IBM betting big on open source for Lotus Notes future

US based tech giants IBM have shown massive faith in the power of Open Source technologies as they prepare to launch new version of their Lotus Notes software.

The beta of the next version of this application is due out in a public beta release this fall. IBM has said that this updated version will include support for the open standard, XML-based OpenDocument Format (ODF).

In addition, it would also become the first major commercial collaboration client based on the Eclipse open source framework.

It would include office productivity editors including word processing, spreadsheet and presentation capabilities and users would be able to save data in the ODF formats for maximum compatibility. They would also work with files created in MS Office and OpenOffice applications.

IBM added that the new version would add a new concept IBM calls “activity-based computing” which would allow content such as email, meetings, documents, chats, and notes to be associated with specific projects or processes.