Notes 7 will focus on collaboration tools and
workplace.
Instant messaging (IM) and collaboration will be crucial to the
forthcoming version of IBM Lotus Notes, which is due out by the end
of August.
To make its software more appealing to end users, IBM is busy
integrating future versions of Notes with its Workplace platform,
which is based on Java and IBM WebSphere technologies and adding
IM.
The next version of Notes and Domino will be version 7,
replacing 6.5.4. Darren Adams, IBM technical specialist for Lotus
messaging and collaboration solutions, said the user interface has
been updated, but there are few radical changes.
"We are evolving it, not revolutionising it," he said
The most significant changes are to the IM features, which will
have "multi-threading" - that is the ability to see multiple IM
messages more easily. Users will be able to save IM transcripts
into the Notes mailbox, for text searching, and will be able to
encrypt IM sessions.
There are more Lotus Sametime tools, enabling users to switch an
IM session to video or audio real-time collaboration. In addition,
the 'buddy list' has been improved, so end users can bring up a
list of the people they commonly work with from within
applications, to see who is online.
IBM is saving the big changes for the 2007 version of Notes,
which has been code-named Hannover, or Notes 7.x.
This will be a collaboration platform based on the IBM Workplace
collaboration framework, where end-users can access critical
information from within the e-mail client, or contact other users
via presence-based systems, and share documents and data through a
number of avenues, such as e-mail (via Notes), the collaboration
platform itself (via Workplace), web-based team workplaces (via
Quickplace) or an IM platform, Sametime.
Forrester Research senior analyst Erica Rugullies said, "Notes 7
looks similar enough to Notes 6.5 that most organisations will not
need to budget more than usual for user training.
But Hannover will present significant changes in look and
behaviour, so IT organisations should plan to increase Notes user
training budgets when they roll out Hannover."