Lotusphere ReportLotusphere Report

By Fred Knight Good morning from Lotusphere 2008. A crowd that I'm guessing approached 7,000 jammed into a cavernous ballroom at the Dolphin Hotel in Orlando to hear Mike Rhodin, GM responsible for the Lotus/Domino constellation of products, and his team make a wide range of announcements on everything from clients and servers, to UC to social networking and portals. Over the next day or two, I'll be sending more details along.

By Fred Knight

Good morning from Lotusphere 2008. A crowd that I'm guessing approached 7,000 jammed into a cavernous ballroom at the Dolphin Hotel in Orlando to hear Mike Rhodin, GM responsible for the Lotus/Domino constellation of products, and his team make a wide range of announcements on everything from clients and servers, to UC to social networking and portals. Over the next day or two, I'll be sending more details along.Sitting through the opening session (OK, truth be told, I got there late), it seemed to me that IBM hopes to accomplish the following objectives: 1. Shake Lotus (and IBM's) stodgy image: The interfaces on Lotus 8, which will begin shipping during the year, borrow heavily from popular consumer apps and also from Apple - e.g., animated icons. They're obviously placing a major emphasis on making it easy for the user - whether it be an app developer or regular Joe/Jane - to create what they want in the way they want it.

2. Expand Lotus/Domino from a set of apps into a tightly integrated environment: The range of capabilities that will become available affect everything from communications, messaging and presence, to document creation, content management and social networking.

3. Attack the SMB market: Rhodin announced that it would deliver the new capabilities packaged in an envelope-sized box that an SMB could install within 30 minutes.

That's all for now........back later today/tonite.