Lotus CEO and President Jeff Papows this morning announced the company's new knowledge-management software suite, Raven.
Specifically, Lotus will offer applications designed to let employees locate different sources of information using a variety of content tracking and analysis techniques. Although details are sketchy on exactly which products will emerge from the project, Lotus says that products based on Raven technology will become available over the course of 2000.
One component of the new software suite will be an enterprise portal, a personalized interface for employees that incorporates information from sources including mail, calendar, discussion groups and team rooms, Web sites, and news sources, Lotus says. It will also include a tool for building virtual meeting places, which Lotus calls a "knowledge applications template library."
Another element of Raven is what Lotus calls the discovery engine, a search mechanism that will let users locate people who possess expertise in specific areas. The expertise location feature will let users build and maintain profiles based on different attributes, such as experts' experience or job type, Lotus says. The discovery engine will also let users create a content catalog that searches and analyzes content. Based on this analysis, it then identifies people's skills and maps these people into entries in the catalog.
A third component of the new knowledge-management software will be an integration toolkit, designed to let developers extend their existing applications or build new ones that incorporate the new knowledge management features described above, Lotus says.
The service organizations of Lotus and parent IBM will help customers implement these new products, Lotus says.
Earlier today in his keynote speech, Papows said that tighter integration of Lotus' Sametime instant-messaging application into Lotus' Notes/Domino collaborative software would be a key element of Raven.
Lotus, in Cambridge, Mass., can be reached at 617-577-8500, or at http://www.lotus.com.
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