Ed Brill

CRN: Lotus To Unveil Host Of Workplace Offerings This Month

Some details on the Notes/Domino 6.5 release and its position in the Lotus Workplace story.  

Lotus considers its forthcoming Lotus Notes 6.5 client to be part of its Workplace line, Lepofsky said.

Now I realize that not many have seen the "Workplace" capability in the Notes 6.5 welcome page (since it is in M3 and M3 hasn't been a public beta).  Notes 6.5 delivers a Workplace user experience in the welcome page.  You'll see....

Executives acknowledged that Notes/Domino and Lotus Workplace Messaging will become one offering over time, but said the company intends to keep developing the Notes and Domino products separately from Workplace for now to allow for broad corporate choices. The next release, Notes/Domino 7.0, will give customers the option of using the Notes file system (NFS) in Notes or IBM's DB2 database.

What does that mean?  "One offering over time" is about packaging, licensing, delivery, and pricing, not about code (hence "intends to keep developing the Notes and Domino products separately" [emphasis mine]).  You also again are seeing a commitment to "7.0" in writing here.
Read the whole story here >
and watch for more press coverage in the next few days/weeks about Notes/Domino 6.5 and the Lotus Workplace story.