Ever since it announced Systems Application Architecture, IBM Corp has cultivated an unfortunate genius for confusing its customers and most of the rest of the industry as well, and so the news that the company late Tuesday announced IBM WorkGroup will be met by a sea of blank faces: is this something to do with WorkPlace, formerly WorkPlace OS, and if it is, what is WorkPlace these days? In fact of course, it is intended to be IBM’s answer to Lotus Development Corp’s Notes, described as a family of integrated, customisable software that simplifies and streamlines the way teams get work done – whether the work is highly structured, such as insurance claims processing, or ad hoc. IBM WorkGroup includes a new client-server messaging function, based on IBM Ultimail, and IBM Message Queuing Series or MQSeries; it also includes FlowMark for workoflow management; Visualizer for data query, analysis and reporting; Visual Document Library for document management; FormTalk for forms routing, tracking and approval; SearchManager for contextual searches; Person to Person for personal video conferencing; and VisualInfo for image processing. The integrated IBM WorkGroup functions, in beta test, include mail, scheduling and diary, based on IBM Time and Place, and directory and facsimile capabilities. WorkGroup clients are available for OS/2 and Windows 3.1, and servers run under OS/2, OS/400 and AIX. Mac, Windows95 and Unix clients and Unix and System/390 servers are in the plan. It has diary and mail directory gateways to OfficeVision and interoperates with Notes and cc:Mail. Work and information management are out now, with more to follow in six to nine months.
