It seems there will be a lot to look forward to.

Mick's view
DominoPower Senior Technical Editor Mick Moignard always keeps a careful and critical eye on the Lotus strategy. Here are his thoughts:

I guess I'm looking for:

• Confirmation that ND7 will deliver the promises made and seen in the betas, the DB2 stuff and the DDM (Domino Domain Monitoring) stuff particularly, plus the stability and performance that we've come to expect from previous versions. The Notes client betas 1 and 2 have been pretty good. We've commented on the DB2 stuff before, and I think that will be well recieved in the marketplace, particularly the larger installations, because the performance and stability should be really impressive -- making large Notes apps run better as well as being able to get even more mail accounts per server.

• LEI (Lotus Enterprise Integrator) being fully cluster-enabled. This will make LEI applications even more deliverable, because you can be sure that they will scale as far as the server will go.

• Workplace coming of age, if you like, and confirmation that the product set is moving in the marketplace. We also want to see that the Notes plug-in to the Rich client has the value and functionality that we expect, demonstrating that it both deliverable to corporate end-users, and does the stuff in a way that will be acceptable and easy to use.

• The Notes future. With the wobbles of the last couple of years (especially Sphere 2003), we want to see the roadmap for Notes and Domino and find out what the Notes 8/9/10 client is going to look like.

• Finding out whether the format changes to Lotusphere work...

• And generally getting a feel for the Notes community -- has it still got the vibrancy and buzz that means that people will still evangelize it within their companies? Does IBM still get what Notes really is?

All are excellent questions and issues we'll be watching. One thing I can say, based on my discussions with members of the Notes community before Lotusphere. Our readers and the members of the Notes community are as vocal and active as ever. Let's hope that translates into a good business year.

Amy Wohl on 2005
Amy Wohl is one of the technology industry's leading analysts. We've often turned to her reports and analysis to give us fascinating insights into coming trends. She's also one of our many exceptional DominoPower authors and had this to say:

I'm expecting to see a preview of Lotus 7. It's already in its Beta 3 stage so what's in it is certainly no secret. They might show some integration with the Workplace products which won't be in 7 but which will occur later on.

If you've had a chance to look over the Lotusphere program you will have noticed that there is a whole separate program track on Workplace and role-based work processing.

I'd say the word at Lotusphere is that Notes and Domino continue, supported with new releases into the distant future, and incremented and improved with technology from other IBM products like Workplace. The Workplace products offer another path to customers with somewhat different needs and they will proceed down their own development roadmap.