I was just reading Jens Bruntt's blog entry from last week, "Android synci'ing PIM with Lotus Traveler: TouchDown". This is just days after I held an internal review to discuss our plans for Lotus Notes Traveler in 8.5.2 and beyond. I can't blog those plans yet, but a portion of the discussion covered what our plans should be for support for Notes Traveler on Android-based devices.
The philosophy with Lotus Notes Traveler has been to leverage built-in capabilities on the devices that are supported. In some cases, we install a small shim program to handle communications to Domino, but we don't build mail/calendar/contacts applications. For the Apple iPhone, we use the native experience 100% (though in the future, we may build add-ons that enhance the built-in capabilities).
Android-based phones present a different challenge. The base operating system has only just added an an "Exchange" (ActiveSync) mail client in the 2.0 SDK. More to the point, since Android is an open platform, we will see different device manufacturers elect to include or exclude different components from their implementations, or choose to build their own, or implement third-party, solutions for different functionality. There's also a gap in that the base 2.0 Android kit does not include a calendar implementation, though presumably most device manufacturers will include a calendar component on their devices.
Jens's blog entry talks about a third-party Android product that implements email, calendar, and contacts for "Exchange". Jens has not tried the product but one of the comments on his site says "it works!". This is good news and another testimonial to the Notes Traveler 8.5.1 implementation, even though obviously this won't be an officially-supported configuration.
At any rate, it looks like Android's momentum is increasing -- Gartner predicts that Android will be the #2 mobile phone operating system by 2012, behind Symbian. (Blackberry and iPhone follow in 3rd and 4th...and Windows Mobile is in 5th and declining. Some are even writing Windows Mobile off) Given that, I want to make sure that we bring Notes Traveler to the Android sooner rather than later. The problem is that the different implementations, distributions, and capabilities are going to make this much more difficult than other mobile platforms we support. Microsoft is facing the same challenge for Exchange -- for a change, they are not the first and default experience in a mobile operating system. Calendar especially looks like a place where there will be little consistency. We're working on some options now, but it's a good opportunity to ask -- what would you like to see for Android?
Techworld: Home grown eMed app gets Web 2.0 refresh
Tue, Mar 16th 2010 7:54a Ed Brill A story that will surprise from down under...The University of NSW Faculty of Medicine has developed an in-house student management system, dubbed eMed, which has remained cost competitive with commercial software for seven years and is now being extended into the Web 2.0 paradigm. As the core internal undergraduate application for some 1500 students across six years, eMed has iterated through several major releases. IT manager Luc Betbeder said there was nothing that "spoke our language [read] Keywords: admin
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Upcoming Lotus Education online training webinars: XPages, composite apps, upgrading
Sun, Mar 14th 2010 10:50p Ed Brill Lotus Education is trying something new -- in-depth, detailed training classes delivered as live online webinars. The cost to attend is fairly inexpensive, yet the benefit is direct access to the experts and practitioners from across IBM Lotus to capture their real-world experiences. Four such webinars are scheduled, follow the links for details: STM01 -- Demystifying Sametime 8.5 Webinar â¨When : Thursday March 25th, 11am -- 2:30pm EST â¨Speakers : Wes Morgan, Michael Herring, [read] Keywords: domino
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My week in Spain for LCTY
Sat, Mar 13th 2010 6:52p Ed Brill It's all over but the frequent flyer mile posting -- I'm back from a very quick tour of Lotusphere Comes to You in Madrid and Barcelona. Family commitments drove me to rush right back from Barcelona, one of my favorite cities in the world, but it was still a great week and only makes me want to return sooner rather than later. The IBM Spain team put together two excellent LCTY events this past week. Both were well-organized, professionally-run, and had great food and venues. More important [read] Keywords: collaboration
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Check out a new developerWorks article about Notes Traveler 8.5.1 performance
Sat, Mar 13th 2010 6:46p Ed Brill Some useful tips on configuring Lotus Notes Traveler in your 8.5.1 environment, and how well it works...This article reports IBM® Lotus® Notes® Traveler 8.5.1 performance results for Microsoft® Windows® 64-bit operating systems. In addition, it compares the performances of Lotus Notes Traveler 8.5 (64-bit) server and IBM Lotus Notes Traveler 8.5.1 (64-bit) server. Link: ibm.com developerWorks: IBM Lotus Notes Traveler 8.5.1 performance > (Thanks, Jan) [read] Keywords: ibm
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Alistair Rennie podcast on LotusUserGroup.org
Mon, Mar 8th 2010 4:30p Ed Brill Alistair Rennie has been the general manager of Lotus software for about sixty days. In this podcast, recorded last week, Alistair debriefs on Lotusphere, talks about Project Vulcan, and looks ahead in the collaboration and productivity market. Well worth a 20 minute listen.LotusUserGroup.org caught up with Alistair Rennie, General Manager of Lotus Software at IBM, and we recorded the whole conversation for you to hear. Listen in to hear what he finds matters most in his new position and what [read] Keywords: collaboration
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Off to Spain
Sun, Mar 7th 2010 3:00p Ed Brill Near as I can tell, it has been more than seven years since I was last in Spain. Madrid, more like ten years. I barely had discovered blogging at the time of my last visit. As such, I can't wait to get there tomorrow morning and start the day with some churros y chocolate. The Lotusphere Comes to You events are on Tuesday in Madrid and Thursday in Barcelona. I agreed, as blogged earlier, to deliver my presentation en español. While I studied Spanish in high school and college, it has b [read] Keywords: ibm
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