FRAMINGHAM (10-10-95) - Rather than viewing the World-Wide Web as a groupware threat, Lotus Development Corp. is embracing the popular Internet meeting place with a new Notes-based Web proxy server.
Lotus early next year is expected to release a tool -- dubbed the Notes Web Navigator by some industry observers -- that helps eliminate the distinction be-tween Notes and Web resources, Network World has learned.
The Navigator will offer Notes clients standard Web browser features, such as search and scrolling tools. In addition, Lotus customers will be able to tap into familiar Notes tools such as views, which allow for data manipulation based on criteria such as author, time and date.
Users will also have access to Notes Agents, preset scripts that can automate searching and other common processes, as well as full-text searching based on the existing Notes search engine.
The result, Lotus of-ficials hope, will be a seamless integration that blends the best of two worlds. By making Notes a window to the Web, Lotus believes the popularity of the Internet will fuel Notes sales rather than douse them.
The Lotus product would eliminate the need to give direct Internet access to each desktop, said Bill Wood, associate director of team technologies at Smith-Kline Beecham Corp.'s pharmaceuticals research and de- velopment division in King of Prussia, Pa.
Wood's only concern is whether Lotus can keep pace with the likes of Netscape Communications Corp. "When will Lotus have [Sun Microsystems Inc.] Java support? Netscape already has it," he said.
The Lotus product will not support Java, Lotus sources said.
But the Lotus offering has a few interesting architectural twists of its own. For instance, Notes clients can sit behind a company's firewall, protecting end-users' systems from intrusion. The Notes Web server, however, can sit outside the firewall, giving it full access to Web resources, a source familiar with Lotus' plans said.
The Notes Web server may also improve Web access. The Notes server can cache frequently used Web pages, making access nearly instantaneous for end users and eliminating overloads that typically occur when multiple users pull up the same page.
Customers seem to like the integration idea. "You could send URLs in mail and embed them in a Notes document. That way people wouldn't have to learn Netscape," Wood said.
Observers believe the tool, being built internally by Lotus creator Ray Ozzie's Iris group, will ship sometime after Notes Release 4.0.
This tool rounds out Lotus' existing Internet product line, which includes:
--Notes Web Publisher, a product that converts Notes documents into HyperText Mark-up Language and will soon support HTML-to-Notes conversion. Un-like the Web Publisher, the Navigator will not translate Web documents but instead provide native access.
--Notes Web News, a system that exchanges information between Notes and Internet newsgroups.
Lotus declined to comment, but sources expect an announcement about Navigator as soon as next month.
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