Lotus has confirmed that they will not release Notes/Domino 5.0 this year. Lotus released the second public beta for Notes/Domino and Designer 5.0 on Nov. 15.

News.com is reporting that Lotus will launch a new services division in January. The Lotus Worldwide Services and Solutions Group will work with customers to design software applications based on Lotus products.

Network Computing has this article on how to build your e-business from the ground up.

Internet Week has the hits and misses from last week’s Java Expo. Among the hits at the show were IBM’s WebSphere and Secant Technologies’ Secant Extreme Enterprise Server for EJB.

ZDNN is reporting that IBM plans to introduce software that protects email systems from computer hackers. The software, called SecureServer, will replace the existing Sendmail delivery software that currently processes more than three-quarters of Internet correspondence.

Lotus repsonds to the recent total cost of ownership studies which compare Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange.

ZDNet’s Jesse Berst has this commentary on why Lotus’ FastSite 2.0 is a natural born killer.

PC Week reports that Novell will release two applications that will allow users of Microsoft Corp.’s Outlook and Office 2000 programs to make use of functionality in its GroupWise groupware.

Here’s a great Christmas story from Internet Week Magazine.

Candle Corporation announced that Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc. has selected Candle’s IntelliWatch Monitor and Quickstart services package to help manage their Lotus Notes servers. Candle’s IntelliWatch solutions will help MGM’s Messaging Systems Division manage its growing Lotus Notes environment by minimizing the impact of server slowdowns and crashes, managing Lotus Notes logs, recycling Notes servers automatically and plugging into its network management framework. IntelliWatch Monitor detects and corrects Lotus Notes and Domino server problems before or as soon as they occur, thereby increasing server stability.