The sphere of Lotus

IBM will use Lotus to extend Websphere's collaborative functions.

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EDS extends contract with Australian Taxation OfficeIBM's aim is to support organisations with a distributed, global workforce, enabling employees to integrate across offices and regions. Users will be able to search for and find colleagues in an organisational directory from anywhere in the portal and initiate instant contact. The user will be able to "see" their peers and various chains of management, which provides valuable insight for the user before initiating a conversation or conference with fellow employees. The Collaboration Centre has been named the software's centre piece, the "killer app", according to Larry Bowden the vice president of portal solutions, at IBM. The collaborative centre capabilities can be fully integrated with Websphere Portal Extend and Websphere Portal Experience. Alongside the features listed above, Lotus Web Conferencing (Sametime) will allow users to view and participate in online meetings with which they are associated. It is expected to increase the portal's value to an organisation by enabling the individual "portlets" to share information and providing a sample user interface that pre-configures each "portlet" and page. Instant Lotus messaging will feature on all "portlets," which will enable a user to see if an employee is online and potentially ready to collaborate. These features will be available to customers in the second half of 2003. The regional manager for Lotus in Australia, Max McLaren described the new movement as a "dynamic workplace", which will include email, instant messaging and the portal. "A portal is a great thing, it is a generic user interface that can be customised for the individual," he said. When IBM announced the closer integration of Lotus Notes to the WebSphere portal critics predicted the death of Lotus Notes, but Mr McLaren said this is not the case. "Any company that abandoned a user base like ours would be suicidal."