Lotus set to launch Workplace 1.1

Next week IBM’s Lotus Software plans to detail the next step in its Workplace strategy with the introduction of the 1.1 version of its J2EE-based platform for collaboration.

First introduced earlier this year, Lotus Workplace is a platform environment that offers collaboration technologies as components that can be embedded in a variety of applications and business processes. The first delivery in this strategy was Workplace Messaging, a low-cost messaging system based on J2EE and IBM’s DB2 database that was unveiled at Lotusphere last January.

The Lotus Workplace 1.1 announcement will include four collaborative products focused on the areas of Web-based messaging, instant messaging and team collaboration, Web content management, and learning management, according to IBM officials.

The team collaboration aspect of the Workplace strategy offers Lotus QuickPlace and Sametime functions such as discussion threads, document repositories, Web conferencing, work management activities, and real-time collaboration as a set of components that customers can use to build applications such as supply-chain management, CRM, training applications, or portals.

“This is the next generation of how we see instant messaging and asynchronous and synchronous collaboration coming together in a collaborative environment,” said Mike Loria, director of advanced collaboration products at IBM.

Whereas IM and team collaboration once stood only as standalone products, “Workplace is blowing that out to include all forms of collaboration,” he said.

Customers building applications with Workplace will have collaborative functions such as presence awareness, Web conferencing, and IM available as embedded components, which can be surfaced in any application built on top of Workplace.

One driver around the Workspace strategy is to leverage J2EE and Web services to combat the problem of complex and time-consuming application integration, Loria said.

“Customers spend a substantial amount of their investment integrating their applications. Today’s heavy lifting development around a set of APIs now becomes J2EE components that I can easily embed into other apps,” he said.