Lotus delves further into ebusiness

Business-to-business (B2B) services should not merely automate transactions but also enable participants to learn from each other and collaborate on a wide range of projects, according to Lotus' chief executive.

Speaking to developers at the company's DevCon event taking place in San Francisco this week, Al Zollar said the foundation of ecommerce platforms should be built on messaging and collaboration technologies, and that so-called e-learning will enable customers to keep pace with the rapid changes in ebusiness.

Lotus, which originated from the groupware market, is keen to reposition itself in the B2B sector. It is pushing its products at enabling businesses not to just trade goods but also ideas.

Zollar, who took control of the IBM unit in February, said: "Collaboration provides a competitive edge for ebusinesses, but the rate of learning can't keep up with the rate of change. People seem to get lost in the shuffle. The companies that will succeed will be those that use e-learning to decrease that gap for customers and business partners, as well as their employees."

Lotus has repackaged many of its products for ebusinesses. These include Same Time, its instant messaging application that will support real-time audio and video, and Quickplace, its teamware product that enables documents to be shared by virtual work mates.

Analysts praised the company's move to reposition itself in the ebusiness space but have reservations about its strategic vision.

Dan Rasmus, an analyst at Giga Information Group, said Lotus is still suffering the effects of being acquired by IBM in 1995. For example, Lotus has lost a number of key executives, whom Rasmus considered as visionaries, that provided an interface between the company's research engineers and customers. "There doesn't seem to be any real leadership there," he said.

IBM's style of controlled and timed product rollout culture also did not suit some Lotus employees, who preferred the informal way of researching and developing updates and new modules when customers felt a need for them, said Rasmus.

However, Lotus' move to extend its collaboration technologies outside of corporate firewalls and into the internet will enable it to compete with the many startups that are already moving into this market, he added.

Enhancements made to its development environment include extended support for Microsoft and Java languages, and the introduction of XML, the common language for ecommerce platforms, to its Domino server.

Lotus also intends to bundle Domino with WebSphere, IBM's ecommerce development environment, but a fully integrated version that will enable sign-on and support a common object request broker is not expected until the fourth quarter of this year.