Lotus readies Notes/Domino update
Lotus Development will officially launch the latest version of its groupware package at a user conference next week in Orlando, Florida.
As expected, the IBM-subsidiary will release its much-anticipated Notes/Domino 5.0 at Lotusphere 99.
The launch comes after an elongated development cycle. The newest version of the product had originally expected to be shipped by the end of 1997, and was then rescheduled to the first half of last year.
The company has said the delays were due to an expansion of the software's feature list in response to customer demand.
Lotus rolled out the second public beta of Notes/Domino R5 on November 15, after delaying the final testing phase by several months.
With the delays behind it, Lotus is expected to show off the new product to the anticipated 10,000 Lotus customers and partners in good fashion.
In the spirit of the new year and the end of the century, Lotus wants attendees to "Network like it's 1999," according to comments on its Web site.
Domino 5.0 features an improved user interface, enhanced real-time messaging features, and support for Java applets.
Notes 5.0, previously code-named Maui, combines Internet email, calendaring and scheduling, personal document management, news groups, browsing, and native HTML authoring into an integrated client that can access standards-based Internet servers. Notes now supports HTML 4.0 and IBM's x.509 client and server certificates.
The company will also be showing off Sametime 1.0, a software tool for instant communication via the Web, which began shipping earlier this month .
Lotus said Sametime is a family of real-time communication and collaboration products that allow people to find others on the Web, regardless of their location and to instantly communicate and share documents or other visual information.
The real-time client-server package can be purchased as a standalone product or as a complement to Lotus Notes and Domino 4.6 and 5.