IBM Lotus Software is to unveil two projects - designed to bridge
Domino and WebSphere development environments and protect existing
Domino developer skill sets - at its annual Lotusphere show next
week in Orlando
The projects, codenamed Montreal and Seoul, aim to address some of
concerns expressed at last year's show when IBM revealed plans to
standardise Lotus technologies on Java 2 Enterprise Edition.
Many Domino developers feared that the Notes client and Domino
development environment would give way to WebSphere.
Montreal and Seoul - part of Lotus' next-generation collaboration
strategy - will give Lotus Domino developers tools to flourish in a
J2EE world. A Lotus spokesman said the aim was to help protect the
Domino developer skill set and applications as they move into a
Java environment.
Project Montreal will adapt some Domino Designer functionality to
IBM's WebSphere Studio Java-based developer toolkit. Project Seoul,
meanwhile, aims to provide collaborative capabilities in a
component fashion for use in a variety of J2EE-based applications
and business products.
The Montreal and Seoul technologies will hit the market later this
year.
Other themes planned for Lotusphere include the building of blended
applications on Domino and J2EE application development
environments and overall messages about the use of common
componentry across Lotus and IBM software groups, said Ken
Bisconti, vice-president of messaging solutions at IBM Lotus
Software.
Lotus also is working to bring some of the rapid application
development qualities of Domino Designer to the J2EE world.
Bisconti added that Domino developers would be reassured that "they
have investment protection in all the applications and skill sets
they have invested in".