IBM to Release Lotus Notes for iPhone… as a Web App?
August 9, 2008 by Erik MacKinnon
IBM has pulled the covers off of its upcoming webapp – dubbed “IBM Lotus iNotes™ software” or “iNotes” - with the goal of allowing you seamless access to your work’s Lotus Notes-based contacts, calendar and email through your iPhone’s web browser.
The only question I have is… why a webapp? With the industry-standard Microsoft Exchange integrated with the Apple iPhone at the firmware level, IBM’s capable engineers owe their clients at least a dedicated iPhone application. Why, you might ask? Simple: PUSH.
Back at WWDC in June, Apple announced that iPhone push notification for developers was coming in September. With this capability, any application (including those soon to be available in the App Store) would be able to have push notification (badges, sound alerts and text messages) that was delivered through Apple as an intermediary. Remember this slide from Steve’s keynote?
This marks the perfect opportunity for IBM to bring Lotus Notes’ utility on the iPhone as close to par with Microsoft’s as they are going to get. IBM could easily develop email notification and calendar notification that would push down to Lotus iNotes through Apple’s Push Notification Service. You’d get a message on your iPhone (similar to the one in the slide above) notifying you of some short key details, and an action button (i.e. “Reply”) which will launch the application.
Spending time and resources developing Lotus iNotes as a webapp – which can only be accessed through iPhone Safari and has no notification ability at all – is virtually useless at this point. Microsoft Exchange can push contacts, calendars and email down to an iPhone instantly and it takes about 60 seconds to configure out of the box. This almost feels like IBM is chucking a bone to their Lotus Notes customers.
Having said that – the interface does look very slick for a webapp. Here are a couple of screenshots from IBM’s Lotus Domino page on iNotes:
IBM could be doing much better, but as Lotus Notes users currently have no way to easily access their work data through their iPhones, I suppose it’s a start. Hopefully IBM will see the light once the Push Notification Service-enabled firmware drops and they see how useful this utility can be.
What are your thoughts? Are you a Notes user at work and excited for this? Do you care? Let us know in the comments.
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