MUST read: Jeff Calow on Lotus Workplace
August 5 2003
Some of the primary components of Lotus Workplace are the traditional messaging pieces that bring mail, personal calendar, and address book together. The platform also brings together other collaborative capabilities like: team spaces, instant messaging, Web conferencing, and learning. We’re building it all on one release schedule, so we have all these pieces together, unified around a single architecture and around a single schedule. Out of that one big collection of technology, we have different offerings, so customers can purchase the combination of functions that they need.Run, don't walk, to Lotus Developer Domain here. Jeff's ability to explain things in terms that techies can understand (and their managers can, too) is unmatched. Check it out.
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Warren Elsmore www.elsmore.net | 8/6/2003 4:51:56 AM
I could be very wrong, but Lotus Workplace seems to be a packaged Quickplace/Sametime/Workplace Messaging - and not much more. I presume this is meant to be the 'Next-Gen' equivalent of the these products, while the existing 'now-gen' products continue.
On the other hand, it does really confuse the product map. Why not just produce a Next-Gen version of Sametime&Quickplace, which use DB2? Then surely that could be integrated with Websphere Portal server to give the same answer?
I really hope the answer to all this isn't "it's too hard to sell/install/maintain these separate products". That would be a very poor show and I'm fairly sure a certain Seattle company has made alot of money solving that particular problem ;-)
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Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 8/6/2003 4:47:44 PM
1) Michael, the J2EE RAD capabilities are in WebSphere Studio, not in Lotus Workplace. That you'll see in WSAD 5.0.1 or so. There is another tool called Workplace Designer, which is what Jeff is talking about as future capabilities for power users as well as developers.
2) Warren, these are the J2EE equivalents of "Sametime" and "Quickplace", integrated with WebSphere Portal (the next evolution of the current "Lotus Collaboration Center" capability).
One of the key goals, which you'll get from reading Jeff, is that they want to get away from building separate products because it's too complex to get them all to integrate with each other. You need a particular version of Domino for a particular version of Quickplace which doesn't work with a particular version of Sametime. By building all the J2EE components at once, the testing/integration becomes a lot more straightforward.
Existing products continue....more to come on what transitions look like (for those inclined to transition).
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Ben Langhinrichs http://www.GeniiSoft.com | 8/6/2003 4:57:52 PM
I must say, the Lotus Workplace message is getting stronger and stronger. I am particularly interested in the "rich client" idea, obviously, whether that is Notes or the to-be-developed rich client or both, but the whole message is actually coming together. See my further comments at http://www.geniisoft.com/showcase.nsf/archive/20030806-0124 and thanks for the link.
[moved to correct topic ERB]
I must admit I'm still confused with this newcomer "java rich client", with this "every thing is a portlet" strategy. Sure I must wait for all this to become a little more concrete, but, in the meantime, I think the message is still not that clear (2 rich clients for 2 mail systems...hum...)
Not to mention that I still don't know what the Lotus J2EE RAD tools we were talked at LS2003 is (The workplace designer ? the upcoming WSAD extention ? another thing ?)
Sorry.