CRN: Can you talk about VAR opportunities with the new Office Communicator Web Access client?

PALL: Customers [want] to integrate presence and IM [instant messaging] into their apps, a lot of which are written in multitier architectures where you have portals and are mostly accessed through the browser. Communicator Web Access is built on AJAX, [and that means] you can actually take AJAX controls and embed them into portals and into apps, which we think is incredibly powerful. That’s a big opportunity. Integrators are doing a lot of the work in building, maintaining and updating these apps.

CRN: The plan was to converge Live Communications Server and Live Meeting architecture over time. PALL: I can’t discuss time frames, but it’s something we’re actively working on.

CRN: Microsoft has a variety of realtime stuff, some overlapping between MSN and your group. Can you parse it?

PALL: MSN is focused on consumers; the scenarios are buddies and friends and friends of friends, exchanging pictures [and/or] personal information between families or individuals. We’re focused on information workers, anything that has to do with info workers and IT managers.

CRN: How much of the realtime collaboration stuff will stay separate, and how much will flow into the Vista or Longhorn operating systems? PALL: There’s an evolution; as solutions come out [they are] much more integrated around the scenario. Then the platform will start emerging with provider interfaces, with apps on the top and [service] providers on the bottom, then sort of a middleware platform [in between]. I suspect many components will be built that way in the future. Now we’ll focus on making sure the right scenarios can be enabled. At the same time, we’re mindful of platforms. This whole AJAX thing we did in Communicator Web Access was to make sure whenever there’s an interesting opportunity for integration that we have a platform for the customer.

CRN: Google is expected to come out with calendaring and other things that will encroach on your realm. Which competitors worry you?

PALL: Google has promised a lot, some things are in perpetual beta. But they are in a different segment at this time at least. IBM is probably the most traditional competitor we have. I can see over time, as convergence happens, some others. Oracle is aspiring in the collaboration space, folks like Webex in point solutions, Jabber in IM.

CRN: IBM had Sametime [enterprise IM] out early, but it seems not to be a big emphasis now.

PALL: It’s hard to speculate [on what] IBM is doing with Sametime, I know there was realignment from Lotus to Workplace. Mike Rhodin, General Manager For Workplace, Portal And Collaboration Software At IBM, Spoke With Darrow Before This Week’s Lotusphere About Project Hannover And Plans For The Show.

CRN: What’s the status of Project Hannover, the next release of Notes/Domino? RHODIN: Some of this is a tit-for-tat game with Microsoft. Every time we ship a release, they send out an announcement that it’s the last release. Four straight times they’ve sent that out since I’ve been here, and this time we pre-empted them. We talked about Hannover right before we shipped [Notes/Domino] 7 so they couldn’t say that. The 7 release was primarily focused on [total cost of ownership], security, scalability, administration capabilities, what our IT shops are telling us needed to be done.

With Hannover, we said this is all about end users. We’re coming out with stuff for IT shops, but we wanted to get that the focus has squarely shifted to end users.

CRN: You’re not narrowing support to 64-bit servers? RHODIN: No. We’ve been doing 64-bit, but we’ll continue 32-bit support.

CRN: Microsoft’s argument for stopping 32-bit support on Exchange 12 is that you can’t find a 32-bit server.

RHODIN: A new one. If you’re trying to drive a hardware upgrade, [then] that’s the statement you’ll make. The reality is there are a lot of 32-bit servers out there running both Microsoft and Lotus software, and I’m not going to be standing here saying you have to buy new hardware just because you want to go to my next release of software. That’s a choice you make on your operations, your administration. We’ll continue to deliver choice and flexibility on that.

CRN: How does AJAX fit?

RHODIN: It fits right in. AJAX is a style of development, but building AJAX components is non-trivial. The really good AJAX applications are handcrafted by experts. The thing that’s been missing is simple tooling. You’re going to see us start to extend Workplace Designer with some AJAX capabilities. We already have some AJAX-style componentry. If you look at UI for [WebSphere Services Express] the palettes that slide in and out, the drag and drop, that’s AJAX-style things and have been there for awhile.

CRN: Some say five years out, mail will not be a differentiator and more customers will outsource it to put resources on IT areas where they can differentiate. Comments?