Lotus To Rebrand SameTime, QuickPlace

The changes include rebranding Sametime instant messaging as IBM Lotus Instant Messaging, and QuickPlace, which facilitates group online meetings, as IBM Lotus Team Workplace. The changes are expected to be detailed at next week's Lotusphere conference in Orlando, Fla.

A Lotus spokesman confirmed the changes, characterizing them as an attempt at simplification.

But how IBM Lotus Team Workplace will be easier to remember than Quickplace was not immediately apparent to solution providers.

One longtime East Coast partner slammed the move. "We're outraged. They've spent a zillion dollars turning SameTime, particularly, and QuickPlace, into brands. Now they call them 'blah blah blah,' " he noted.

A Lotus spokesman said the company only acted after extensive customer research. "I can't tell you how many times I've heard 'SamePlace' and 'QuickTime,' " he noted.

Lotus, which is trying to build its franchise beyond the Domino mail and collaboration server and its Notes client, has pushed Sametime and QuickPlace aggressively for the past two years. It claims to have seen extraordinary sales growth in those products.

The rebranding will be phased in over the course of next year, the spokesman said.

Indeed, Lotus has beaten rival Microsoft to market by several years with Sametime, a secure, enterprise-ready instant messaging that is in its third major release. In that time, Microsoft has repositioned its realtime collaboration (RTC) efforts several times. Much of its realtime effort had centered on Exchange Server. Last year, the company said it would offer RTC foundation technology in its server operating system. Last fall the company reiterated that plan but said the realtime functionality would not ship with the initial release of Windows .Net Server, now renamed Windows 2003 Server. That operating system is set to debut in April after numerous delays.

And it appears that Microsoft's realtime efforts are still a work in progress. The company earlier this week said it was buying PlaceWare, an online conferencing vendor. (See story.) In October 2001, Microsoft took a $51 million stake in Groove Networks.

In other Lotusphere news, Lotus will try to assuage developer angst over the rift between Domino and WebSphere development. A Lotus insider confirmed published reports that the company has been working on an effort, internally called Project Montreal, tasked with putting Domino classes into IBM's WebSphere Application Developer toolkit. Another effort, dubbed Project Seoul, promises to let Domino developers stay within their familiar development environment but create J2EE components usable in any J2EE setting.

"The overarching message is this will give Lotus people a way to ease over to J2EE while protecting their Domino skillset," the source said.

Lotus sparked fears among a cadre of faithful Domino developers last year when it scrapped plans to embed a home-grown Java Server Pages/servlet support that they had expected to ship with Domino 6. (See story.) They were told not to worry about J2EE support, but had to wait several months before IBM detailed a WebSphere/Domino bundle that would provide that capability.