To many who had a chance to goto to Lotusphere or the new Lotusphere comes to you, would have had a very distinctive satisfaction this time..
It was not the same confused IBM, which was yet to decide what to do with Lotus Domino/Notes, whether to have a separate Java engine capabilites with Domino?, should there be Notes users? asking users to move to Websphere and eventhough nothing similar between Domino / Websphere other than that they are Web Technologies.
Its a very distinctively clear IBM, which has heard its customers and for a change accepted some of their views and concerns, the one which understood that Nothing in this World could the Domino users and developers (for that matter) are going to be threatened. Definetly not just by saying Java as future. Rather they understood that the need to have a path laid down to move along and may be over next 5-10 years bridge the gap so that may be there exists a code to inter convert or coexist.
Not only that the IBM has also understood the power of Blog and the reach it has among the communities / customers and made a distinctive intiative to push for their own employees and some loyal developers to have a good network that would stand a chance to compete the Propoganda War with that of Microsoft. Some of them are here and more to come
Its very heartning to know that IBM is thinking atlast with a fully customizable (atleast by Experienced developers) client and the one which could not just embbed a passive interent browser rather to have an active Click 2 Action based system. This would make a new way to think forward for the solution providers. Its also interesting technolory preview on SOA ( Service oriented architecture) and Activity Managed System and Composite Application Interface.
It was very happy customers who were able to have a sneak preview of the Hannover Notes client & Sametime 7.5. Especialy the Sametiem 7.5 which could compete with any mordern IM and could give a run for its money. Some features i doubt even the mordern famous IMs have. Though performance and stability is something we need to look at a bit apprehensively at this stage.
But out and out this Lotusphere is something that definetly brought some smile to just sneak through the corner of the customers' / developers' / administrators' faces.
Hope we have the golden days ahead..
