in this space is also trying to push customers into the cloud. Microsoft has been aggressively selling Microsoft Office 365, which combines its widely used productivity applications in the cloud with an email service to replace Microsoft Office and Microsoft Exchange running on premise.

IBM has opted to make available its own set of productivity applications with IBM Verse and Souder said IBM has not decided whether it needs to make it possible to integrate Microsoft Office applications with IBM Verse.

The degree to which solution providers across the channel can make money selling IBM Verse will probably have more to do with selling additional downstream services than the actual cloud service itself. As a result, the publishing of APIs and on premise edition of IBM Verse are critical components for the channel.

In the meantime, IBM will be out promoting IBM Verse as a transformative change to the way individuals inside organizations work. Depending on how much frustration there really is with the way email currently works the degree to which that idea will gain actual traction in the market remains to be seen.