All about the Lotus Foundations Start 1.2 Beta Program

I was quite delighted to have few of you inquire in regards to the upcoming beta program, specifically right after the tweet last night. As promised, it is my pleasure to present the details here. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment. I’ll have the team monitor this post.

The Foundations Team would like to announce the availability of the IBM Lotus Foundations Start V1.2 closed beta program. Since its a closed beta, A review board team will assess the nominations forms and notify those approved for participation.

We are looking for Business Partners that are interested in deploying the beta level program on non-production environments, test-drive new upcoming capabilities and provide feedback. The ideal candidate has some familiarity with the Lotus Foundations and/or Lotus Domino offerings, have an application they would like to enable/support on the Lotus Foundations Start platform and/or have a business opportunity for Lotus Foundations Start.

This will be a closed Beta program for a limited number of participants. Business Partners are invited to nominate themselves or be nominated by an IBMer for this early release program by November 15, 2009.

Upon acceptance into the beta program IBM will supply each participant:

• List of new/enhanced features in beta release
• Beta code when available
• Beta preview documentation
• Bug reporting mechanism

Please note that over the course of preparing the product for general availability, the packaging, installation and features of Lotus Foundations Start may change from what was experienced in the beta program.

Key Dates

These are planned dates and are subject to change.
Nominations required by	15 November 2009
Nominations results communicated	18 November 2009
Program Kick-off Web Conferences	*W/C 30 November 2009
Program Start	01 December 2009

_{*W/C = week commencing}

Nomination Process

To be considered for participation in this early release program, please complete and submit a nomination form, by following the applicable URL below:

Business Partners self-nomination: Click here for nomination form (requires IBM ID).

If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment or message me directly.

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!