CAMBRIDGE, Mass.-Lotus Development will build richer Extensible Markup Language (XML) support, Windows and Office 2000 support, and Linux versions of its Notes and Domino products in a series of point upgrades to its Release 5 lines, culminating in the arrival in mid-2000 of a new full edition, code-named R-Next, Lotus officials said Tuesday.
In a briefing with editors from InfoWorld's parent company, International Data Group, Lotus officials here described how the current R5 version of Notes/Domino will build on its client richness as a browserlike desktop, while the server component will gain additional knowledge management attributes via XML and added scalability to meet the needs of the nascent application service provider (ASP) industry.
Lotus is also building on its QuickPlace products, available for download at www.quickplace.com, to bring Notes-like client features to the consumer desktop market. Coupled with Domino Runtime Services (DRS), consumers can use either a browser or Microsoft's Office 2000 applications to access Notes services via DRS, Lotus officials said.
The arrival of the Windows 2000 operating system and its associated tools from Microsoft, expected in the fourth quarter, will also bolster the capabilities of Domino R5 and the Domino Designer rapid development and deployment tools, said Lotus officials, because Component Object Model (COM) support will open Domino services to a broad base of COM-oriented developers.
"[With Windows 2000] Visual InterDev and Visual Studio developers can do much more sophisticated Web design ... and call Domino services from the Microsoft tools. We're very excited," said Michele Deziel, general manager of the Web application market at Lotus.
While the scheduled release for R5 in the first quarter of this year was some 12 months late based on earlier Lotus plans, and was delayed again at the last leg of its journey, the product is not faring as well as past major Notes releases in its adoption rate, Lotus officials confirmed.
By this stage of the game, past versions of Notes have entered some 20 percent of the installed base, but R5 has yet to hit that mark, officials said. They declined to break out R5's adoption statistics in detail, however. Recent research by Framingham, Mass.-based market researcher International Data Corp. shows that Microsoft Exchange has recently outsold Notes/Domino, but Lotus still holds to the top market share for messaging and collaboration products.
"Users are installing the server first and adopting the client afterward," said Ken Bisconti, senior director of communications products marketing at Lotus. The newest R5 Notes clients, however, are available for a free 90-day trial download (although they are not time-bombed to expire after that time) at Lotus's Web site, and a trial of free R5 client distribution is under way in Germany, Bisconti said.
R-Next, as the forthcoming major upgrade for Notes is called, will focus on the needs of the enterprise, and the server will come on Linux by year's end, officials said. Lotus calls R5 the best client available for use offline, and newer versions will have additional mobile user support, Lotus officials said.
The future release will also sport better use of the Lotus Sametime instant messaging platform, better calendaring features, broader use of bookmarks to navigate, and better searching capabilities-all designed to offer users the ability to craft their own "personal portals," Bisconti said.
"R-Next will deliver more exposed XML support in the Domino data store. Our data is complementary to XML-described data. The XML gives us a standards-based way to extend the interoperability of the content," said Bisconti, adding that the Microsoft Exchange and forthcoming Platinum messaging products will have a more difficult time adapting to XML.
"We are advantaged over Microsoft's store with Exchange. We can be more integrated [using XML]," Bisconti said.
This story from Infoworld.com Copyright © 1999 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc.
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