Candle Corporation announced IntelliWatch Pinnacle Express, a new Notes/Domino performance management solution that complements the company’s IntelliWatch Pinnacle 99 product line. Pinnacle Express delivers a solution that maximizes the uptime and performance of a Notes network.

IT FACTORY unveiled a strategy for the rapid development of Lotus Notes applications using plug-and-play components. IT FACTORY’s new component strategy provides an extension to the company’s software development environment and business applications, and is intended to further streamline the deployment of fully integrated enterprise applications based on Notes/Domino.

BMC Software, Inc. announced the newest version of its PATROL for Lotus Domino. PATROL for Lotus Domino ensures employees, partners, customers and suppliers can exchange information with each other. The newest version for PATROL for Lotus Domino will be generally available January 25, 2000.

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Senior Technical Editor Richard Echeandia filed this report from Lotusphere 2000 in Orlando, Florida: At Business Development Day on Sunday (a day dedicated to Lotus Business Partners only for sales training and new year knowledge transfer), Jeff Papows said goodbye to the Lotus Business Partner Community. He quipped about wishing that Bill Gates had resigned before he did so that the press would leave him alone. Jeff spoke of Lotus’ continued concentration on Knowledge Management and distance learning as a way to offer organizations the tools to shape a new millenium. Jeff also introduced the incoming CEO of Lotus — Al Zollar. Hopefully, Al will do more than nod and wave to the crowd tomorrow during the opening session

In his keynote address, Lotus CEO Jeff Papows said that Notes worldwide market share is 41 percent, to Microsoft’s 34 percent. Sales numbers for the fourth quarter were 8.5 million seats bringing 1999 to a total of 22 million new users in all of 1999. 1999 closed out with Lotus Notes having a total installed base of over 56 million users

After sitting down on a stool (ala a fireside chat), Papows spoke on the difficulty of making the decision to leave Lotus on February 1st. He’s is convinced that now is a time that he can move onto a new challege with the minimal interruption to the critical business. He’s leaving because he would like to lead an indepedent organization. He referred to Al Zollar as his "chosen succesor" and then introduced Al Zollar (who was sitting in the audience). Any input from Al? Nope — Al just stood up and waved

Lotus VP Mike Zisman announced the re-branding of all the Domino services into three brands: Notes — traditional Lotus Notes clients accessing Domino services, "inotes", and "Mobile Notes". "inotes" is a new brand name for a collection of server services that allow Netscape Communicator, Internet Explorer and Microsoft Outlook users to work with something that’s Lotus is calling "Domino offline services". Domino offline services (or DOLS) offers replication from a Domino server onto a PC with a browser or Outlook. Implemented as a collection of ActiveX controls, Mike Zisman said that DOLS will allow any Domino application to be operated in an offline mode, even without a Notes client. "Mobile Notes" allows access to Domino data from mobile phones, handheld devices like the Palm devices and pagers. Using the Domino Designer, email, calendars, to-do lists AND custom applications, applications can be synchronized to Palm devices

Since our news editor is at Lotusphere, news will return on Wednesday. Stay tuned for all of the Lotusphere news

Wired News took to the newsgroups to see the reaction following Microsoft’s announcement.