IBM Workplace is a discontinued a brand of

collaborative software Collaborative software or groupware is application software designed to help people working on a common task to attain their goals. One of the earliest definitions of groupware is "intentional group processes plus software to support them". As re ...

applications from IBM's

Lotus Software Lotus Software (called Lotus Development Corporation before its acquisition by IBM) was an American software company based in Massachusetts; it was "offloaded" to India's HCL Technologies in 2018. Lotus is most commonly known for the Lotus 1-2- ...

division. It was intended to be the next generation of collaboration software that would work with IBM's

Java EE Jakarta EE, formerly Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) and Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE), is a set of specifications, extending Java SE with specifications for enterprise features such as distributed computing and web se ...

-based

WebSphere Portal WebSphere Portal is an enterprise software used to build and manage web portals. It provides access to web content and applications, while delivering personalized experiences for users. The WebSphere Portal package is a component of WebSphere app ...

server software. Introduced in 2003, the brand was largely disbanded by 2007, with its core technologies and many of its products rebranded as Lotus or

WebSphere IBM WebSphere refers to a brand of proprietary computer software products in the genre of enterprise software known as "application and integration middleware". These software products are used by end-users to create and integrate applications w ...

History

In 2002 at

Lotusphere Lotusphere was an American annual conference hosted by Lotus Software (which later became an IBM software brand) from 1993 to 2017. In 2013, Lotusphere was re-branded as IBM Connect. Except for the first conference, which took place in December 19 ...

, IBM's annual conference for Lotus customers, IBM's Lotus division announced its Java EE-based "NextGen" initiative. This became the Workplace brand, which IBM first introduced at

2003. The first Workplace product is Workplace Messaging, a lightweight e-mail solution. More Workplace applications were introduced later, such as instant messaging and document management. In 2004, Workplace 2.0 was released, to run inside of a desktop

rich client In computer networking, a rich client (also called heavy, fat or thick client) is a computer (a "client" in client–server network architecture) that typically provides rich functionality independent of the central server. This kind of computer ...

and in a web browser. Because the goal of Workplace largely overlapped IBM's existing

Lotus Notes HCL Notes (formerly IBM Notes and Lotus Notes; see Branding below) and HCL Domino (formerly IBM Domino and Lotus Domino) are the client and server, respectively, of a collaborative client-server software platform formerly sold by IBM, now by HCL ...

and

Domino Dominoes is a family of tile-based games played with gaming pieces, commonly known as dominoes. Each domino is a rectangular tile, usually with a line dividing its face into two square ''ends''. Each end is marked with a number of spots (also ca ...

software, Notes and Domino customers became increasingly worried that Notes and Domino would either be discontinued or at best marginalized in favor of Workplace. To assuage this fear, IBM demonstrated in 2005 plans for integrating Workplace products with Notes and Domino products. IBM also started to include Lotus Notes and Domino within the "Workplace family". However, by 2007, most Workplace-branded products were being either discontinued (such as Workplace Messaging) or rebranded as Lotus or WebSphere. Mike Rhodin, general manager of Lotus Software, said that Workplace was a way to shake up the Lotus team into creating innovative technologies, and now that technologies had been created, they were being folded back into the core brands. Lotus also heard that having the Workplace brand in addition to its other brands was confusing.

Foundational Technologies

IBM Workplace Client Technology is a defunct application platform built on top of the

Eclipse An eclipse is an astronomical event that occurs when an astronomical object or spacecraft is temporarily obscured, by passing into the shadow of another body or by having another body pass between it and the viewer. This alignment of three ce ...

Rich Client Platform The rich client platform (RCP) is a programmer tool that makes it easier to integrate independent software components, where most of the data processing occurs on the client side. Overview RCP is a software consisting of the following components ...

(RCP) 3.0, which itself is written in

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...

. It provides tools to manage rich clients, such as synchronization so that clients can work with data offline, and provisioning so that servers can automatically push down the latest version of applications onto clients. Workplace Client Technology has evolved into IBM Lotus Expeditor.

Products

IBM Workplace Collaboration Services

IBM Workplace Collaboration Services is a single product providing a set of communication and collaboration tools such as

e-mail Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" mean ...

, calendaring and scheduling, awareness,

instant messaging Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat allowing real-time text transmission over the Internet or another computer network. Messages are typically transmitted between two or more parties, when each user inputs text and trigge ...

e-learning Educational technology (commonly abbreviated as edutech, or edtech) is the combined use of computer hardware, software, and educational theory and practice to facilitate learning. When referred to with its abbreviation, edtech, it often refer ...

, team spaces,

Web conferencing Web conferencing is used as an umbrella term for various types of online conferencing and collaborative services including webinars (web seminars), webcasts, and web meetings. Sometimes it may be used also in the more narrow sense of the peer-l ...

, and document and Web

content management Content management (CM) is a set of processes and technologies that supports the collection, managing, and publishing of information in any form or medium. When stored and accessed via computers, this information may be more specifically referre ...

. IBM ended support for Workplace Collaboration Services on September 30, 2009. It has been superseded largely by Lotus-branded products, such as

Notes Note, notes, or NOTE may refer to: Music and entertainment * Musical note, a pitched sound (or a symbol for a sound) in music * ''Notes'' (album), a 1987 album by Paul Bley and Paul Motian * ''Notes'', a common (yet unofficial) shortened version ...

, Sametime, Quickr, and

Connections Connections may refer to: Television * '' Connections: An Investigation into Organized Crime in Canada'', a documentary television series * ''Connections'' (British documentary), a documentary television series and book by science historian Jam ...

IBM Workplace Managed Client

IBM Workplace Managed Client is a server-managed rich client for IBM Workplace Collaboration Services. It has offline support for email, calendaring, scheduling, and document management. It has a plug-in for running Lotus Notes 7 applications, and a set of productivity tools for office documents, forked from OpenOffice.org 1.1.4 (the last version released under the

Sun Industry Standards Source License The Sun Industry Standards Source License (SISSL) is now a retired free and open source license, recognized as such by the Free Software Foundation and the Open Source Initiative (OSI). Under SISSL, developers could modify and distribute source co ...

). Version 2.6 was released January 23, 2006. Workplace Managed Client introduced a collaboration tool called Activity Explorer. It let teams of users manage projects via an object hierarchy, which groups together information objects (such as files, messages, and web links) that are related to an ongoing project and are shared among team members. Workplace Managed Client is no longer being actively marketed. It was superseded by

and

Symphony A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, most often for orchestra. Although the term has had many meanings from its origins in the ancient Greek era, by the late 18th century the word had taken on the meaning co ...

. Activity Explorer functionality is now part of

IBM Lotus Connections HCL Connections is a Web 2.0 enterprise social software application developed originally by IBM and acquired by HCL Technologies in July 2019. Connections is an enterprise-collaboration platform which helps teams work more efficiently. Connecti ...

IBM Workplace Forms

IBM Workplace Forms is a suite of products for developing and delivering data-driven, XML-based electronic forms to end-users. The product is now known as

IBM Lotus Forms IBM Forms is a suite of products by IBM's Lotus Software division that interact to develop and deliver data-driven, XML-based electronic forms (e-forms) to end-users. IBM Forms consists of a server, designer, and client viewer that enable creation, ...

References

External links

IBM Workplace Collaboration Services support

IBM Workplace Managed Client support
{{OpenOffice, state=collapsed Groupware

Workplace A workplace is a location where someone works, for their employer or themselves, a place of employment. Such a place can range from a home office to a large office building or factory. For industrialized societies, the workplace is one of ...

OpenOffice