January 21, 2000 Web posted at: 10:18 a.m. EST (1518 GMT) by John Fontana

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(IDG) -- Lotus this week began its trek into the new millennium with an emphasis on collaboration, client options and pricing structures.

At its annual Lotusphere conference, Lotus used a guest appearance by veteran newsman Walter Cronkite to sum up the milestones of the 20th century before giving its own vision for the next 100 years.

The Lotus focus was on the concept of knowledge management, a collection of technologies for data mining and sharing and corporate collaboration - all done through an infrastructure created by Lotus.

Lotus also announced a deal with Microsoft to support it's competitors Outlook messaging client, and a new pricing structure that will provide licenses tailored to the way users deploy Domino. The company also demonstrated voice integration with its messaging and conference software.

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Outgoing CEO Jeff Papows, who was greeted with warm applause, also reflected on his seven years at Lotus and said his departure is timed to have the least amount of disruption. "The company is at its peak of product and business strength," he said. But he continued to deflect questions about whether he was asked to resign in the wake of questions about his character and allegations made in a sexual harassment suit.

Papows said the Notes/Domino installed base is now at 56 million, including 8.5 million seats added in the fourth quarter of 1999. His successor, IBM veteran Al Zollar, sat in the front row for Papows' keynote but did not address the Lotus faithful. Many attendees said they wanted to learn more about Zollar.

Overall, Lotus wasn't showing much new technology, only emphasizing its march toward knowledge management, a technology that is getting a lukewarm reception from enterprise customers.

The spotlight was on a suite of products codenamed Raven. The knowledge management suite, first unveiled last year, includes tools for organizing data and access to company experts into an individualized desktop interface. It also combines Lotus's Sametime technology for instant messaging, and Lotus's traditional messaging and calendaring features.

"There is certainly plenty there [in Raven], but I'm not sure it will all work," says Ronald Shoults, information technology secretary for The Salvation Army.

Papows said it must work, and called knowledge management the key for businesses crossing what he called the e-line, the separation of traditional and next generation companies.

"Perpetual learning, distributed learning will be the key to organizational effectiveness," he said. "Collaboration is the castle and the castle is under construction as we speak."

Papows said Lotus will integrate distributed learning technology acquired from Macromedia's Pathway, a technology for managing and tracking online classroom work, with its LearningSpace server early in the second quarter to form a cornerstone of Raven. Lotus also plans to integrate Raven with the next version of QuickPlace, an application for setting up online workgroups that can share data. On the client side, Papows vowed that the company "was not conceding the client market, not one inch," but did announce an agreement to support Microsoft Outlook.

Later Mike Zisman, executive vice president of strategy for Lotus, said Outlook was part of a Notes client family called iNotes. Key to iNotes is Domino Offline Services (DOLS), which lets non-Notes clients including Outlook, replicate data from a Domino server. DOLS also lets Domino applications be used offline.

"They seem to be opening a crack for Microsoft on the desktop, a crack that Microsoft could well take advantage of," says Eric Arnum, editor of Messaging Online, a Web-based newsletter. Some users said Outlook and other clients would be a perfect fit for users just needing basic Domino services such as messaging and calendars.

Zisman also reiterated Lotus would integrate Sametime into the Notes client and also push client access to handheld devices and mobile phones.

Later during a demonstration of Raven's capabilities, Lotus also revealed voice integration, built on IBM's ViaVoice, on the client side, and demonstrated support for voice over IP in its application sharing feature of QuickPlace.

The Raven demo featured a user filling out a request for a meeting using voice commands. The person also used voice commands to ask the system to notify her when another user had their instant messaging system turned on. The demonstration drew loud applause. Lotus also demonstrated real-time language translation within its instant messaging software.

Finally, Lotus officials said they would integrate Domino and IBM's WebSphere, another key that shows Lotus software may be moving closer to being consumed by its parent company. Raven will rely heavily on WebSphere and its transaction processing, as well as on DB2 database for backend storage of data, bypassing the Domino object store.

Papows also said Lotus would offer a new pricing model but gave few details. A Lotus spokesman said the models would be designed along deployment scenarios. Those using Domino for knowledge management, for example, may get license options for Lotus technology that would not be included in a license directed at users focused on messaging.