Courtesy of Ed Brill (and CRN), I see that IBM is planning to release the long-awaited 6.5 version of Notes this month. 6.0 was released at Lotusphere, and the 6.5 beta was released in the spring, but IBM is pushing to release this month (surprise) to beat Microsoft's Office 2003 Live Communication Server offering to market.

This release is particularly interesting relative to the Industry Insider because IBM (Lotus is just a brand nowadays) is integrating instant messaging into 6.5, and creating a new 'rich client' for Notes that incorporates the functionality of the Lotus Instant Messaging (formerly Sametime) client. From one perspective, this is simply a way to reduce the number of client apps running on the desktop. However, from another perspective, it can also be viewed as a move to block other IM vendors from moving into the Notes userbase.

Note that IBM has also announced (although they have no press releases at either IBM or Lotus websites on these announcements) that Notes is viewed as an element of the IBM Lotus Workplace initiative, which includes Workplace Messaging and Lotus Instant Messaging. And, in time, the two technologies -- Workplace Messaging and Notes -- will be consolidated as a single technology.

IBM seems to be trying to hold on to what they've got, and who can blame them? The real juncture for Notes and Sametime users is downstream, when the somewhat murky future plans for Workplace become more clear and they can begin to plan what transition to make: from Lotus to IBM, or from Lotus to other vendors? A very dangerous period of time for IBM, and likely to trouble not a few of their current clients, given all the architectural changes, brand shifts, and organizational shuffling going on.