Web meeting tools

IBM's Lotus software division is set to reveal additions to its Workplace family of collaboration tools on Wednesday. Lotus rolled out the Workplace brand earlier this year to unify a collection of products and services designed to help people work together more effectively. The foundation of Workplace is an instant messaging service based on Sun Microsystems' Java 2 Enterprise Edition. J2EE allowed Lotus to create a compact messaging framework that can be built into any environment where people can benefit from real-time communication, said Ken Bisconti, a vice president in IBM's Lotus division. "We made instant messaging a very integral component of Workplace," Bisconti said. ***

Lotus Development is adding instantaneous communication to its groupware product line. The company today shipped Sametime 1.0, a software tool for instant communication via the Web. Lotus said Sametime is a family of real-time communication and collaboration products that allow people to find others on the Web, regardless of their location, and to instantly communicate and share documents or other visual information. The real-time client-server package can be purchased as a standalone product or as a complement to Lotus Notes and Domino 4.6 and 5. Sametime Connect Client software, Sametime Server, and support for third parties will make up the new product offering from the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based software maker. Sametime server software is priced from $5,000; client access licenses are $20 per user, Lotus said. ***

IBM subsidiary Lotus Development is preparing to give away copies of its Internet-ready addition to Organizer 97 in a bid to defend its position in the maturing market for personal information managers. The software developer will demonstrate the product, called the Organizer 97 Web Calendar, next week at Internet Expo in Boston. By the middle of next month, it will be available free for download from the company's Web site, according to Jim Burnham, who is in charge of marketing the organizer for Lotus. The tool lets geographically dispersed end users share and update their calendars on the Web. A CGI application, the tool works with standard Web browsers like Netscape Communications' Navigator and ***