Lotus Puts Final Touches On Notes Domino 6.5

IBM's Lotus Software made the first beta version of its Lotus Notes Domino 6.5 upgrade available in April. In recent weeks, Lotus distributed the "milestone" second beta to the same audience, but it will narrow down testing of the next several beta drops to a smaller group of private beta testers, said Ken Bisconti, Lotus vice president of worldwide product marketing.

"It will be a more restricted distribution," said Bisconti, noting that the gold code will ship late in the third quarter. "The next code the general population will see is final code."

Meanwhile, Microsoft Exchange 2003 was released to manufacturing on June 30 and is expected to ship to licensed enterprise customers by the end of the summer.

Notes 6.5 is the point upgrade to the version 6.0 upgrade released at Lotusphere last January. Channel partners are anxiously awaiting some of Notes 6.5's new features and additional stability, such as enhanced antispam and e-mail management capabilities, support for the Mozilla browser and more tightly integrated instant-messaging features.

For instance, the Notes 6.5 client will integrate the presence-awareness capabilities of its Sametime instant-messaging server. This allows customers to see their live names list or the online status of people and launch instant-messaging sessions directly from within their inbox or e-mail address book.

"Companies that are using Lotus Sametime,those that are either on the existing Notes R6 client or earlier versions such as R5 or Notes 4x,will find the new Sametime integration very compelling," said Carl Tyler, CTO of Instant Technologies, an ISV and consulting partner in Durham, N.H., and a Notes 6.5 beta tester. "I believe the uptake of [Notes] 6.5 will probably be quite strong since traditionally many companies often wait for a major point release before installing a major new release of software to ensure that any wrinkles are ironed out."

Tyler also noted that the enhanced client and IMAP services support will be a big help to his own company, which uses Microsoft Outlook as a client that accesses the Domino server.

Partners and ISVs also lauded the new antispam capabilities of the e-mail client, which will complement the blacklisting features offered on the back-end Domino 6.0 server. Version 6.5, for example, offers quick rules that improve junk-mail management and enhanced inbox maintenance.

"I expect significant migration and upgrade activity, but not necessarily from Domino 6, which is very stable and feature-rich," said Ron Herardian, CEO of e-mail integrator Global System Services, based in Mountain View, Calif. "Notes 6.5 will become the platform to migrate to for remaining Exchange 5.5 and Domino R5 customers."