IBM Lotus has unveiled the latest versions of its messaging
products Lotus Notes and Domino 7 and collaboration products
Websphere Portal and Workplace.
Notes and Domino will be integrated more closely into IBM Workplace
through IBM Workplace Collaboration Services. Collaboration
Services is IBM's integrated environment. It includes a range of
collaborative capabilities or "services", such as e-mail,
calendaring, instant messaging, electronic learning, web
conferencing, document and web content management.
IBM has also introduced new Workplace development tools and a
hosted package that allows organisations to use IBM collaborative
software on demand.
The Workplace tools will let developers link Notes and Domino into
back-end databases and other enterprise information systems, said
IBM.
Back-end database support could boost applications, said Alan Bell
of Lotus user group Collaboration. "This will make it easier and
faster for programmers to create powerful applications," he said.
"Other suppliers seem to be compartmentalising their e-mail
solutions, so they just do messaging, whereas Domino is developing
into a flexible application platform covering all business
processes."
In terms of application development, Notes and Domino developers
can now use a range of J2EE and open source Eclipse-based tools to
write applications that run under IBM Workplace, IBM said. These
include Workplace Tools, Workplace Designer and a rapid application
designer called Workplace Data Access.
Some experts have suggested that the greater integration available
in Notes and Domino could blur the distinction between the two
products: IBM sees Domino more as an application framework on which
users can build collaborative applications, and Notes as a
messaging application.
Butler Group research analyst Richard Edwards said, "Workplace is
embracing some of the Notes technologies, and an extension of the
workplace to incorporate Domino functionality. Whether that will
lead to the extinguishing of Notes is not clear."
What IBM has yet to do is lay out its plans for the arrival of
Microsoft's Longhorn, the next major version of Windows, expected
in 2007. Jim Moffat, a founding member of Collaboration, said, "In
the back of everyone's mind will be how IBM software will relate to
Longhorn. How much clear water is there between what IBM delivers
today, and will deliver in 2005-6, and what Microsoft would like to
deliver in collaborative tools, portals and rapid application
development?"