Lotus launches new Smartsuite

Edition is just a ?stop-gap' says user group

Lotus has unveiled its Smartsuite millennium edition and released further details of the next major version of its Domino Web server and Notes client, writes Nick Farrell. Available in Europe next month, the Smartsuite office automation suite will feature integrated speech recognition capabilities for the 1-2-3 spreadsheet and other applications and bundling of Lotus Mail email, Netscape Navigator 4.0 and Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0. Grant Pearson, spokesman for the Lotus user group complained of Lotus? failure to hold off Microsoft?s ever-growing application market dominance, and said that the launch was a stop-gap until Lotus can launch its e-Suite Java version of Smartsuite. ?Perhaps the best thing that can be said about it is that you can use the new Smartsuite to open a Microsoft Word 7 document ? and save it as a Microsoft Word 7 document,? added Pearson. Domino 5.0 looks set to include technology inherited through Lotus? acquisition of real-time applications developers Ubique and Databeam. Under the brand Sametime, the technologies will enable synchronous real-time communications between a Notes Client and Domino.