September 19, 2007; 07:26 AM
NEW YORK, NY
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18 Sep 2007:
IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced an expansion of its collaboration software portfolio,
introducing new products and features to help customers improve
productivity, business networking and knowledge sharing. The
announcements were made at IBM’s Collaboration Summit in New York
City. In the past year, IBM has upgraded every product area in its
collaboration portfolio, including Web 2.0 features in Lotus Notes and
Domino 8; professional networking tools for the enterprise
with IBM Lotus Connections; easy document sharing through IBM Lotus
Quickr; rich, browser-based Web 2.0 electronic forms with IBM Lotus
Forms; expanded unified communications and instant messaging in IBM
Lotus Sametime 8.0; and enterprise mashup capabilities in IBM WebSphere
Portal.
New additions to the portfolio include tools to help users move to the
next level of integrated communications. This helps them track
information, easily locate subject matter experts, form project teams,
and allocate skills where they are needed. Users can also easily
create, share and process electronic forms directly from the Web as
well as replicate Lotus Notes and Domino content from a mobile device.
“Throughout 2007, IBM has delivered on its promise to take customers
beyond email with advanced collaboration capabilities that address the
needs of today’s connected workplace,” said Mike Rhodin, general
manager, IBM Lotus Software. “IBM is changing the game for customers
competing in a Web 2.0 world, with a clearly defined product line to
help them transform their business processes.”
IBM’s collaboration suite includes the following tools, offerings and upgrades:
- Applications on Demand for Lotus Notes - making Lotus Notes 8 available as a service with enterprise level application hosting.
Available now, IBM’s Applications on Demand service provides customers
with the benefits of the Lotus suite without having to invest in
computing assets or skills. This new offering provides Lotus
collaboration customers with a hosted and managed environment for their
mail and collaborative applications, helping improve the performance of
their messaging environments while enhancing efficiencies and
productivity. By delegating the complex management of mail and
collaboration applications, Applications on Demand for Lotus Notes can
help clients tackle the integration of their entire email solutions.
This includes not just email, but ever-expanding collaboration
capabilities all within a security-rich, advanced hosting environment.
Since clients pay as they go for what they need, they are able to
reduce up-front project and infrastructure costs, speeding returns on
investment. Applications on Demand for Lotus Notes currently support
Lotus Sametime and Lotus Quickr, and will be extended to other Lotus
collaboration products over time.
- Mobile support for Lotus Notes and Domino Web Access users through IBM Lotus Notes Traveler-
Following the shipping of Lotus Notes and Domino 8 that began worldwide
in August, IBM is announcing Lotus Notes Traveler, a new client for
Lotus Notes and Domino 8.0.1. Currently scheduled to be available in
the first quarter of 2008, Lotus Notes Traveler will provide
out-of-the-box, mobile support for Lotus Notes and Domino Web Access
users, enabling access to Lotus Domino mail from Microsoft Windows
Mobile devices. As currently planned, Lotus Notes Traveler will
provide automatic, real-time replication of email, including
attachments, calendar, address book, journal and to-do’s and will work
over all wired and wireless connections.
- Web 2.0 features in Lotus Domino Web Access 8.0.1 and 64-bit support in Lotus Domino 8.0.1–
This light view of Lotus Domino Web Access includes a new Web 2.0-based
interface that provides optimized access for users connecting to their
Lotus Domino servers over a low speed connection such as dial-up.
Lotus Domino 8.0.1 will introduce native 64-bit support for Microsoft
Windows and AIX platforms, dramatically reduce email and application
storage costs through increased data compression, and adds support for
FIPS 140-2 standard support to enable secure Notes email.
- Extended reach of Lotus Quickr to more users and
content sources through Lotus Notes 8 and Microsoft Outlook connectors,
additional APIs and Lotus Quickr Content Integrator - New
Quickr connectors for Lotus Notes 8 and Microsoft Outlook are currently
planned to be available in the first quarter of 2008. They will allow
team members to save attachments into team workspaces; replace
attachments with shared links; and use the collaborative content
services of Lotus Quickr directly in Lotus Notes and Microsoft Outlook
without having to hop between applications. With drag and drop
support, the Lotus Quickr connectors for Lotus Notes and Outlook will
make it easy to move attachments directly into Quickr folders, enabling
users to reduce the size of their mail files, ensure they always have
access to the latest document version and get new team members up to
speed quickly. New planned Lotus Quickr APIs will allow integration
with enterprise content management systems, including IBM FileNet P8
and IBM Content Manager, setting the stage for comprehensive content
management coupled with the intuitive user interface and collaborative
strength of Lotus Quickr.
- Also currently planned for availability in the first quarter of 2008 is Lotus Quickr Content Integrator, a new companion product to Quickr for the mass movement of documents from server to server.
-- Administrators can use Lotus Quickr Content Integrator to import
content from Lotus Domino Document Manager libraries, Lotus Domino
teamrooms, Microsoft Outlook public folders, and Microsoft SharePoint
sites into Lotus Quickr services for Domino (NSF repositories). The
price for Lotus Quickr Content Integrator will be released at product
availability.
- Browser-based electronic forms with Lotus Forms 3.0 –
This major upgrade to IBM’s electronic forms product uses
open-standards based technology to make it easy for customers to
integrate data across the enterprise and with existing IT systems.
Customers can now extend business processes outside the firewall by
offering their customers the ability to create, fill out, sign and
submit forms data via a web browser without downloading additional
software. By integrating directly with Web Services, Lotus Forms
delivers a scalable solution with a user interface that tightly
integrates to Service Oriented Architectures, and helps to streamline
process automation, improve efficiencies and reduce costs of
operation.
- Simplified WebSphere Portal purchasing with three
new business packages that include tools from Lotus Quickr, Lotus
Connections and WebSphere Web Content Management – The new
accelerators give organizations easy to integrate packages for
WebSphere Portal so they can add key features as needed. With tools
from WebSphere Web Content Management provided in the Content
Accelerator, customers can build and manage web sites, intranets,
extranets, and portals. Content can be easily created using intuitive,
web-based tools and then delivered with a high level of personalization
to site visitors. Using the Collaboration Accelerator, users get access
to the following: team workspaces, document libraries, presence
awareness and Lotus Sametime, web conferencing, people profiles and
directories, as well as enterprise social networking features such as
blogs, wikis, shared bookmarking and communities. The Enterprise Suite
is a comprehensive package that includes Web content management,
collaboration, electronic forms, dashboards, advanced search and
offline rich client support.
Pricing and availability:
Applications on Demand for Lotus Notes is available now. More information is at: http://www.ibm.com/services/aod
Currently planned to be available in the first quarter of 2008 are the
new features in Lotus Notes and Domino 8.0.1, Lotus Quickr 8.1 and IBM
Lotus Quickr Content Integrator. For more information, visit:
ibm.com/lotus/nd8
http://www.ibm.com/software/lotus/category/mobile-wireless/
ibm.com/software/lotus/products/quickr/
Lotus Forms 3.0 and WebSphere Portal Accelerators will be available in
September. Pricing will be provided on September 25, 2007. For more
information, visit:
ibm.com/software/forms
ibm.com/software/workplace/products/product5.nsf/wdocs/formshome
ibm.com/software/lotus/portal/value/
All prices will be published upon availability through IBM’s Software Catalogue. Fore more information, visit: ibm.com/software/info/ecatalog/en_US/index.html
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