Lotus Foundations 1.1 gets the lovin’

After the announcement of Lotus Foundations Start 1.1 and Branch Office 1.1 , I purposely delayed writing about the launch as I wanted to gauge community’s feedback on the release.  I am very proud to say that Lotus Foundations v1.1 has been a great hit with the partners and our clients. Some of the excerpts for your reading pleasure.

Ray Davies describes it in a short and sweet way,

Lotus Foundations is the best thing since sliced bread if you like bread!

Scott Hooks talked about it at BleedYellow.com .

The release of Lotus Foundations 1.1 finally delivers the ability to add Foundations to an existing Domino environment and/or add additional Domino servers to allow distributed computing, instant messaging, Blackberry, and more. It also adds support for VMWare 2.0, which allows multiple virtual servers, including Windows servers and applications, to be run from one physical server, and supposedly Windows servers can perform better on the Foundations VM than they do natively on Wintel hardware.

This release also allows Lotus 911′s TruePresence add-on for Lotus Foundations to extend all of these capabilities by adding a Voice-Over-IP (VOIP) telephone PBX that is integrated with Notes and Sametime, meaning that you can now run all of your communications tools, including a turn-key phone system, from one easily-managed, self-healing server.

Stuart McIntyre writes,

1) With Lotus Foundations Start 1.1, you get the ability to run not only Linux applications on the in-built Foundations OS, but also any application that runs on Windows or other Linux distributions/appliances. Support for VMware Server 2.0 is provided in both Foundations Start 1.1 and Foundations Branch Office 1.1 so that you can protect your existing appliance investment with an experience that is superior to running applications on a native Windows machine. You benefit from the stability of a Linux-based system while enjoying the ability to support the wide array of Microsoft Windows-based applications. Running Microsoft Windows applications on a virtual machine represents a significant improvement over traditional Microsoft Windows based x86 platforms. (I’m really looking forward to using Foundations Start as a base for Lotus Connections and Quickr deployments now we have this functionality…)

2) Lotus Foundations Start 1.1 supports distributed deployment of Lotus Foundations Start services in multiple locations – an improvement over the single-server model of 1.0. This means that Lotus Foundations Start deployments in two locations can be aware of each other and be able to share data and users between them. Lotus Domino is not a prerequisite for this offering. Secondly, Lotus Foundations Branch Office supports deployment of Lotus Foundations Start as a branch office solution for organisations with existing Lotus Domino infrastructure at the head office. Administration of the Domino server within the branch office can be done following existing processes, and using existing Domino administration tools. So now Foundations can provide your organisation with an easy-to-manage and easy-to-deploy solution for remote offices.

These are excellent improvements to the Foundations product line. If you haven’t taken a closer look at Foundations so far, it’s time to do so.

A quick search on twitter for Foundations 1.1 yeilded few other conversations like,

@stuartmcintyre : @gravescj Completely agree – LOtus Foundations 1.1 is *such* a step forward, it really does make it perfect for so many SMBs
@collabmatters : Just blogged: Lotus Foundations Start 1.1 and Branch Office 1.1 released – now to get Connections on there!
@we4it : IBM hat gestern Lotus Foundations 1.1 freigegeben. Hier die offizielle Ankündigung: http://is.gd/oQg2
@elissachan : Lotus Foundations Start v1.1 and Lotus Foundations Branch Office 1.1 are NOW AVAILABLE..!!
@Africanjoe : IBM Lotus Foundations – not only for very small Companies!

Lotus Foundations and Xerox, a match made in heaven!

At the Lotusphere lab event tonight, the Lotus Foundations team held a preview event for Lotus Evangelists like yourself to showcase the limitless possibilities of Lotus Foundations in a small to medium sized business environments (SMBs). One thing you might notice at this event is how much attention Lotus Foundations is getting these days from the the business partner community.

Partners like Lotus 911, Research In Motion (the makers of Blackberry devices), and ShoreTel have been evaluating the platform’s functionality and ease-of-use, and believe it a good platform to reach the SMB market.

At the lab tonight, engineers at IBM and Xerox demonstrated Lotus Foundations ability to enable Xerox’s multi-function printing devices to empower ISVs and VARs to offer better support to the SMB sector.

“With Lotus Foundations, IBM has a simple and secure platform that supports document solutions that involve encoded and image information and is ideal to simply SMB business processes. Combine Foundations and EIP and you will have a complete collaboration infrastructure in which solutions can be prototyped, developed quickly to the SMB market.”

To demonstrate this, Xerox engineers showcased a MFP solution to the blogging community that automatically converted a paper document into a Lotus Symphony document in a matter of few seconds! The solution was able to distinguish charts from data and even formatted it properly. Imagine the possibility of being able to use your multi-function printing devices to scan documents over a network and store it digitally in a secure Lotus Foundations network!

I kid you not, this prototype solution was a immediate hit among the community present who were blogging the event live on their blogs and twitter accounts.

"I just saw someone from Xerox scan in a paper document and it automatically showed up on his screen at his desktop as a Symphony spreadsheet ” – Erica Topolski

“Pardon my language but that is f$#R%#$ awesome!” – Nathon Freeman

“Dude this demo is truly kickass!” – John Rolling

Caleb Barlow, executive for Lotus Foundations, was also excited to announce the wide availability of a VMWare virtualization solution on the platform to allow SMB clients to take advantage of a wide range of applications on Microsoft Windows as well. The VMWare solution is available now for everyone!

Look out for more exciting news tonight about the upcoming Lotus Foundations Branch Office Edition.