Lotus, knowledge management and AIIM: Presidential keynote and new Domino.Doc release at show

A presidential keynote, the new release of Domino.Doc and a knowledge management focus are making a big splash for Lotus (www.lotus.com, Booth #0223) at AIIM.

"This is the year that Lotus has really arrived," said Scott Cooper, general manager of document management and imaging products at Lotus.

Highlighting the AIIM presence for Lotus is a keynote from President and CEO Jeff Papows. The speech deals with the technologies making E-business and Internet commerce a reality. Centered around collaborative and knowledge management solutions, the keynote addresses areas where the company sees itself going.

"Jeff's keynote will say, 'Here's what we are thinking,'" according to Cooper. Those ideas are being refined in terms of the technology assets and products Lotus has.

"In our experience at Lotus, what Lotus Notes delivers at its core is connecting individuals to individuals, grouping workers one-to-one," he said. "That looks a lot like the key technology of KM. Lotus Notes is network glue." Document management, led by the new Domino.Doc Release 2.0, has a role in that space too.

"Document management certainly plays an important role. It's a piece of a knowledge management solution," said Cooper. That piece has proven successful on the department level and offers potential at a higher level.

"The most valuable documentation is littered across department managers' desks," he said. "It's a gigantic organizational problem, where documents exist."

That is why Release 2.0's file cabinets of documents are distributed across networks. Enterprise servers or distributed servers are interlocking, and, according to Cooper, "it's a real science making it work."

While still an out-of-the-box solution, Release 2.0 includes more customizability than the previous version, which sold 86,000 seats the first day it shipped.

Domino.Doc 2.0 offers application programming interfaces that look like a service on the network, not a separate application.

It also takes Domino.Doc beyond the English language barrier, now offered in 10 different languages. Release 2.0, which ships in June, will retain a price of about $20 a client seat and about $9,500 for a server.