Lotus, Third-Party Vendors Push Notes, Domino At Lotusphere

As IBM Lotus showcased its new 'mega server' bundle at the annual Lotusphere conference, the company's partners on Monday joined in to tout a slew of new products for Notes, Domino, and IBM's WebSphere.

Dubbed IBM Software Solution for On-Demand Workplace, the collection of J2EE-based application server, portal server, content manager, and collaborative tools is the company's latest move to integrate the wares from Lotus with those created by other divisions within the Armonk, N.Y.-based computer giant, particularly IBM's WebSphere Portal Server.

Along with the bundle, Lotus rolled out the newest version of Lotus Notes and Domino and previewed a new rich client for its Workplace platform. Notes/Domino 6.5.1 offers embedded instant messaging, an optional portal-style interface, and a new connector that links Microsoft Outlook users with Lotus' Domino mail server, said Lotus executives at the conference, while the new client is designed to compete on features with software such as Outlook and Notes, but still provide the low cost of ownership associated with browser-based access.

Announcements from third-party vendors, however, outnumbered those from IBM. Several companies lined up behind Lotus Monday to ring out new products at Lotusphere, which opened Monday in Orlando.

DYS Analytics, for instance, unveiled a major upgrade to its Control! suite of management tools for e-mail, collaboration, and instant messaging that adds support for IBM Workplace Messaging and IBM Team Workspace. Control! 4.2, which will release in April, will include new tools for logging instant messaging chat sessions, add integrated mailbox and mail traffic reporting for defining actual storage use by an organization's e-mail system, and offer up tools and alerts for IM and Web conference servers. Other enhancements range from per-portal access control -- so that administrators can define which sections of a portal are available to individual users -- to improved replication analysis of Domino servers as they're duplicated for backup.DYS also launched Control! Desktop Edition that targets smaller-sized shops with up to 5,000 e-mail seats. The Desktop Edition provides the same management diagnostic capabilities as the enterprise version, said DYS, but is geared towards installation on typical desktop-class PCs, rather than on servers.

Brightline Technology also put the Lotusphere forum to good use Monday by introducing a Java application server that integrates with Lotus Domino's messaging and collaboration platform. The Brightline Application Server, priced at $2,500, allows customers to host J2EE 1.3 applications from Domino, including those built with Java standards such as JavaServer Pages, Enterprise JavaBeans, and Java Messaging Services. The server utilizes Domino's security model in J2EE apps, and lets administrators manage J2EE servers and applications through a Notes client, the company said.

Another Java vendor, Trilog Group, on Monday shipped FlowBuilder 3.0, a J2EE framework for creating Java applications that now sports tools for building portlets within WebSphere Portal Server and IBM Lotus Workplace. FlowBuilder also lets corporate and consulting developers migrate Domino apps to those portal platforms, said Trilog.

Conferencing vendor Forgent launched an extension to its Alliance software that integrates with IBM Lotus Web Conferencing so that customers can use their current scheduling application to set up audio, video, and Lotus Web Conferencing sessions, as well as manage everything associated with an a meeting, including attendees, resources (such as rooms), and outside services.

CipherTrust on Monday unveiled IronMail 4.0, a new anti-spam and e-mail software appliance that adds new spam detection techniques, including URL filtering and blacklists, to Notes users' defenses. Anti-spam settings can also now be configured by user, by group, or by domain, the company added.Also at Lotusphere, Sybase subsidiary iAnywhere Solutions rolled out the latest version of Pylon Anywhere, which now synchronizes data between Lotus Notes/Domino and any mobile device, including SMS-enabled gear and WAP-based phones. (Support for Microsoft's SmartPhone 2002 and 2003 will be added later, sometime during the first half of 2004.) Relying on 'push' technology, Pylon automatically sends server-based schedules and received e-mails to the targeted mobile device and synchronizes both ends. Pylon supports Domino 6 and 6.5, as well as Microsoft Exchange 2003.

Group Technologies added new capabilities to its securiQ.Wall's Content Recognition Engine that will allow Notes users to scan and classify file attachments based on content, not just file type. By classifying incoming documents, said the vendor, companies can better archive and dispose of documents, manage the glut of e-mailed attachments, and in sales situations, process orders faster. The engine can be trained by administrators to classify attachments simply by copying and pasting samples -- such as an order template -- into the software's database.

And Captaris on Monday touted an updated RightFax Gateway with new support for Lotus Notes. The optional module links RightFax, a network-based fax delivery and receiving application, with Lotus Notes 5, 6, and 6.5 so that Notes users can send, receive, and manage faxes directly from within the e-mail client. The module will ship when the next version of RightFax releases in February, said Captaris.