Workplace Managed Client
One big difference between the two Workplace products is that Workplace Services Express is browser (and hand-held) oriented, while Workplace Collaboration Services also gives you the option of deploying IBM Workplace Managed Client. Users of Lotus Notes already know about rich clients and some of the benefits they provide. Until Workplace Collaboration Services and Workplace Managed Client came along, though, the J2EE platform had no rich client on which to deploy applications. Workplace Managed Client is quite different from Lotus Notes in many ways, for example:

• Workplace Managed Client is based on the Eclipse open-source framework. Eclipse was originally a developer environment, but it has been put to new use as a client framework. Add-on functionality in Eclipse is implemented as one or more plug-ins, Java programs that occupy space on the screen and provide user interfaces to various things. (Sound suspiciously like a Portal?)
• Workplace Managed Client is a managed client, in that the applications and features that each user sees in the client UI is controlled (or provisioned) by the server. The Workplace administrator decides which individuals or groups get which packages, applications, or updates in their copy of the Workplace Managed Client. When users log into the Workplace server from their Workplace Managed Client, new code can be downloaded automatically. This provisioning feature vastly simplifies deployment of client-side code.
• As hinted above, the Workplace Managed Client user experience is quite similar to that of WebSphere Portal except that it's not just a browser. The Workplace Managed Client UI contains an embedded browser, of course, but it also contains a series of productivity editors or tools, including a word processor, a spreadsheet, and a presentation / slide show editor. These editors provide most of the word processing and spreadsheet functionality most people need on a day-to-day basis. They can read Microsoft Office files, but instead of saving data in proprietary file formats, the Workplace editors use XML.

The Workplace Managed Client thus becomes much more than just a browser window with a bunch of applications in it. It lays the foundation for true composite applications by taking integration on the glass to the next level. Workplace Managed Client is a programmable client -- you can write your own Eclipse plug-ins, and you can use the Workplace Managed Client APIs distributed by IBM to enable client-side components (whether they be traditional portlets, Notes-based applications, or custom-coded plug-ins) to communicate with each other and share data (with appropriate security, of course).

This kind of client-side functionality both incorporates Lotus Notes (with full support for replication and off-line use) and goes beyond it. The Eclipse UI is customizable and extensible in ways that Lotus Notes never was. Would you like a custom UI for a calendar view? No problem, write your own plug-in viewer and hook it into the Workplace Managed Client event model. Would you like something special to happen when users send email? No problem, write a custom event handler. (Of course, you need to be a Java programmer). What does this mean for the future of the traditional Notes client? Is it going away? Absolutely not. Is IBM Workplace replacing Lotus Domino? Absolutely not. In fact, the two platforms are evolving and merging in important ways that take nothing away from the Notes/Domino functionality we all know and love.

Evolution of the Notes and Workplace rich clients: Merger of equals
Today, the Notes client and the Workplace Managed Client look like two vastly different things. This situation naturally leads to all sorts of speculation about which one will "win" and whether or not people will be forced to migrate applications from one platform to another.

The good news is that this situation is only temporary. The two client platforms (Lotus Notes and Workplace Managed Client) will actually be merging together in the next major release of the traditional Notes client, code-named Hannover, after the city in Germany where the product was first announced. Hannover is truly innovative: It's still Lotus Notes underneath, but the entire UI has been re-hosted on the Eclipse open framework, making Notes components first-class players in the composite application client space. Furthermore, Notes components will be provisioned from either a Domino server or a Workplace server.

What this really means is that by upgrading to Hannover, customers will also gain the benefits of the Workplace rich client--including portal interface, server-management/provisioning, extensible UI--while it's still Lotus Notes. Moreover, because it's still a real Notes client underneath the Eclipse wrappings, all your existing Notes/Domino applications will continue to run unmodified in the Hannover environment.

Of course, traditional stand-alone Notes and Domino configurations will continue to be offered by IBM. No one will be forced to adopt the new Hannover client against their will. The benefits of the unified rich client, though, are huge, and we predict that most customers will find the transition smooth and the results very empowering.

Different layers, different benefits
Why IBM Workplace then? It's worth repeating (if only because there has been so much confusion about this over the past couple of years) that IBM Lotus Notes and Domino are not going away.

The J2EE foundation technology embodied in IBM WebSphere Application Server provides a fast, scalable platform onto which organizations can deploy applications. By integrating Lotus Domino with WebSphere Application Server, you can unlock some of the performance bottlenecks inherent in high-volume Domino Web applications without losing any of the rich collaborative functionality that Lotus Domino provides.

The Portal layer on top of WebSphere Application Server provides personalized desktops on which knowledge workers can organize their workspace as they choose and bring all their important applications into one place with integration on the glass of their data.

The IBM Workplace layer on top of WebSphere Portal gives you a series of prepackaged applications, the ability to expose existing Domino applications in a Portalized environment, and powerful new administrative options for provisioning. Furthermore, Workplace Collaboration Services now provides users with the Workplace Managed Client that further enhances the on-line work experience. The recently shipped version of Workplace Managed Client supports a plug-in for Lotus Notes 7. The next major release of Lotus Notes will actually be a merger of the traditional Notes client with Workplace Managed Client, yielding powerful enhancements of both. This is not at all a replacement of Lotus Notes with Workplace Managed Client rather it's a merger of equals that make both better.