Pace 92 PG WEEKNAPPLIGATION DEVELOPMENT, APPLIED INTELLIGENCE — Lotus Hollows Strategy of Solving Functionality Problems Second of a sertes of articles on the strategic directions that Lotus Develop- ment Corp. is pursuing and the significance of those strate- gtes to organiza- ttons planning Jor the 19905. Due largely to the astounding success of 1-2-3, Lotus is often characterized as a one-product, compa- ny. Even those in the industry who rec- ognize that Lotus has significant prod- ucts in other categories often fail to re- alize the extent, of market, penetration achieved by Lotus products. in addition to its famous 1-2-3, Lotus has products specializing in database work, text management, graphics, utili- tes and word processing. | Yet what.s interesting about these products is not how they're ranked in their respective categories, but, their de- velopment, employing several unigue features, to solve functionality problems. In the realm of 1-2-3, of course, there is an interesting trend. Release 2.2 of 1-2-3 was announced as a new product during the development of release 3.0. Release 2.2 was developed on the foundation o£ release 2.01—that is, its an assembler code product. It of- fers features that have been on the wish list of many customers for a long time. Linking of cells between files, an Undo command, greatly improved graphing ca- pabilities, 100 percent. compatibility with release 2.01 worksheets, macros and add- ins attest to the degree of importance it represents as an improvement over 2.01. Release 2.2 runs on 8086 and 8088 ma- iopr with the same speed as release Release 3.0, which dominated the news within the industry for some time, offers a new level of power and fea- sales, primarily to Microsoft Excel, and that a mixed-vendor spreadsheet envi- ronment will exist in many organiza: tions. Mixed-spreadsheet, environments don't pose major problems as long as work groups are consistent in their use of products and applications. Virtually every product provides worksheet; file compatibility or transfer to standard 1-2-3 file format, sustaining and enhanc- ing desktop operations. It's no secret that desktop computers will play an important role in the com- puterized corporation of the future. Many organizations will choose to imple- ment enterprise information systems, not only be available, they will provide such a powerful competitive advantage that most organizations won't be able to ignore them. It's in this context that Lo- tus promises to provide direction to move from existing spreadsheet applica- tions to enterprise applications. In April 1987, Lotus unveiled a num- ber of plans for future releases. Release 3 was just, one of the many new prod- ucts mentioned. Lotus 1-2-3/M, 1-2-3/G, Symphony 2.0 Plus and Lotus/DBMS were included. Later there were an- nouncements of the joint development plan with Digital Eguipment Corp.; 1-2-3 for the Macintosh; joint development ities shared between Lotus and IBM, an allijance that provides Lotus with valu- able access to mainframe markets. 1-2 3/M will be developed as a Systems Ap plication Architecture (SAA)-compliant product. As such, it will be well posi- tioned for large, multiplatform coopera- tive-processing applications. Many changes have occurred since the concept of 1-2-3 on a mainframe went into development. The biggest change is the significant role that networks will play in corporate computing. Even with large PC LAN environments, 1-2-3/M on the mainframe will still be an important product, because many corporations will which link operational data to financial with Sun; and what is now called The Computetized Corporation of the, Futute Integrated Tools Will Automate Data Processi ne and Data Access iti the Client-Server .., prah Configuration Tedi ib go nači upre s | Setver fersA PS/2 O € SELO (Externai LAN) o me aii Va iji REL k EU ii pesi N Me File (> K Server : three-dimensionality with 256 žive x? RENEJA carin spreadsheets in one file, backward com- | k | | Soejiroje sr ; patibility with izo] and 2.2 file links, ja WE | IRRESO | ramatically improved graphing and KURJENN RE ae vezi kje ed when installed under Enterprise environments will provide such an advantage that price. Release 50) regulres a 286 with most firms won't be able to ignore them. Lotus promises to : | | 4 or vatel PE | h | . w | La H | svit LM byte ot RAM k pone 286 —— help move from existing spreadsheet applications to them. standard base level machine, and by the SRE Li ZA pe a Z EIUU chines worldwide than 8086s and 8099« pi ii, | | | sd MUCE Nastane sira sred otel Sie models and present the results using Datalens, a new application-program- release aci ofulsške, guery and graphic front ends. : ming interface. ent-server configuration shown Lotus responded to criticism about in the figure le či urati a of cooperative- — . failure to meet the delivery dates for | these products by withholding comment. Until products are shipped and the at- vs ee tribut« la, data la aocegeeci -. mosphere eases, the silence is expected Pepe ez A complete portfolio of na to continue. After the logjam of current exploiting the power of re] tools to develop ol li la re — releases is broken, a less restricted com- pak overly concerned with kas sne a ofTered today by loča a oše ge lire pra an 9! relense 3.0. A more important jes her vendor. — | k, on can be expected was the ovallability of (ene rni lssue— Today, enterprise april ( 1-2-3/M isa joint effort between Lotus sinetjona expected ka rja, pleced together k are and IBM. It will run under the VM and se biro, Ča kel dla 29 vin rv obut usi are not Wwel] inte. | ato Obe tine system. In addlton, ee go are new grated application environnemc Uje Č under OS/400. Lotus. -2-3/M will be an "4% product with marketing responsibil- | a s A | continue to use mainframes in their cross-platform strategy. Dealing with Unstructured Data Within any organization, unstructured ideas and text are managed and manip- ulated more often than structured data. | Examples would inchude the manage- | ment of E-mail, to-do lists, correspon: lu: dence files and general information J databases. The unstructured nature of the information has traditionally made |. it difficult to mf obn applications | As a result, large (and vital) applica- tion domains have been ignored within major corporations. This application area will be supported more effectively in the future through the efforts of or- ganizations like Lotus, products like Agenda, the study of work habits and the understanding of how ideas are managed and manipulated. The introduction of Agenda in many respects was the commencement of a new software category: personal infor- mation managers (PIMs). Lotus has mar- | keted Agenda aggressively with some- —, W' what modest: results. One reason is that. | Agenda, though extremely powerful, re- | guires considerable learning and appli- cations development to be fully exploit- . // ed. Unless development: resources or use- ||! ful templates are available, this growth | will continue to be slow. With the migration of LAN work: group environments, it's likely that Notes, a group-productivity product un- der development, will be far better re- ceived. Notes will be in a struc- tured manner where project manage- ment, scheduling and sharing of . information within a group are done. Major competition in this category ex- ists with Symantec's GrandView, Persoft's IZE, Broderbund's MemoryMate and others. Next week TU discuss Lotus products geared to the spreadsheet, database, text-management, graphics and word- processing markets. 8 To learn more about the subject of these articles, please call The James Martin Report, an information service updated guarterly, at (800) 242-1240. 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