Mainsoft Launches Sharepoint Integrator for Lotus Notes V2.0

Milpitas, California (PRWEB) June 16th, 2009 -- Mainsoft® Corporation, a leading provider of Microsoft® SharePoint®-Java™ Ee interoperability software, today announced growing customer demand for SharePoint-Lotus integration software (http://www2.mainsoft.com/content/mainsoft-sharepoint-integrator-lotus-notes-overview) and the release of Mainsoft SharePoint Integrator for Lotus Notes® version 2.0. Mainsoft's client-side software accelerates SharePoint adoption among Lotus Notes users for email and document management by integrating Lotus Notes, Lotus Sametime®, and Microsoft SharePoint into an integrated messaging and collaboration platform. Version 2.0 introduces support for Lotus Notes 8.5, including SharePoint calendar integration; user-friendly enforcement of the SharePoint taxonomy and IT governance; and Microsoft SharePoint Online.

Growing Demand for SharePoint Integration, Lotus Notes 8 Upgrades

In an April 2009 survey of LotusUserGroup.org members, an online community of more than 16,000 Lotus Notes administrators, 78% of the respondents said SharePoint content integration with Lotus Notes is a top priority, a high priority, or a priority.

In a follow-on survey of LotusUserGroup.org members that are currently evaluating Lotus-SharePoint integration software:

•    63 percent said they want to integrate SharePoint with Lotus Notes 8.x.

•    45 percent said they are evaluating SharePoint for their team collaboration infrastructure.

•    37 percent said they want to integrate Lotus Notes with Office SharePoint Server 2007.

•    18 percent said they want to integrate Lotus Notes with Windows SharePoint Services.

•    7 percent said they want to integrate Lotus Notes with Microsoft SharePoint Online.

"To cope with the global economic recession, we're seeing a brisk adoption of Microsoft SharePoint among Lotus Notes customers, both at the department level and enterprise wide," said Yaacov Cohen, Ceo of Mainsoft. "Customers rely on Mainsoft software to eliminate IT barriers that separate users' personal and team spaces in order to accelerate SharePoint adoption for managing emails and documents. And, it's a smart investment for enterprises with a tight IT budget."

According to Cohen, Mainsoft SharePoint Integrator costs 1/10th the cost of a typical email migration strategy. It helps enterprise IT save email storage and network overhead costs by encouraging Lotus Notes users to share information using team sites rather than Ccing colleagues on duplicate emails. Mainsoft SharePoint Integrator also supports customers' cloud-computing strategy, to reduce on-premise server and administrative costs.

About Mainsoft SharePoint Integrator for Lotus Notes v2.0

Mainsoft SharePoint Integrator extends the Lotus Notes platform to include SharePoint, integrating Lotus Notes email and Sametime instant messaging with SharePoint document sharing, calendar, and team collaboration features. The software is built using the Eclipse Rich Client Platform plug-in architecture and documented SharePoint Web Services interface, and it enables users to drag-and-drop documents and emails from a Lotus Notes sidebar to SharePoint, and from SharePoint to Lotus Notes and Sametime. Version 2.0 introduces new features that enable users to:

•    Manage SharePoint team events from the Lotus Notes 8.5 calendar application. Users can manage their time from a single, integrated calendar view, with personal appointments and team events color-coded for easy identification. They can edit event details, delete an existing team event, or create new ones. This information is copied to SharePoint, keeping team calendars up-to-date, without requiring the user to re-enter appointment details. Users can also use Lotus Notes to invite people to attend a team event and view SharePoint team appointments when offline.

•    Easily adopt the SharePoint taxonomy and IT governance. Users are prompted to check in documents they have checked out, as well as fill in required document properties for documents they upload on SharePoint.

•    Send document links in place of attachments in outgoing emails. Using the SharePoint button users can publish attachments on SharePoint and send a link in place of the attachment in outgoing emails. The Domino administrator can provision the default setting, either prompting the user to save an attachment on SharePoint and send a link, or to save attachments on SharePoint automatically in a location designated by the user.

•    Access the Microsoft cloud. The SharePoint Integrator can connect to Microsoft SharePoint Online and other hosted SharePoint solutions. Asynchronous drag-and-drop operations ensure that Lotus Notes remains responsive when users drag large documents to and from the cloud. Additional enhancements, such as caching of favorites and last visited folders, will be supported in future releases.

