iPhone in the Enterprise: Lotus iNotes Ultralite
Back in January, we reported that IBM had plans to bring the Lotus Notes groupware application to the iPhone platform. Well, it's happened! Big Blue is announcing the availability of iNotes Ultralite, an iPhone portal to Lotus Notes that is available for free for anyone with a Lotus Notes license. In case you're wondering, there are currently about 140 million people worldwide who use Notes for their email, calendaring, and contacts.
IBM is always concerned about data security for its customers, and as such they decided to make iNotes Ultralite a web app rather than a native iPhone application. IBM felt it was important to customers to insure that all communications between the iPhone and Lotus Domino server be encrypted, and that no data remain on the device in case it was lost or stolen.
iNotes Ulitralite provides yet another foothold in the enterprise market for Apple.
[Via New York Times Technology blog]
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Back in January, we reported that IBM had plans to bring the Lotus Notes groupware application to the iPhone platform. Well, it's happened!...
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There are plenty of other ways to get your Lotus Notes mail, calendar and contacts on your iPhone. Tons of us are blogging about it (mine is at http://dominoiphone.wordpress.com). No, none of them are as seamless as if you were running Exchange and EAS, but it's doable.
For the record, we are not yet running 8.0.2, so I cannot comment on how this works in production. However, I have an account at Lotus Greenhouse (greenhouse.lotus.com) and I have used iNotes Ultralite there on my iPhone, and it's not bad.
In order to have better integration with the native apps, Apple either needs to greatly expand the capabilities of the SDK or get to working with IBM's Domino Traveler protocol.
Nice to see the iPhone getting ready for Enterprise finally......
October 01 2008 at 3:01 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyThe reason this is implemented as a browser application has got nothing to do with security. There are technical limitations with the published iphone sdk that make implementing a native application not feasible. These links explain it somewhat:
http://www.edbrill.com/ebrill/edbrill.nsf/dx/and-a-last-word-on-the-notesiphone-thing
http://www.lotus911.com/nathan/escape.nsf/d6plinks/NTFN-7FGKUB
I've used this web app and it is actually a poor implementation and simply a jazzed up webmail client accessed via safari.
There is no access to the corporate address book, and you can not interact fully with your calendar.
I know IBM are working on a native app so lets hope it comes soon
What would be, in this case, the difference in functionality between a webapp and a native app?
September 30 2008 at 6:10 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyIt'd be more secure to use a native app. With a web app, the caching behavior of the browser is unpredictable. It might be saving all sorts of secret information. With a native app, you can control that - and provide a better user experience.
Sounds like an excuse to me.
Howard Stern would love this thing...supposedly his whole office uses lotus notes...maybe he'll get one now and get rid of his ancient treo
September 30 2008 at 2:47 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyWhere is the link for the web 2.0 page? I have both lotus and an iPhone.
September 30 2008 at 2:29 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyWhat a load of rubbish.
What this means is that my company HAS to implement the latest (or at least newer) version of Domino, followed by implementing an iPhone portal for those users who choose to personally buy and use an iPhone. No chance.
If IBM had released a TRUE iPhone client then we might be OK (as it is I can access Lotus via the webmail system - though of course that doesn't work 100% as it requires Java).
Thanks IBM - for nothing !!
We are stuck in a similar boat although with the other ancient dreadnought: Oracle. We really could use an Oracle Calendar app. Even Oracle Devs themselves are screaming out for one, but Oracle does not want to budge (yet).
September 30 2008 at 3:08 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyHow could IBM have done this? The SDK doesn't allow access to anything other than contacts. Again, there are plenty of other ways to integrate with Domino while we're all waiting for an enterprise worthy solution.
October 13 2008 at 11:30 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyThis is great news. I can't wait until my company loads the correct version on the server so I can try it.
Go to http://greenhouse.lotus.com and sign up for a demo account. Then show it to your admins and tell them that this is why they need to go to 8.0.2.
October 12 2008 at 9:05 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyUhh, no app store worries. unfortunately (or fortunately), this is a web app. See the mobile safari bookmark, etc icons at the bottom of the screenshot? Personally, this is really lame but I can understand that IBM basically has no incentive to support iPhone, it's not like adding that feature will drive sales of Domino/Notes, rather more likely to drive sales of iPhones...
September 30 2008 at 2:11 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyWhat is the web address for the iphone link? I want to try it. Please help
September 30 2008 at 3:01 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyHot Apps on TUAW
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