Boston Globe: Lotus Notes gets upgrade

May 16 2006

The Globe reports on yesterday's IBM announcement...

oftware industry watchers said that introducing ODF to millions of Lotus Notes users might quickly establish it as a major alternative to the Microsoft document standard.

''When you're trying to get a standard started, the biggest problem is to get a lot of that standard out and people using it," Wohl said. The size of the Lotus Notes user base ''gives you a real kickstart in the marketplace."

Anne McFarland, director of data strategies and information solutions at Clipper Group in Wellesley, called IBM's move ''a really interesting challenge to the hegemony of Microsoft."
Link: Boston Globe: Lotus Notes gets upgrade >

Ed Brill | Karlsruhe, Deutschland Category:  Lotus  Add/View Comments [18]

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  1. 1  Mike Brown  | 5/16/2006 11:16:02 AM

    The ODF announcements couldn't have come at a better time. It looks like Microsoft's latest attempt to "embrace and extend" a standard is going to be kicked back:

    { Link }

    Cheers,

    - Mike

  1. 2  Andrew Price www.healthspace.ca | 5/16/2006 2:27:42 PM

    Thank you Lotus.

  1. 3  Brian Green  | 5/16/2006 2:28:15 PM

    About 10 years ago, I was a co-op student working for IBM. I created Computer Based Training (CBT) presentations using IBM's "Linkway Live" for DOS.

    PROFS was our email system, and we surfed a text-based "internet" with a 3270 terminal screen on OS/2.

    10 years is a long time! So, from the Boston Globe article, let's revise this little sentence, shall we? :)

    "Ozzie went on to found his own groupware company, Groove Networks Inc, [way back in 1997, nearly 9 years ago!]. Groove was acquired by Microsoft Corp. in 2005, and Ozzie is now Microsoft's chief technical officer.

  1. 4  Charles Robinson  | 5/16/2006 3:57:23 PM

    How's that for "nothing innovative", Mr. Gates?

  1. 5  Bob http://www.bobcongdon.com/blog | 5/16/2006 7:04:09 PM

    @4: The "innovation" here is mostly packaging -- anyone who wants OpenOffice can download it now, they don't need to wait for Hannover. It's true that IBM made improvements to OpenOffice code but apparently they are only in IBM's code. The "open source" aspect of OpenOffice is a little messy. See { Link }

    @1: This is Gartner's opinion, not fact. For a somewhat different view on the ODF file format, see { Link }

  1. 6  Stephen Hood  | 5/16/2006 11:43:14 PM

    @5: You missed the point from the customers perspective. It is indeed innovative and significant that an office suite is now part of the product. Your thinking from a techie perspective not a customers.

    As far as the messy part, nice try but no cigar. The important point is ODF (now an ISO standard) , not what icons one vendor uses in their application vs another. Just looks like good old fashioned competition to me - nothing "messy" about it. Unless I guess you consider competition messy. And if that's the case - then maybe you should just make the standard format for MS Office the new ISO document standard - ODF. That would be to your customers benefit by making things less "messy".

    Not quite sure what your link to George has to do with the Gartner article. They are talking about the chances of ISO accepting two document standards. Who cares what George thinks about some techie naval gazing issues that are irrelevant to everday users. Every new version of Windows that comes out requires me to double my memory to maintain the same performance. If we follow George's logic then we should just not upgrade to Vista. Right? But wait - Vista will offer this and that benefit you say .. well maybe ODF does as well.

  1. 7  Nathan T. Freeman  | 5/17/2006 2:46:12 AM

    "The "innovation" here is mostly packaging"

    Kinda like Internet Explorer. *eye roll*

  1. 8  Pedro Quaresma  | 5/17/2006 4:14:33 AM

    Any idea what will be the system requirements for "Hannover"?

    I ask this because I guess Notes can be a serious competition to Office, if it doesn't need 1Gb of RAM to run like Vista/Office 2007.

  1. 9  Tony S Lee  | 5/17/2006 10:00:37 AM

    @8 - At $50 or less a gig, memory requirements don't really freak me out...

  1. 10  Charles Robinson  | 5/17/2006 10:23:56 AM

    @5 - Call it "mostly packaging" if you like, but IBM icluding a suite of office tools with their collaboration package is innovative. One install and you get it all. I don't care what the underlying document format is or how it performs. I care that I won't have to buy, install and support a separate product. Oh, and it runs on Windows, Linux or Macintosh so all my users will have the same experience regardless of platform and I'm now free of the shackles of a Windows-only environment.

    Choice is good.

  1. 11  Kevin S.  | 5/17/2006 10:26:30 AM

    @9:

    Try buying (at least) 2 gig per machine in a 10,000 desktop environment. Think of the manpower required to do the upgrade, and this isn't all that easy of a decision.

    We are a university, and the cost may perclude going to Office 2007.

  1. 12  Irv Schor  | 5/17/2006 11:00:30 AM

    @11) and Ed B... (A) Observation: All PCs eventually get replaced or upgraded... remember, some kids will choose to go to a different college if your computer equipment isn't up to par (B) Perhaps Lotus/IBM would have an educational discount to make it worth your while (10,000 Seats is a nice seed oppty for any of you IBM SWAT Team types out there!). ...Note: I remember a time not so long ago when I got criticized for installing such a 'pig' of a software client (Notes) on PCs because it took up so much disk space. ...has anyone looked lately to see how much disk space MS Outlook 2003 (full, not Express!) adds to their Office Install (and without any collaboration I might add!).

  1. 13  Tony S Lee  | 5/17/2006 11:31:48 AM

    @11 - Ok you mean to tell me that the TCO of 1 GB RAM >> $50????

    B-)

  1. 14  Bob http://www.bobcongdon.com/blog | 5/17/2006 12:10:39 PM

    @10: Choice is fine. In fact, Lotus has had an office suite on the market for many years called SmartSuite. IBM still sells it including bundling it into Notes/Domino offerings. See { Link }

  1. 15  Charles Robinson  | 5/17/2006 12:30:03 PM

    @14 - You really need to stop trolling for a bit and read what I wrote. I was talking about OS choice being good, and the point with IBM including ODF editors into the next Notes release was that you didn't have to buy/install/support another product.

  1. 16  Bob http://www.bobcongdon.com/blog | 5/17/2006 1:31:55 PM

    @15: Okay, it wasn't clear that your "choice" comment referred to OS. But remember that SmartSuite offers OS choice too. It runs on Windows *and* OS/2 (To be clear, yes while true, I'm making a joke here).

  1. 17  Kevin S.  | 5/17/2006 2:02:53 PM

    @12 - We are a mixed shop (Domino / Exchange.) Our PCs are rotated on a three - or four - year cycle. The challenge is to upgrade all the PCs with "only" 512 MB that two years ago were more than adequate. I agree with you - education is a competitive market, even for state schools.

    @13 - Tony: Yes, I am. Even with "cheap" student worker labor, it still takes some time to properly replace memory in 10,000+ PCs and put them back in proper working condition.

  1. 18  David Bell  | 5/17/2006 4:25:09 PM

    @5 - the bigger innovation point is the integration of these tools in a platform that provides secure storage and sharing of the documents in a place that is not just a workstation-centric flat file system. And to make the documents accessible from an activity list, rather than having to remember what app created what information. It is a fundamental redefining of how people can work with document-centric information, reducing the focus on the tools and increasing the focus on the business process/activity that they need to perform.