Domino.Doc died at Lotusphere 2009. The idea probably is that customers now move to Sharepoint and come back to Lotus preying for Connections. That is a great strategy.
XPages will be in 8.5.1 on the client (very nice).
IBM now can do Google too. LotusLive.com is live and IBM now competes with Windows Live and / or Google Apps. Lotus Live, what a great name. At least Apple did it worse calling their stuff Windows Mobile Me.
I am sceptical that this will work but IBM always had some projects running to burn their money.
I am a bit shocked what comes out of the 1 billion dollar investment in IBM Lotus Sametime but at least they are pimping mobile devices (Blackberry) to enlighten decision makers. It is an expensive but promising strategy.
Unfortunately no iPhone announcement at Lotusphere 2009 but maybe it makes sense to wait what happens with Steve Jobs!? Really, I have absolutely no idea why IBM is able to completely ignore this area.*
IBM now has an App Store too called Smart Market. It offers IBM and Business Partner products. So far it is a great place for evaluating software you have never heard before but maybe this will work when more IBM business partners jump on the boat!? The products that I took for a test ride all were quite expansive and deeply hidden (no screenshots, demos only after sales contacting sales aso).
Parts of the site were slow. No surprise as IBM again is putting their Intranet 2.0 software Lotus Connections on the web. Ok I have heard that more than 40.000 companies already bought that piece of xxxx software but does it really have to be taken on the web? It wasn't designed to work there, at least it feels like that.
IBM is now buying into OpenNTF. That is a good story and Niklas Heidloff already has some details. I do really like the idea but would prefer that IBM ships a Wiki with the Domino product line (just a Wiki, everything else they can put on OpenNTF). I work with very conservative companies that don't care much about stuff like Connections or Sametime but they do love Wikis. And the Wikis they love all look like MediaWiki / Wikipedia. I know that many people like OpenNTF but it doesn't work well for me. I cannot rely on a product that is developed in the spare time of others and too difficult to keep it running myself. MediaWiki is free too but it runs the Wikipedia website.
What I would prefer is more software in the 100$ category and a working system to ask for enhancements, maybe even as a payable service.
So far this is neither OpenNTF nor the Smart Market.
I am a but worried that now as all good parts of IBM Workplace have been morphed into Domino IBM development run out of ideas. So far Lotusphere had not much to say about what is coming Next.
By the way NSF2DB2 (the use of DB/2 as a datastore for Domino) is dead too. I am one of the little people who think that SQL would have been a good addition for Domino but unfortunately it didn't work.
Well at least L2009 didn't announce something that is going to replace Notes and Domino again. I have heard lot's of me-too stuff and little innovation but nothing that I worry about (maybe the .Doc announcement but it was dead anyway). If this is everything IBM is in danger that the after Sphere events morph into a Lotusphere yawns to You series.
*Update:On Wednesday IBM announced that Lotus Traveller will get iPhone Support this year and that IBM is going to license Active Sync from Microsoft to make it happen. I did not expect from IBM to go that far and I must say that I am pleasantly surprised. I do not own an iPhone (and don't want one) but I have seen a lot of pressure in Domino shops to make it happen.