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I have just been to the IBM Lotus Workplace Strategy Roadshow and learned a few things.

The major news is that if you already have subscription licenses for Lotus products such as Notes Mail, IM, Team Workspace, Dom.Doc etc you are entitled to equivalent licenses for equivalent Lotus Workplace functions. Many probably already knew this, but I have not heard it expressed publicly before.

For Domino sites, this means there will be no licensing costs to move to Lotus Workplace.

If you need more that the Collaboration features provided by Workplace, you will need to purchase WebSphere Portal which gives you "Enterprise" integration.

Over time, all existing collaboration tools will be ported to the new platform. Initially you will be able to integrate existing Domino-based services (IM, Team Workspace, Mail) through Workplace and, as the Workplace versions arrive, move to the new versions.

They also talked in a bit more detail about the timeframe for upcoming products. In October, there will be a "1.1" update of Lotus Workplace Messaging along with a number of new offerings. Some that were mentioned include:

• Lotus Workplace Messaging 1.1
• Lotus Workplace Team Collaboration
• Lotus Workplace Advanced Learning
• Lotus Workplace Web Content Management (formerly Aptrix)

Q1 next year will bring version "2.0" and some "tooling". This may mean the Workplace Designer and possibly the rich client - although there was much vagueness about what would arrive when.

There will also be a number of high-value, high-volume offerings that would be aimed at particular business sectors - an example given was "Lotus Workplace for Retail Store Management". These would include standard templates related to the industry in question. Alongside these will be Express versions aimed at the SMB market.