IBM bakes Lotus Notes for Android
Plus Traveler server for Linux
IBM isn't forgetting about Google's mobile OS after squeezing Lotus Notes onto the iPhone and the BlackBerry.
Big Blue has said that an Android-based app for Lotus Notes is now in the works. Deadline: before Microsoft makes its own Android-based app for Exchange.
Lotus Notes Traveler Companion, IBM's first application for the iPhone App Store, was announced on Monday at Lotusphere 2010 in Orlando, Florida. Companion is a free plug-in that lets iPhone users read their encrypted Lotus Notes email on the Jobsonian cult communicator.
IBM already offers support for Research In Motion (RIM) BlackBerry phones, so the odd-mobile-OS-out is Android-based devices. IBM plans to remedy this soon, beginning with a client for Google's Nexus One.
"We've been looking at our options here — a quick-fix approach to using the installed software on some of the Android-based devices, or a more serious commitment to building a full client," said Ed Brill, IBM chief of product management for Lotus software, on his blog.
Brill said IBM chose the latter approach, but the open source nature of Android makes creating the app a bit more difficult.
"The different providers can and will create their own distributions and installed software," Brill said. "As such, we're doing the engineering to do this right — and ahead of Microsoft, by the way."
IBM also announced plans to include support for the Notes Traveler server software on Linux in 2010.
Mobile access is turning out to be a major plot at this year's Lotusphere. Yesterday, IBM provided a peek into the future of Notes with something it calls Project Vulcan. It blends email, profiles, IM, and calendars in one place — not unlike Google Wave — but the company says it will also apply business and social analytics to specific business scenarios in an effort to make the collaboration software "more relevant" the companies who use it. ®
COMMENTS
Notes is...
... shockingly, shockingly bad whatever the platform
Baking a turd does not a cake make.
Continuing to bake it will not yield any results either.
Can we run the android version on the desktop
Because if it has to be able to run on a phone then maybe, just maybe, it'll be light enough for my Core 2 based laptop to run it at a decent speed, unlike the eclipse-based monstrosity they call the full thing.
For something that is used as an email application 99% of the time, it sure does suck at at being an email application.
Notes - but a slimmer version
Notes support Apps - and as we know, that isn't allowed on the iPhone and I can't see what benefit the app will provide if it doesn't support any Notes apps... not sure how it can differentiate between the email app and other apps. Being able to replicate the address book might be useful...
So Notes on Andriod is likely to be difference to Notes on iPhone; if anything, it will be bloated and slow.
Of course, as someone else pointed out, the Notes client is so bad (Currently using Notes 8.5)that there is nothing here to write home about.
Sametime, on the other hand, might be worth porting if they can sort out a push solution...
What "Notes" needs...
is staking, not baking. It's like a vampire that just won't die no matter what you do.
Once it's in an organisation it's practically impossible to get rid of because to get it working you have to hire a cadre of Notes people who then hold all your email hostage and claim that any problems are down to either user error, or misconfiguration by the previous bunch of clowns.
Next Step
Awesome - maybe after inflicting Notes on phones, IBM will figure out how to put the Notes client in a large, spiky suppository and slam it up their users' a**holes.
