IBM Makes Collaborative Innovation Real With Preview of Next Generation IBM Lotus Notes Client

IBM Makes Collaborative Innovation Real With Preview of Next Generation IBM Lotus Notes Client

During a preview of live product code at the Deutsche Notes User Group (DNUG) conference, IBM®, today announced that office productivity editors will be included in the next version of Lotus Notes®, when it goes to planned public beta this fall. These lightweight but powerful productivity editors support the XML based OpenDocument Format (ODF) standard recently approved by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and will offer over 125 million Lotus Notes users alternatives to existing integration with proprietary document formats, such as those in Microsoft® Office.

The office productivity editors will include word processing, spreadsheet and presentation capabilities, and will enable Lotus Notes users to create, edit and save documents natively in the ODF. The editors will also import and export to supported file formats used by Microsoft Office and previous versions of OpenOffice. The inclusion of these standards-based editors will give Lotus Notes customers the flexibility to base IT decisions on business needs and reduce the risk of being “locked in” to one software platform or vendor.

As the first major commercial collaboration client based on the Eclipse open source framework, the next release of Lotus Notes aims to set new industry and customer precedents for openness, value and productivity. The next version of Notes, including the productivity editors, will be available to Lotus Notes users who are current on software maintenance, making it simple for Lotus Notes customers who choose to upgrade to begin using this dynamic platform. “The inclusion of standards-based office productivity tools in the next version of Lotus Notes is great news,” said Jeff Forbes, chief information officer, IntelliCare. “This enhancement will bring tremendous value to our organization by helping us to break free from the proprietary format that has dominated the desktop environment for so long.”

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