Ian Skerrett: IBM Lotus Platform Strategy

February 14 2008

Ian's blog is called "Marketing at Eclipse"...

Lots of people know about IBM's commitment to Eclipse but the awareness is typically of IBM Rational developer tools. What I find intriguing is the rising prominence of Eclipse in the Lotus division.

It is pretty clear to me that IBM Lotus is executing on a platform strategy that spans Lotus Notes, Sametime and their new Symphony product line. At the heart of this strategy is Eclipse RCP.

The nice thing to see is that Lotus seems to really be benefiting from a common integration platform based on Eclipse.
Also of note: a Notes 8 session from IBM at next month's EclipseCon.

Link: Ian Skerrett: IBM Lotus Platform Strategy > (Thanks, Dan)

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Eclipse  Add/View Comments [7]

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  1. 1  bill mccuistion  | 2/14/2008 9:40:09 PM

    WOW! A whole 10-minute short talk in a 3-day conference!

    Wonder how they might reveal that the RCP is actually Expeditor in such a timeframe?

  1. 2  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 2/14/2008 10:29:18 PM

    Personally, I think it's cool that they don't see this coming. Like... one day, someone's going to wake up and go "wait a minute... Notes is Eclipse! Eclipse is Notes! There's a hundred million users!! The spice is the worm!"

    And then everyone who didn't get the point will STFU.

    But that's just dreaming, isn't it? ;-)

  1. 3  Dan Sickles  | 2/14/2008 11:59:18 PM

    @1 - There was a longer session last year as I remember and this year there were several other R8-related abstracts submitted (they publish them. Open processes RULE!), including one from Jeff Eisen.

    The Eclipse foundation tends to keep a little distance from it's parent IBM:

    { Link }

    Maybe the trick is to make Lotusphere more visible and attractive to Eclipse developers from outside the Notes world.

    The positive post from the Director of Marketing for the Eclipse Foundation should open a few more eyes.

  1. 4  Mike Brown  | 2/15/2008 3:45:44 AM

    Count me as a believer too, since the latest betas of Notes 8.01 and Symphony 3 & 4.

    But 'twas a big worry for me at the start there, I can tell you. Notes 8.0 Standard, and Symphony 1 ran like treacle; they were unusable as far as I was concerned. Seeing the latest and greatest versions in operation - including (yaayyy!) Mac Notes 8.5 - was a big weight off my shoulders.

    They're still not as fast as any native app on any platform, and I guess that's something that we'll have to live with for while yet, but they're fast enough for me.

    Cheers,

    - Mike

  1. 5  Mike Milinkovich http://milinkovich.blogspot.com/ | 2/15/2008 8:56:45 AM

    @3 - The issue here is not that we want to distance the Eclipse Foundation from IBM Lotus. The opposite is true. We think what they are doing is fan-freakin'-tastic.

    The issue is that we really try hard not to have vendor-specific or product-specific talks at EclipseCon. EclipseCon needs to be vendor-neutral.

    But clearly EclipseCon is the place to go for anyone interested in understanding more about where all the technology underneath Notes/Sametime/Expeditor is heading.

    We would definitely be interested in hearing ideas on how to make EclipseCon more relevant for Notes developers :-)

  1. 6  Charles F. Phillips  | 2/15/2008 11:58:39 AM

    @2 - Love the Dune reference! :-)

  1. 7  Dan Sickles  | 2/15/2008 3:23:12 PM

    @5 - Thanks for clarifying. My intent was to convey "arms length", just like with other vendors.

    I don't know how EclipseCon could be more relevant for Notes developers. It is the best way to discover and see in action all the tools and applications that can be integrated with the Expeditor platform.

    I still think that a bigger challenge is helping the universe of Eclipse developers understand the Expeditor technology on top of Eclipse and the opportunity that it reprsents. That challenge is IBM's. Bringing more developers to the platform increases it's value (both ways of coure).