It also must explain why parent IBM is partnering with key Lotus rivals and how the two companies are progressing in their technical integration of Domino and IBM's WebSphere application server. Lotus customers appear to be itching for action. Maybe they were focused on getting people to move to R5. Raven is, and ship XML tools we can start testing with our current applications. But pressure is also coming from current innovations evolving outside the traditional collaboration market.
Lotus needs to be more nimble as the market evolves.
Next week, Lotus is expected to announce an imminent shipping date for its key Discovery Server, which was due six months ago. The server is the highlight of Raven, which has been troubled since its debut. Now Lotus faces an uphill climb as its impatient parent IBM signed deals in December with Lotus competitors Plumtree and Tacit Knowledge to fill holes in IBM's Corporate Portal Offering, which will compete with Raven. CEO Al Zollar, who took the helm at Lotus last year, has said the company's ASP strategy will be a major source of revenue. RNext features will include the ability to securely isolate multiple customers on a single Domino server, delegated administration and performance improvements aimed at hosted services.