IBM Goes Open Standard With Upcoming Notes Release

Since this story was originally reported, its title has been modified to more accurately represent IBM’s upcoming Lotus Notes release.

International Business Machines (IBM) on Monday previewed its upcoming version of the Lotus Notes application—code-named “Hannover”—which includes a set of power productivity tools that support the OpenDocument Format, enabling the program’s 125 million users to employ non-proprietary document formats instead of those like the ones used within Microsoft’s Office.

The OpenDocument Format was recently approved by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as an international standard for retaining and exchanging digital office documents. For more, read ISO OKs OpenDocument Format as a Standard.

IBM made the announcement at the Deutsche Notes User Group conference in Germany.

The new tools, called IBM Workplace productivity editors, include word processing, spreadsheet and presentation capabilities, and they let users perform a variety of document functions like editing, importing and making new documents. The editors will also still be able to import and export formats employed within Microsoft Office and older versions of OpenOffice.

IBM says the public beta of the new version of Notes will be available this fall.

Current Notes users on software maintenance programs will have the option of upgrading to the new version.

“The code that we are showing today demonstrates our ability to deliver on the Workplace vision that makes customers more productive in the context of what they do every day,” said Michael Rhodin, IBM’s general manager of workplace, portal and collaboration products, in a statement.

The new Notes will also feature what IBM calls “activity-based computing” capabilities, which will connect content generated on a daily basis to related or relevant initiatives and processes, and group them all together in a central repository so that all involved parties have access to the same information.

For related news coverage, read IBM to Offer Tech for Fighting Potential Flu Pandemic, Infectious Diseases.

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