LOTUS CEO DEFINES NEXT GENERATION TECHNOLOGIES TO EXTEND COLLABORATION THROUGH KNOWLEDGE SHARING.

Lotus Development Corp. President and CEO, Al Zollar, last week opened Lotusphere Europe 2000 with the company's vision of the next-generation advancements in collaboration through transparent knowledge sharing within and between organizations of all sizes.

Citing a broad range of Lotus technologies that extend collaboration, including the new K-station knowledge management portal, Sametime 2.0 for instant messaging and conferencing, QuickPlace Web-based teamware, and Mindspan solutions for e-learning, Zollar said that Lotus is singularly focused on making the gathering, storing and distribution of knowledge throughout organizations as transparent and ubiquitous as possible.

For example, Zollar explained how the very large purchases that characterize Business-to-Business (B2B) selling require the same online relationships as traditional face-to-face negotiations and commerce. This, in turn, requires sharing knowledge on multiple levels in as transparent a manner as occurs through personal interactions, he added. "A typical B2B transaction is US $7,500 .... 100 times larger than a typical B2C (Business-to-Consumer) transaction. It's not only more money, it's also a complex process .... one that involves contracts, negotiations and teams of people, often in different places and on different computing platforms. Products like Lotus QuickPlace 2.0 and Lotus Sametime 2.0 are highly effective ways to manage that process and to enable these people to work as one."

Zollar told the audience of more than 5,000 Lotus customers and partners that in today's online marketplaces, these interactions include finding the right product or service, matching buyers and sellers, negotiating contracts and terms, tracking orders and providing rapid and effective customer service.

Citing major global trends behind today's rapid and volatile market changes, such as increased telecommunications convergence, mergers and acquisitions and alignments of political and economic systems, Zollar said that another major goal at Lotus is to help companies keep pace with change by closing what he termed, "knowledge gaps." "In transitioning from the old to the new economy, many companies find that they can't communicate or learn quickly enough, that they don't have enough talent to go around and that they are unable to put the know-how they do have to work in fast-moving situations. This 'knowledge gap' can be closed with Lotus solutions that accelerate the rate of learning through better communications, collaborative learning and more effective knowledge management."

Lotusphere Europe 2000, which runs through September 29th, provides attendees with a forum for sharing technical and business knowledge about their successful implementations of solutions from Lotus Development Corp. and its alliance partners around the world. The conference also showcases hundreds of Lotus and Lotus Alliance Partners' solutions for e-business and collaborative commerce in the Lotusphere Europe 2000 Exhibition Hall.