Lotus readies collaboration upgrades

IDG News Service - Attempting to rally the industry behind its vision for enterprise collaboration, IBM's Lotus Software Group next month will unfurl new versions of its instant messaging, team collaboration, and messaging and calendar platforms.
Version 3.0 of the Lotus Sametime real-time collaboration software will introduce new management features designed to give IT fine-grained control of its enterprise-class instant messaging software. For example, Lotus' beefed-up server-side tools aid in IT monitoring and management of user log-on and log-off, company executives said.
Other enhancements in Sametime 3.0 are improved group administration of buddy and co-worker lists, better file-sharing capabilities and the ability to control file attachment size, said Jeremy Dies, senior offerings manager in the advanced collaboration group at Cambridge, Mass.-based Lotus Software. The new tools are designed to allow users to more easily collaborate on file attachments within a Sametime session, he added.
According to Lotus General Manager Al Zollar, the company's vision for Sametime breaks down the concept of a stand-alone instant-messaging client to allow collaboration within any application.
"The next step is going to make sure that we have more consistent Java-oriented APIs that allow these things to be built into applications," he said. "Sametime is a great example here, where you can look at any Web-based application, and as long as you have a name and you have a directory, you can Sametime-enable that application to tell the user of that application whether someone is online at that moment or not."
Lotus also plans to roll out Enterprise Meeting Server, a Java 2 Enterprise Edition-based application designed as an add-on to Sametime 3.0 that aims to improve the scalability of large meetings, according to Dies.
Enterprise Meeting Server will also include new load-balancing and clustering tools and added features designed to simplify the process of joining an electronic meeting.
Furthermore, Lotus is attempting to boost Sametime Version 3.0's support for industry standards. To that end, Lotus plans to ship a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) gateway for Sametime in an effort to connect islands of instant messaging in the enterprise, Dies said.
Momentum is gathering behind SIP and the related protocol SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions (SIMPLE) as the industry standard for real-time communications. In addition to IBM's support of SIP, Microsoft Corp. and America Online Inc. have both pledged support for SIMPLE as it matures through the standards process.
Also next month, Lotus plans to roll out an update to its QuickPlace team collaboration offering. The new versions of both QuickPlace and Sametime have inched closer together