Lotusphere 2010: Symphony 3.0 and Project Concord
January 19 2010
At Lotusphere 2010 yesterday, IBM announced the upcoming beta of Lotus Symphony 3.0, coming in February. Symphony 3.0 is based on the OpenOffice.org version 3 codebase, with a refined user interface, more features, support for Visual Basic macros, and the latest Open Document Formats. Symphony 3.0 marks the first major release of Symphony since 2008, and demonstrates IBM's ongoing commitment to the Symphony project. Be ready to check out this beta in a week or so, or if you are at Lotusphere, stop by the Symphony labs to check out the latest. Very good effort to bring this product forward.
We also demonstrated Project Concord, a set of collaborative web editors that will be part of the new LotusLive Labs in Q2 2010. Project Concord is something I've talked to customers about in concept over the last year or so -- that when we started working on productivity as a set of web tools, we weren't just going to deliver yet another reinvented word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation tool. Instead, this project demonstrates some very cool collaborative document editing, contextual commenting, smart tables, and task and attention management. It is designed to work with installed editors (e.g. Symphony), browser users, and even mobile users.
Symphony 3.0 and Project Concord are part of our general theme at Lotusphere 2010 of showing more technology, even if it is in early "lab" form. LotusLive Labs is intended to be an incubator for new cloud-based capabilities, and Project Concord is just one of those. For those at Lotusphere interested in more, check your conference guide for the Tuesday morning session on LotusLive Labs.
Post a Comment
- 3
travis smith | 1/19/2010 10:17:48 AM
please beta on Mac ;-)
- 4
Patrick Kearns http://cic.com | 1/19/2010 10:29:52 AM
Can we talk?
415-722-4868
- 6
Silvia http://www.itranser.com | 1/19/2010 1:12:28 PM
Ed,
It would be possible to donwload symphony directly from an ubuntu repository doing a simple apt-get install ?
Symphony would not be sucessfull until it is not included by default on mayor linux distributions (ie, ubuntu). Otherwise people would go for OpenOffice.
Is there any argument why I should choose Symphony versus Openoffice besides support ? If they are using the same code... what is the reason tohave two different products ? What does "have the same code" of open-office implies ?
- 8
JohnD | 1/19/2010 1:28:19 PM
Any chance they will include Notes java classes similar to what the put together for LS? I don't have anything against LS, but I'm trying to do as much as possible using Java. The documentation for accessing OOO via Java is not very good. Just hoping for some parity.
- 9
Henry Ferlauto | 1/19/2010 2:09:56 PM
Will there be a Symphony version of OO Draw?
How about a few screen-shots?
- 10
Kerr | 1/19/2010 2:26:07 PM
@7, ooh, it would be great if you guys could work something out with Canonical. In Linux land if can't get something via your package manager then it's a significant speed bump.
On a slightly related note. Since this is the first version on Symphony to be based on LGPL code, do you know how IBM is going to handle that?
- 11
Thilo Hamberger | 1/20/2010 12:55:31 AM
"support for Visual Basic macros". Wow, this is a shocker. Do you really mean that Word and Excel docs with macro work in Symphony the same way as they do in MS Office? And, Lotus Notes 8.5.1 can upgrade their productivity editors to a 3.0 codebase, right?
- 12
Joscha Feth | 1/20/2010 5:45:19 AM
Hi,
where can I find some information about Project Concord - I searched the web and the IBM Intranet - any hint?!
regards,
Joscha
- 13
John Head http://www.johndavidhead.com | 1/20/2010 12:57:39 PM
@8 the java api's are there, both for stand-alone from Eclipse and for automating from Notes in 8.5.1. Documentation is a big squirrely but just hunker down. It's not bad once you get thru the intro
@11 It's just within Excel for the first release - and its best for stuff like UI actions like tabs. They said there would be a published list of what functions work. The live demo is pretty cool :-)
- 14
Jarrod Bradford http://www.rumpke.com | 1/20/2010 3:56:15 PM
Ed,
It's great that IBM is continuing to invest in Symphony but what I'm curious about is integration with Lotus Notes. The version of Symphony that is included with Notes 8.5.1 seems to be locked. Is there anyway of updating the version in Notes without having to wait for a new Notes release?
- 16
Sacha | 2/3/2010 4:00:58 PM
Ed,
Can you already give a specific date on when the beta will be available? Can't wait to get my hands on it!
Thank you
- 17
Oksana | 3/10/2010 7:56:11 AM
Hello Ed,
Do you have info when will be the official release of Symphony 3.0? Q2 or Q3?
- 18
bu11frogg | 4/13/2010 5:48:06 AM
I can see this having major implications on the adoption of Quickr -- if one of Concord's ultimate goals is to be integrated into Lotus' web applications in place of, or in addition to, the text editor. (I hope it is!) That would effectively replace about 30-40% of our client-based office apps forever!
One of the confusing aspects of Quickr for my users is editing Office docs in Office apps, outside the context of the web application. They always want to do a "save as" to keep a local copy, and that screws up the Quickr/MSOffice integration. Embedding the office editors right into Quickr would make a TON of sense.
Exciting stuff! Keep pushing the envelope, Lotus!
Ed is really called symphony 3.0 or Symphony 2.0 --- OK that doesn't really change the picture but worth to ask :)