In 1998, Forbes magazine announced "The Decline and Fall of Lotus". 14 years later, this prediction came true. Sort of.
The annual Lotusphere event, typically held at the end of January, has been a staple of the Lotus community since 1993. But in 2012, Lotusphere was re-branded as IBM Connect. This is hardly a surprise, as IBM recently announced it was dropping the Lotus brand, to reposition its products as IBM Notes and IBM Domino. According to an IBM spokesperson:
"In a nutshell, the updated branding of Notes and Domino is a continuation of IBM's overall branding strategy. As social business begins to dominate the collaboration market, Lotus must follow suit. It's not about IBM dropping a brand, but more about strengthening the portfolio and meeting customer needs."
You've come a long way, baby.
For Automation Centre, we witnessed the change with not a little nostalgia. Lotus Notes / Domino was the groupware platform for Tracker Suite, our first, award-winning solution. For organizations utilizing Lotus Notes / Domino, the possibility of leveraging one of their largest IT investments (and the experience of the user base with it) to automate their Projects, IT, HR and Sales processes, presented an incredible opportunity with a tangible ROI.
But while the brand name may be fading into the history books, the software shows no sign up stopping. IBM released the public beta of IBM Notes and Domino 9.0 last month with a host of new features.
Thus, it only makes sense to call a version that adds embedded experiences, a modernized user interface, new mail and calendar features, the Notes browser plug-in, SAML support, Traveler support for Windows Phone 7.5/8.0 devices and on the IBM i operating system, new XPages features, and more.... 9.0.
Ed Brill, Director of Market Management - IBM Mobile Enterprise
A TrackerSuite.Net project home page, surfaced in Notes
Like IBM Notes, we’re still moving forward with our latest product, the 100% Web based TrackerSuite.Net, although where Notes seems to be headed, TrackerSuite.Net has already arrived. TrackerSuite.Net can be surfaced inside email clients including Lotus Notes and Microsoft Outlook, allows users to create a unified communication/work portal that they can configure for their own particular needs.
As we tip our hat to the passing of the “Lotus” brand, we welcome the latest incarnation of IBM Notes, and look forward to watching its continuing evolution and finding new opportunities for integration with TrackerSuite.Net.
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