IBM Lotus Notes access for SAP solutions announced

May 11 2006

Looks like Ferris Research wins the "first with the news" coverage of today's IBM announcement (not yet on ibm.com) of IBM Lotus Notes access for SAP solutions.  From the press release (emphasis mine):

IBM Lotus Notes access for SAP solutions include new features to Lotus Notes rich client such as templates that drive SAP interactions at no additional charge to Lotus Notes customers. IBM is building on its experience with over one thousand customers and hundreds of thousands of users who have been using Lotus Notes as a front end to SAP applications for several years. IBM is advancing the integration with SAP with Lotus Notes access for SAP solutions by making SAP data more accessible and useful to a wider audience. It integrates business processes that exist in both SAP applications and Lotus Notes into a single, familiar user experience within Lotus Notes which allows users to access the power of the features more quickly and easily. ....

IBM Lotus Notes access for SAP solutions help customers integrate SAP data and business processes with Lotus Notes tasks including vacation/leave workflow, time reporting, contact management, report generation, approval workflows -- all within the view of their familiar Lotus Notes client.  Using the powerful replication and security rich capabilities of Lotus Notes, users can take SAP application data offline, helping to keep employees productive regardless of location. SAP sites can re-design the flow of information easily to give its users an opportunity to manage their information in a more efficient, tailored way.
These new capabilities will be available for download by May 30, 2006.

While I'll write more about this announcement from DNUG next week, now is a good time to congratulate Bob Balaban, Rocky Oliver, Christian Holsing, Krista Hiltz Kahn, Peter Janzen, Scott Morris, Kathy Howard and many other of my colleagues on the release of these impressive capabilities.  I've been totally wowed by how they've made Lotus Notes sing in some incredible ways.

I'll leave the competitive comment about being first to market and all that to next week.

Update: EBizQ has the press release.
Update2: The press release is now on ibm.com.

Ed Brill Boston, MA USA Category:  Lotus  Add/View Comments [14]

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  1. 1  Ben Rose http://www.lnug.org.uk | 5/11/2006 2:13:52 PM

    At Lotusphere comes to you, this was a 7.0.2 deliverable, do I assume 7.0.2 is 30th May?

    I ran this by our SAP guy and he says it will probably need the "SAP HR" functionality which is extra cost to us as we don't use it already. Comments?

  1. 2  Alan Lepofsky http://www.alanlepofsky.net | 5/11/2006 2:15:59 PM

    Ed, you might wait.. but I'll say it! First to market. More case scenarios. Free vs. $125/user. Hmmmm, I'd say we have the clear winner.

  1. 3  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 5/11/2006 2:24:00 PM

    @1 this functionality is shipping in two phases -- a first phase this month (five use cases) and a second phase (two more) in 7.0.2.

    As for needing SAP HR, I suppose that is only for the HR use cases (such as populating personal address book from a corporate SAP directory)

  1. 4  Bob Balaban  | 5/11/2006 2:31:07 PM

    @Ed - Thanks for the post! We are certainly all excited about it getting out the door. Especially ahead of you-know-who.

    @1 Ben - The May release is on top of 7.01. Two additional feature sets for SAP coming in 7.02. Some of what we did involves SAP HR, some does not. Suggest you check it out (its 2 enhanced NTFs with full LS sources etc.). Let me know if you have further questions.

    @3 I don't think the example you gave (pulling contact info from SAP into perNAB) is one of the ones that might use SAP HR. Time Reporting, perhaps.

  1. 5  Ben Rose http://www.lnug.org.uk | 5/11/2006 2:36:52 PM

    @4 - We actually quite like the time reporting option and (in the absence of SAP HR) are considering modifying it to simply pull project codes from a Notes DB and simply report back to views in the user's mail.nsf to allow easy end of month analysis.

    A sensible idea? Or a non-starter? Hard to tell having not seen the code.

  1. 6  Bob Balaban  | 5/11/2006 3:52:50 PM

    @5 - I'm not SURE that time reporting requires HR, in fact we use CATS ("cross-area time sheet"), and the name implies that it's not package-specific.

    So, don't jump to any conclusions! The code will be eGA pretty soon, and it is fully customizable. The tricky part was really the UI integration, lucky we had Rocky for that, he did a stellar job.

    If you're at DNUG next week swing by the lab and we can look at code together

  1. 7  Ben Rose http://www.lnug.org.uk | 5/11/2006 5:15:03 PM

    Bob,

    Thanks for the offer, but I won't be in Germany next week. I'm sure there will be quite a lot of interest from the user group next time somebody's in the UK.

    Or maybe an online demo?

  1. 8  Bob Balaban  | 5/11/2006 7:02:13 PM

    @7 I'm sure we could arrange something!

  1. 9  Steve Cogan  | 5/12/2006 3:56:28 AM

    @4 Is there a firm committment on a R7.02 release date? I have a few customers who are waiting for the x64 'compatibility mode' support to start.

    Is this just going to be a 'support' issue? Or is there actually anything different about R7.02? That is - if I wanted to started testing now on R7.0 or .01 - would it actually work, or do I need to wait for R7.02?

    Thanks :-)

  1. 10  Bruce Elgort http://www.bruceelgort.com | 5/12/2006 7:35:56 AM

    @Steve,

    We talked about the release date for 7.0.2 on Episode 19 of The Taking Notes Podcast:

    { Link }

  1. 11  Steve Cogan  | 5/12/2006 8:17:58 AM

    Thanks Bruce,

    I'll make sure that one is in iTunes ready for my next sync. Though you'll be jockying on the click-wheel with Ricky Gervais :-)

  1. 12  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 5/12/2006 8:28:08 AM

    @9 7.0.2 target is "end of Q3, 2006"

    The core code has no differences from 7.0.1, all of the new features are template-based or otherwise outside the core code. They're all also completely optional.

  1. 13  Steve Cogan  | 5/12/2006 10:08:12 AM

    @9 - thanks Ed :-)

  1. 14  Carl Dellson  | 5/15/2006 9:24:08 PM

    Any chance of getting these "templates" and retrofitting them for existing (non-SAP) systems? In other words, take the vacation\leave request form\db\approval process and link it to my inhouse SQL vacation tracking system?

    Now that would be open source :)