Helping Customers Achieve Their Collaboration Goals, Save Costs

•    Camerons Accountants and Advisors, a regional accountancy firm in Australia, is using Mainsoft SharePoint Integrator for Lotus Notes to save email storage and network overhead. Explained Darren Lucas, the company's Lotus Notes administrator, "Our company receives some 3,000 to 3,500 emails a week, including more than 1,000 duplicate copies of financial newsletters and advisories from the Australian Tax Office. By registering one person to receive these newsletters and publish them on SharePoint, rather than 75 individuals receiving copies of each newsletter in their mailbox, we're able to reduce our email storage and network overhead significantly."

•    Champion Solutions Group, a premier technology solutions provider and long-time Lotus Notes/Domino customer, is implementing Microsoft Office SharePoint Server in order to create a portal that provides Web-based document management, team sites, and integration with back-end Microsoft SQL-based applications. Champion selected Mainsoft SharePoint Integrator to integrate SharePoint with Lotus Notes and Sametime®. Explained Bill Phelps, CTO of the company, "We already have a unified communications infrastructure in place that's fully integrated with our business processes, and we don't see a compelling reason to migrate to a single vendor in order to unify messaging and collaboration platforms. Mainsoft offers the practical integration path we need to support our end users' preferred platforms while preserving our existing IT investments."

•    The French Banking Federation (FBF), a professional organization representing 450 commercial, cooperative, and mutual banks operating in France, recently deployed Office SharePoint Server to speed the development of policy-related documents. In February, the company purchased Mainsoft SharePoint Integrator to accelerate SharePoint adoption and enable its employees to publish, classify, and archive emails within the context of the documents they relate to. Explained Federic Guinet, director of IT for the organization, "Mainsoft SharePoint Integrator for Lotus Notes enables our distributed teams to collaborate with member banks, subject matter experts, lawyers, and regulators more efficiently on documents, and with a high degree of confidence they have all relevant correspondence at their fingertips." According to Guinet, the Mainsoft SharePoint Integrator licensing cost about 12 percent of its overall SharePoint project costs.

•    Kawasaki Robotics, a leading supplier of industrial robots and automation systems and a Lotus Notes 8.5 customer, plans to replace its document sharing and archiving system, consisting of massive hard copy binders, with team collaboration sites based on Windows SharePoint Services. Explained Scott Marchione, applications developer for the company, "We selected Windows SharePoint Services because it comes bundled with MS Dynamics and Microsoft Business Portal Software, which we're using for accounting, enterprise resource planning, and inventory management. By integrating Lotus Notes with SharePoint, as well as our Lotus Sametime-based unified communications platform, we can meet all document collaboration and communication needs in a single application."

•    William A. Hazel, Inc., a site development contractor headquartered in Chantilly, Virginia, deployed Office SharePoint Server in 2008 to enable its employees to share project documents. According to Ken Holsopple, senior network administrator for William A. Hazel, Inc., "We deployed Office SharePoint Server to give our project teams a central repository for storing and easily retrieving documents. Unfortunately, our SharePoint sites remained empty while some of our project managers' email boxes ballooned to 50 gigabytes. What was missing was the ability to drag-and-drop Lotus Notes emails and attachments, which Mainsoft delivers. Today, our team uses Mainsoft SharePoint Integrator to publish and retrieve emails and document attachments on SharePoint, as we had intended. Long-term, we expect to save on Domino storage costs as our team saves emails on SharePoint and uses document links rather than CC'ing the full project team."

About Mainsoft Corporation

Founded in 1993, Mainsoft Corporation develops software and solutions that integrate Microsoft technologies, specifically SharePoint and .net applications, into IBM middleware: Lotus Notes, Lotus Sametime®, Lotus Expeditor®, WebSphere Portal®, and WebSphere Application Server. For developers, Mainsoft has built a patented plug-in to Visual Studio® that allows .NET developers to write Web applications in C# or Visual Basic® and run them natively on Java EE platforms. For more information about SharePoint integration (http://www2.mainsoft.com/content/mainsoft-sharepoint-integrator-lotus-notes-overview) with IBM platforms, or to learn about .NET-Java interoperability, visit www.mainsoft.com.

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