First Raven product announced
A key component to the company's portal strategyLotus K-station was just introduced at Lotusphere Europe 2000 in Berlin. The product is a combination of Lotus portal technologies and services with collaborative tools such as Sametime and QuickPlace. K-station is designed to give users a single point of access to information and can stand alone or be integrated with other services and offerings, including the Discovery Server when it becomes available.
Lotus believes it’s critical for an enterprise to have the ability to quickly locate diverse content and expertise within or outside an organization, have immediate access to this information and have the opportunity to work, meet and make quick decisions within that same single point of access. “It can mean the difference between a successful, knowledge-driven organization and everyone else,” says Cliff Reeves, VP of Lotus’ knowledge management business unit.
Lotus believes traditional portal technology allows users to access different systems through a portal interface, while K-station collects, documents and stores pieces of the decision-making process to be reused in the future. The result, the company claims, gives users a clear understanding of how decisions were made, why they were made and the steps involved in the process, all based on the information gathered.
K-station integrates with QuickPlace to allow work groups to set up environments to centrally communicate, share and organize information, documents and schedules around projects or initiatives. Sametime integration enables organizations to collaborate, facilitate team-building and enhance real-time communication.
Initially, the Lotus K-station server will operate on Windows NT or 2000 with 200 MHz Pentium, 256 MB RAM, 10 GB HD or above; additional platform support will follow in 2001. The client requirement is MS Internet Explorer 5.01 and above.
The product will ship worldwide in the fourth quarter of 2000, and pricing will be announced 30 days prior to the ship date.