IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 6.5 trailblaze the way to Lotus Workplace

September 23, 2003 -- The new release of IBM Lotus Notes Domino 6.5 includes the kind of technical and feature advances customers have come to expect from the industry’s leading messaging and collaboration platform. The new Notes 6.5 client, for example, includes a passel of features for improved mail management and simplified junk-mail blocking. And the new Domino 6.5 server breaks new ground by supporting Linux on IBM zSeries servers and Lotus Domino Web Access (iNotes) now offers a Linux-based client through support of the Mozilla browser.

Ken Bisconti IBM Lotus Vice President of Messaging Products

But current users, potential customers and industry media will find something else in these new releases -- products that incorporate the goals of IBM Lotus Workplace, IBM Lotus’ next-generation platform for integrating people with information and business processes.

“Overall our goal for Notes 6.5 vis-à-vis Lotus Workplace is to get users more familiar with the portal-oriented work experience, and to give them a taste of the capabilities and conveniences of the whole portfolio brought together into one consistent user interface.”

"Lotus Workplace is an integrated platform approach to linking our broad and growing portfolio of collaborative capabilities and making them available in a next generation of modular software and enterprise portals” says Ken Bisconti, IBM Lotus Vice President of Messaging Products. “Many Lotus customers will find the innovative cross-product integration and portal look-and-feel in Notes 6.5 a natural stepping stone to Lotus Workplace"

Integrated Instant Messaging; Workplace “look and feel”
Foremost among Notes and Domino’s Lotus Workplace-like features is its new, seamless, across-the-board instant messaging (IM) integration. Users can easily view the online status of colleagues in Notes or in Domino Web Access — in the inbox, within an e-mail message, on the Notes welcome page or even in custom applications — to determine if the person is available and instantly initiate a chat session.

“Presence awareness and instant messaging are now an integral, natural part of both the Notes client and the Domino Web Access interface,” says Bisconti. “This feature carries forward our goal of integrating collaborative capabilities, rather than forcing users to jump from their Notes client to a browser, or to an IM window. It’s an example of what analysts call contextual collaboration — using collaboration capabilities in the context of enterprise portals and line-of-business solutions.”

The Notes 6.5 client will also give customers a preview of the portal- or Web-based interface they’ll encounter in Workplace. For example, the new Lotus Workplace for Notes welcome page emulates the “look and feel” of IBM WebSphere Portal, on which Workplace will be based. “Overall our goal for Notes 6.5 vis-à-vis Lotus Workplace,” says Bisconti, “is to get users more familiar with the portal-oriented work experience, and to give them a taste of the capabilities and conveniences of the whole portfolio brought together into one consistent user interface.”

"Notes is the highest-functioning, most integrated and most secure messaging and collaboration client available today, a client that tens of millions of knowledge workers and office workers depend on. Quite naturally it’s going to evolve into a first-class citizen of the Workplace environment."

First-class citizens of the Workplace
Asked where Notes and Domino fit in the Workplace strategy, Bisconti says both are “part and parcel” of the investment Lotus is making in Workplace — and that both will evolve into key elements of the platform.

“Notes is the highest-functioning, most integrated and most secure messaging and collaboration client available today, a client that tens of millions of knowledge workers and office workers depend on,” says Bisconti. “Quite naturally it’s going to evolve into what you might call the first-class citizen of the Workplace environment, the richest of the four key Workplace client experiences. Other key Workplace clients include Web browsers, mobile devices and an upcoming rich client environment based on the Java-oriented Eclipse framework.”

Domino will evolve into an integrated part of the back-end server technology that can drive Lotus Workplace applications. “Domino will continue to provide valuable collaborative services and existing investment protection for Lotus customers,” says Bisconti.

More to come, and quickly
Over the next several months, IBM Lotus will continue filling out the Lotus product portfolio with new Workplace offerings that expand the market reach and capabilities of Lotus' collaboration platform.

“But what should appeal to both existing and new customers is that these new releases are evolving toward a fully integrated, highly productive work environment, built on open standards, that will let companies cost-effectively extend messaging and collaboration to everyone in their organizations."

“Lotus Workplace Messaging, released earlier this year, will expand to include basic calendaring and personal information management functionality in Q4 of this year,” he says. “Later this year you’ll also see new Workplace features in areas like real-time team collaboration and learning. And in the first half of next year we’ll see releases that further evolve Notes as a first-class Workplace client.” An upgrade — and a roadmap — with broad appeal Bisconti thinks that this combination of strong new features and a clear path to an integrated future will make getting on the “Workplace on-ramp” with Notes and Domino 6.5 extremely attractive, both to existing and new users.

“Existing customers will get excited about the improved IM integration, the new mail management features, and other improvements that will make them more productive every day,” says Bisconti. “Potential new customers will see a release that extends our already solid messaging and collaboration leadership in some compelling and highly valuable ways, such as first-class support for browsers and even Microsoft Outlook clients, and unmatched platform support that now includes Windows 2003 Server and wall-to-wall, client-to-server Linux.”

“But what should appeal to both existing and new customers,” he continues, “is that like everything else we’re doing, these new releases are evolving toward a fully integrated, highly productive work environment, built on open standards, that will let companies cost-effectively extend messaging and collaboration to everyone in their organizations. Using the products in our collaboration portfolio together, in an integrated way, is what Workplace is all about. Notes and Domino 6.5 will give users an important piece of that functionality now, and will prepare them for what’s coming just around the corner.”