Lotus Announces InterNotes Product Line Provides Worldwide Information and Application Integration Between Lotus Notes and the Internet

Business Wire, Jan 23, 1995

ORLANDO, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 23, 1995--Lotus Development Corp. today announced InterNotes, a new product line that integrates Lotus Notes, the industry standard groupware platform, with popular Internet applications such as the World Wide Web (WWW) and Usenet News. InterNotes will enable Notes users to publish Notes applications to the Internet and to access Internet information directly from within Notes.

The first two InterNotes products are the InterNotes Web Publisher and InterNotes News. The InterNotes Web Publisher enables users to publish public information created in Notes on the Web for access by NCSA Mosaic, Netscape or other WWW browsers. InterNotes News provides Notes users with seamless, bi-directional access to the Internet Usenet News from Notes.

InterNotes Web Publisher Provides Easy Global Access to Notes Information

The InterNotes Web Publisher enables users to publish Notes information and applications to more than 2 million users of the World Wide Web, one of today's fastest growing Internet services. By translating Notes documents and databases into Hypertext Mark-up Language (HTML), the format used by standard Web browsers, the InterNotes Web Publisher makes Notes information easily accessible to Web users. In addition to converting standard Notes documents, the InterNotes Web Publisher automatically creates HTML pages of Notes views to create an easy way for browsers to navigate among documents on the Web site. Configuration and management tools also are included with the InterNotes Web Publisher to simplify the process of creating and maintaining a Web Server.

"The InterNotes Web Publisher is way cool as it leverages Notes' collaborative authoring environment -- providing a highly efficient way to manage Web sites. In essence, InterNotes brings the power of Notes right to the Internet," said John Landry, senior vice president of the Lotus Communications Business Group and chief technology officer. "Notes offers a rich environment for improving business processes. AT&T Network Notes is a robust vehicle for deploying inter-enterprise Notes applications. And, InterNotes further extends Notes to millions of Web users on the information superhighway. Taken together, businesses will be able to create a range of strategic groupware applications that combine public access with a secure back-end."

"InterNotes is an easy and secure alternative to managing, accessing and distributing information on the Internet. By acting as a bridge or facilitator to the Internet, InterNotes capitalizes on Notes' core technology to provide managed access to the most popular Internet offerings," said Judith Rosall, vice president of Market Research, The Radicati Group.

"Our biggest challenge in fielding a Web server is that no single person within our organization owns all the information that we want to publish," said Mary Ayala-Bush, principal technologist, American Airlines. "The InterNotes Web Publisher's secure coordination of multiple authors, automatic HTML conversion and link management, and simple document and link updating are a marked contrast to the labor-intensive manual alternatives. It lets us leverage our Notes investments to reach new channels and markets."

InterNotes News Brings Internet Usenet News into Notes

InterNotes News is a Notes server-based application which allows users to exchange Usenet News articles between Notes and UNIX news servers using the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP). This gives Notes users a secure and easy way to access and participate in Usenet News from the Notes environment. By reading news articles from Notes, users can leverage key Notes functionality, including hierarchical views of discussion threads, full text search and multiple indexed views of the news articles. Additionally, Notes users can participate in Usenet News by posting a response from Notes or by replying directly to the author using Internet (SMTP) mail.

InterNotes News utilizes a centralized Notes configuration database to simplify configuration and administration, allowing administrators and users to subscribe to individual Usenet News groups, create customized Notes news databases and control news replication.

Lotus Opens Web Site

Lotus also announced today the opening of its Web site (http://www.lotus.com), a live R&D project created and managed with a beta copy of the InterNotes Web Publisher. The site will offer a range of Lotus information, including the more than 100 announcements made at Lotusphere today by Lotus and Lotus Business Partners; Lotus' worldwide sales office directory; Lotus ScreenCam demos; and the Lotus Notes Internet Cookbook, which provides in-depth tutorials on how to leverage Notes and Internet connectivity. For example, InterNotes Cookbook users can learn about Notes' current Internet support, which includes the ability to replicate Notes databases across the Internet via native TCP/IP support and the ability to exchange e-mail messages via the Lotus cc:Mail and Notes SMTP gateways. Additional information will be available on an ongoing basis.