IBM subsidiary Lotus kicked off its annual user conference,
Lotusphere, with an appearance by Ben Stein, currently star of the
Comedy Central cable network game show Win Ben Stein's Money.
Ben Stein's money is exactly what customers do want, Lotus CEO Al
Zollar joked in his hour-long keynote speech at the conference.
Stein extolled the virtues of Notes and Domino, especially for
their ability to leverage knowledge management in
enterprises.
Highlights of Zollar's talk included announcements that the next
version of Notes and Domino - which have just officially been named
Notes 6 and Domino 6 - will be released by the end of September and
that Java 2 Enterprise Edition has been adopted as the standard for
Web services development on Lotus products. In addition, a new
services strategy will make IBM responsible for more integration
support, while Lotus service professionals provide support for
Lotus products only, and won't be considered a major revenue source
for the software developer.
The delay in the release of Notes 6 and Domino 6 disappointed some
users, like Raymond Huff, president of Trans Pacific Stores. He
said he has been waiting for the latest version to be released
since last year and would like to start deploying it now.
When asked in an interview after the keynote whether the current
economic slump had delayed the release, Zollar said no. "That had
nothing to do with our decision cycle," he said.
While there are some new features in Notes 6 and Domino 6, both of
which are set to be released in beta version in 30 days, most of
the work was "a shifted focus to quality engineering ... [to] clean
up things from R5," Zollar said.
Lotus customers have expressed displeasure with problems in the
previous upgrade, from version R4 to R5. Deployment is still only
60% on the client side and possibly as much as 80% on the server
side, Zollar said.
New functions in Notes 6 and Domino 6 will include the ability to
work, and not just view, multiple frames within the welcome page.
Lotus engineers have also promised improved compression technology
to speed the download of large attachments. Users will also be able
to do selective replication, based on the addresses from which they
want to receive e-mail.
Many of the improvements are on the back end, however, with
improved network reporting capabilities and management tools as
part of Lotus' push to provide clear return on users' investment.