MacWorld held two important announcements for collaboration professionals, especially those interested in multidevice future:
1. Lotus announced that Notes 8.5 is shipping on Macintoshes, specifically on the new Leopard version of OS X. And its open source office productivity suite, Symphony will be available in a few months. Why does this matter? It matters because Lotus has a clear, vigorous multidevice strategy for the tools that make information workers productive. See Ed Brill's post for the IBM point of view.
2. Cisco announced that WebEx Meeting Center is available on iPhones. In fact, you can download it today to your iPhone. While I haven't yet had the chance to put it through its paces, this announcement signals Cisco's commitment to supporting multiple devices. I expect them to continue to roll unified communications apps on mobile phones of every flavor.
Here are some details:
This idea of smartphones as mobile collaboration platforms is catching hold in organizations that have a mobile or remote workforce, that are looking to cram ever-more productive hours into a day, and give their peripatetic employees the tools they need to be productive away from their desks.
One more thing: In December, RIM bought Chalk Media, a company with a solid technology for pushing training materials and video to BlackBerrys. So RIM clearly gets the "mobile collaboration platform" thing.
Should be a fun 2009!