Lotus Symphony and other announcements from IBM

IBM has announced Lotus Symphony so we finally has a name for the productivity editors inside Lotus Notes 8. This is a free download from IBM and they are based on the OpenOffice suite of editors. Last weeks announcement that IBM will contribute back to OpenOffice community is in direct relation to this announcement. We at SNAPPS have been using these tools for the last few months now and I could not be happier with them. FREE does not hurt either.

There were other announcements made at the New York city event on Tuesday and by Kevin Cavanaugh here at Collaboration University in London yesterday.

Notes Traveler

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.

Lotus Notes 8.0.1

With a beta coming a few weeks there are a lot of enhancements and new features in the new version of Lotus Notes 8.0.1. New Domino Web Access with two different versions of light (fast) and normal. Finally a secondary calendar & time zones that will work good. Mail file quota guage that Mary Beth Raven showed us at Collaboration University in Kansas City last week and will show here in London on Friday. “To do” UI improvements. They did not have time to get those in in the 8.0 release, but now they will be there. Quickr 8.1 integration into side shelf. 35% increased compression on the databases (sorry, they are called applications now) Native support for 64-bit on Windows and AIX. FIPS 140-2 support, a federal standard for security and Citrix support.

Sametime 8

Sametime 8 will have three flavors – Basic (just IM in Notes), Standard (integration with mobile, telephony integration) and Advanced (meetings +).

WebDialogs purchase became Sametime Unyte – web conference available as a service. Simplifies collaboration outside the intranet. Will link to other Lotus products via plug-ins.

Lotus Quickr 8.1

Side shelf connector for Notes 8.0.1, Connector for MS Outlook. Strong UI improvements and performance improvements of over 50%. Personal file sharing for free to Notes users. Enablers for ECM integration.

HUGE! New product announced available early 2008: Quickr Content Integrator: Migrate from Sharepoint, Exchange public folders, Domino teamrooms, and DDM libraries. Also provides coexistence running in parallel, or migrating. Synchronization is an option.

Lotus Forms 3.0

Dropped Workplace name. This is a big deal – Zero footprint eForms. Browser-based using XML XForms standards.