IBM and Novell Team Up, Release Open Client
My latest for Intranet Journal covers yesterday’s announcement of the Lotus and Novell collaboration on the Open Client. Even though we all know that Lotus has been good recently at supporting Linux, it’s nice to see them promote something jointly with Novell and make it a little easier to install. Check it out.
August 10, 2007 @ 9:45 pm
Have I missed something? Is this more than marketing fluff?
I would like to see a feature comparison between the “open Collaboration Client” and the “Notes Client”
August 11, 2007 @ 10:05 pm
Hey Dwight. If you read my article, you’ll realize there is no difference between the two:
“How are three separate pieces of software considered one client? Well, the truth of the matter is that this is really just Lotus Notes 8 on Linux and certified to run on the SUSE distribution from Novell.”
Now they supposedly made it a much easier installation as well. So getting the “open collaboration client” gives you a greatly simplified install. It’s just a certified Linux install that gives Notes 8, Sametime 8 and the ODF editors in one supported package. Seems to be one license fee as well. So not a separate Notes/Sametime CAL.
And I don’t really think of this as marketing “fluff” at all. They are finally pushing this as a Linux desktop alternative to MS. They’ve done that with Notes too, but by partnering with Novell and announcing at LinuxWorld, they are targeting a different audience.
We can’t complain about their lack of marketing and then complain when they finally DO market something…
-Grey