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ORLANDO -- IBM Lotus announced earlier this week at its annual Lotusphere conference that Lotus Notes 8 will go into beta next month, with its general release slated for mid-year. Notes 8 (formerly codenamed Hannover) is a strongly client-focused release, with new features, functionality, and a vastly updated graphical user interface.

Another focus -- stressed repeatedly at the Lotusphere -- is that the new Notes 8 client and Domino 8 server are designed not to break existing applications. With 127 million Notes seats worldwide, this was something that Lotus concentrated heavily on during development and beta testing.

New Features

Lotus is including many new features with the release. Some of these features help the client mimic those that have been available in other clients and email systems for awhile. Things like the ability to select multiple documents

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in a view via CTRL or ALT-clicking, a right-side preview pane for email reading, in-place spell checking and immediate responses to Out of Office messages. These changes eliminate many of the gripes users have had for with Notes for years.

And while those features have been because of Notes playing catch-up, there are many more that have Lotus innovating in unique ways in the marketplace.

The most striking example is that of "composite" applications. The new Notes Standard client will be built upon the Eclipse application framework. Because of this, Notes can leverage that environment to surface multiple technologies within the single client interface. You can add various component pieces to the client, and loosely couple them with a simple drag and drop interface. Now, instead of having multiple application windows open you can have them all within a consistent interface, and internal "wiring" can tie them all together.

A shot across the bow of Microsoft

Another interesting feature is the inclusion of what IBM calls Productivity Editors. These are applications based on the OpenOffice codebase for presentations, spreadsheets and documents. These editors will not only read and write Microsoft Office formats, but can also utilize Lotus SmartSuite, Open Office and the open standard Open Document Format (ODF.)

As for features, these editors won't blow away your Word, Excel, or Powerpoint applications. But, the reality is that in many organizations a majority of users don't use all the advanced functionality anyway. For those users, these productivity editors can replace MS Office. Since the editors are included free with a Lotus Notes license, that means that 127 million users have an option to never pay additional money for a spreadsheet, presentation builder or word processor again. At a time when organizations are faced with paying hefty upgrade fees to move to Office 2007, that is a powerful weapon in IBM's arsenal.

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