SAP integration
You may recall from last year the project called "Atlantic". The name's been changed. The SAP "Atlantic" project announced last year becomes Alloy by IBM and SAP, and will ship pretty soon.

Both the IBM and SAP people I spoke with - Michael Reh, Senior VP at SAP and Krista Hilz Kahn, Program Director at IBM - spoke warmly of the way that the collaborative effort had gone and how the delivery was much more than originally anticipated.

There are basically two parts to Alloy. Firstly, there are Web services calls that can be made from Notes or Domino to SAP's NetWeaver server, or vice versa. With appropriate coding for Notes or Domino, and ABAP (Advanced Business Application Programming) programming on the SAP side, exchange of any Notes or SAP data can be made by custom-written applications.

Secondly, there will be complete business scenarios shipped which will include the use of conventional Notes forms to enter and display data, but also sidebar plugins for Notes.

Initially the templates delivered will be workflows and reports, such things as travel management and travel budgeting were mentioned. There will be more coming, and all will come with the source open for customisation by the customer, too.

Get all that hooked up with XPages, and you get workflow applications using SAP backend data and Notes front-end data in thoroughly modern Web applications, and in the Notes client too.

OpenNTF.org
On top of all that, IBM announced that they are going to start posting Notes database template updates, and Notes plugins and widgets to OpenNTF.org. They'll use the Apache open-source license which lets you use and modify without having to re-post your modifications, and even lets you use the code you get in commercial products.

The first of these donations is already there: it's the template for the documentation wikis that are now used in Notes.net/LDD. It's fully XPage enabled, so you will need to use a Domino 8.5 server to run it.

Working Smarter
And, under the Working Smarter banner, IBM also said that a new site for locating business partner applications will be made available - and this time, not only will you be able to browse the catalog, but you'll be able to pay for and download the application and install it right away.

Kristen Lauria, Lotus's new VP of Marketing and Channels, spoke at the opening sessions about it, showed some video material, and asked for inputs from the floor to come along during the show and tell their stories. It will nice to see this program on the road, and I hope we, customers, potential customers and business partners all get to see it over the coming months.