Users from as far away as Vietnam and Australia and as near as France and Germany this week will gather in Berlin for Lotusphere Europe 99, Lotus' annual European get-together for users and developers.
The event, held Oct. 26 to 28 at Berlin's International Congress Center, is expected to draw some 3,700 users and business partners from 56 countries, plus more than 200 analysts and media representatives, according to a Lotus spokeswoman.
Users will come to hear the latest news related to Lotus Notes/Domino, listen to keynote speeches from CEO Jeff Papows, visit the exhibit hall, where 134 companies are showing products at 176 different stands, and enjoy the sites of Germany' newly-crowned capital city.
A long-anticipated announcement expected at the show is the release date of Lotus Notes/Domino for the Linux operating system.
Papows promised attendees of Lotusphere in Orlando this January that the product would be available on the open-source platform in 1999.
Lotus spokeswoman Jaana Tilander confirms that a Linux-related announcement is in store, but would not offer further details before the show.
As at previous Lotus shows, one major theme here is expected to be knowledge management. Lotus will show its recently launched Lotus Domino Extended Search 2.0, an add-on tool designed to extend the capabilities of full text search and indexing functions within Lotus Notes/Domino.
After looking for data from internal and external sources, Extended Search puts together a ranked list for the user. The product is geared to users of Lotus Notes/Domino Versions 4.5 or higher, but can also be used by any Lotus 4.x and 5.x Domino databases, according to a company release.
Attendees are also expected either to register gripes or deliver kudos about Notes/Domino Release 5, the Web-enabled version of Lotus' collaborative software, which the company released in April.
Also at Lotusphere, Xerox and Lotus will show their document management centre, a system designed to let users manage electronic and paper documents. The two companies have integrated their separate document management offerings - Lotus' own Domino.Doc software and Xerox's Document Centre - into one system.
Lotus also plans to hold briefings on a new company program designed to "fill in the information gaps" in companies' enterprise resource planning systems (ERP), according to a company statement. Lotus will detail alliances in conjunction with its joint competence center with ERP vendor SAP AG, as well as bundled ERP solutions that it is offering with its business partners.
Lotus, in Cambridge, Mass., can be reached at 617-577-8500, or at http://www.lotus.com/.
RELATED LINKS
Apply for your free subscription to Network World. Click here. Or get Network World delivered in PDF each week.
Request a reprint or permission to use this article.
