InformationWeek

February 2, 1998

Lotus Takes On Knowledge Management

Next releases of Notes and Domino will feature improved search capabilities

BM's Lotus Development unit last week made its most aggressive bid yet for the emerging knowledge-management market, unveiling a host of features in its upcoming Notes and Domino 5.0 groupware designed for harnessing corporate knowledge.

Chief among the new features are search capabilities that let users perform a single search across multiple repositories -- including Notes databases, relational databases, and file systems -- from one user interface. In addition, Domino 5.0 will let companies create taxonomies that automatically categorize indexed documents into a hierarchy of topics. Notes 5.0 an d Domino 5.0 are due in the second half of 1998.

Several real-time collaboration features will be included in the 5.0 release, including chat, whiteboarding, and shared objects. Lotus will also offer knowledge-management applications that run on Domino server, such as LearningSpace 2.5, a training application with enhanced course-development tools. It's due at the end of this quarter. Expert Network, a product in development, will present visual maps of employees according to their expertise. Availability has not been announced.

Though Lotus promoted knowledge management as a theme at its Lotusphere 98 conference in Orlando, Fla., last week, some attendees warned that the technologies are in early development and subject to change. "A lot of this is still being generated from [Lotus' research institute] and hasn't filtered down into concrete development," says Matt Cain, an analyst at Meta Group Inc.

Also at the conference, Lotus announced it will consolidate its client products -- including Notes Mail, cc:Mail, Organizer, and Weblicator -- into one client, Notes 5.0. The Notes upgrade will include calendaring and scheduling features from Organizer and user-interface elements from cc:Mail, which are aimed at helping companies migrate from cc:Mail to Notes.

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