There is a slew of announcements from Sphere 2007, and one sort of unannouncement, expanding yet simplifying the product portfolio, once you get your mind round it all. Expected, and coming soon (beta in February, Gold in mid year), Notes and Domino 8, aka "Hannover," the new Eclipse-based Notes client, with a new Domino to support it, service it and provision it. News that Notes and Domino will go on for as long as there’s a demand–20 years more, if need be. We’ve not seen ND8 yet, but ND"Next" is already on the drawing board, and some ideas may even have to wait for ND"Next"+1. Then Sametime 7.5.1 will add a Mac client, a Linux server, video chats and more, in or around April. WebSphere Portal Express 6.0 will ship in January–this month, now, with a whole lot of new portal stuff. And really new: Lotus Quickr replaces Quickplace (well, really it’s QP 8) in Q2, and looks quite cool. More cool is Lotus Connections, business-oriented social software, also round the end of Q2 or early Q3. Unannounced? Lotus Workplace. It’s gone, subsumed into other things or just gone. More in detail when we get back from Orlando and have time to make sense of it all.

Mick Moignard

Senior Technical Editor

Percussion announced ServerAdmin Plus V9, their administration tool for IBM Lotus Notes and Domino. This major release saves precious time and lowers cost of ownership by making it easier for administrators to maintain their Lotus Notes and Domino environments, including the ability to remotely manage Lotus Notes and Domino clients without interrupting end users.

A company looking to chip away at IBM’s dominance in the mainframe space is countersuing its larger rival, claiming Big Blue is trying to use its massive size to bully its smaller competitor. Platform Solutions–or PSI–filed a counter lawsuit Jan. 22, saying IBM is attempting to illegally keep control of the mainframe marketplace through such monopolistic means as only selling its mainframe operating systems to customers who agree to buy or continue using IBM mainframes. The Sunnyvale company also claims that IBM is restricting Platform Solutions’ access to interfaces the smaller company needs to stay compatible with the mainframe operating systems.

A new technique being employed by malicious spammers is testing the ability of email filtering technologies to tell the difference between legitimate newsletter content and messages bearing unwanted advertisements and hidden links to malware sites. According to researchers at security software market leader Symantec, a new trend is rapidly emerging among bulk spammers where the creators of the annoying and often dangerous messages are disguising their work using real content distributed in genuine electronic newsletters. By carefully recreating email newsletters and marketing materials sent to customers from well-known sources such as eBay, ESPN and Wal-Mart, spammers have found a new way to circumvent many filtering systems and sneak their work into users’ in-boxes, said Doug Bowers, senior director of anti-abuse engineering at Symantec.

Internet security experts are gathering at a secretive conference later this week to strategize in their fight against cybercriminals. The meeting on Thursday and Friday at Microsoft’s Redmond headquarters is slated to bring together representatives from security companies and government and law enforcement officials, as well as others involved in network security. The agenda focuses on botnets and related topics, seen by experts as a prime threat to the Internet.

SHA-1 is one of the most prevalent forms of a secure hash algorithm used in the legal and security industry. Now that Professor Xiaoyun Wang and her associates in Tsinghua University and Shandong University of Technology have officially cracked the SHA-1 hashing algorithm, the fallout will begin. This won’t actually be due to security concerns for the most part, but the legal ramifications may be severe.

DYS Analytics, whose software helps manage some of the world’s most demanding messaging environments, announced a new version of its Sametime management software with support for the newly shipped IBM Lotus Sametime Gateway that allows interoperability with AIM, GoogleTalk and Yahoo! Instant Messenger. DYS’ enhancement to Collaboration CONTROL! allows IT staffs to gain control of the anticipated surge in IM traffic on their systems as Sametime users interconnect with colleagues on public IM systems. With expanded features for chat logging, alerting and reporting, the new Collaboration CONTROL! also enhances security and helps IT more tightly manage IBM Lotus Sametime as the foundation for the real-time enterprise.

IBM kicked off Lotusphere 2007, a five-day conference with nearly 7,000 attendees and a set of announcements that dramatically expands Lotus’ collaboration portfolio. The main announcements include:

IBM Lotus Connections–the industry’s first business-ready social software platform.

IBM Lotus Quickr–a new Web 2.0 collaborative content platform offering.

IBM Lotus Sametime 7.5.1–featuring expanded unified communications capabilities and increased interoperability with Microsoft software.

In addition, IBM will demonstrate IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8 and announce the product’s open beta program starting this February. The new Lotus Notes client includes major upgrades to core applications and expanded integration with the new collaboration tools announced today. New to Lotusphere this year is the introduction of a Lotusphere Complex in Second Life, marking the first time IBM has run a customer conference simultaneously in both the real and virtual worlds. By visiting the Lotusphere Complex in Second Life–which IBM will launch on Tuesday, January 23–avatars can interact with Lotus experts, learn about software solutions, and experience Lotusphere from wherever they are.

Knocking on the door of its competition at the opening of their annual user event, Microsoft announced new tools to help IBM Lotus Notes/Domino users migrate to the Microsoft fold. At the kickoff of IBM’s annual Lotusphere conference in Orlando, Fla., Microsoft announced a series of tools to help Lotus Notes/Domino customers take advantage of the unified communication and collaboration innovations that are being delivered as part of the recently released Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, the 2007 Microsoft Office system and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 technologies, said Elisa Graceffo, group product manager of Microsoft’s Office Business Platform Group.

And you thought social networking was all about text-messaging among bored teenagers. IBM has another take on it. Today the company plans to announce a set of social software tools that will bring the kind of blogging, idea sharing, and war-story swapping typically associated with MySpace and Facebook, the social networking sites popular among teenagers and college students, to the corporate world. Called Lotus Connections, the new software, expected later this year, will let employees set up virtual worlds in which they can meet like-minded colleagues within the company and exchange ideas with them, all in the name of improving productivity. And that’s just for starters.