Notes on Productivity Home Page

IBM Connections is now positioned as the platform upon which the rest of the IBM social and collaboration suites rest.

To  that end, IBM is rebranding their collaboration social tools under the IBM Connections brand:
     IBM Notes (The product formerly known as Lotus Notes) is now IBM Connections Mail
    IBM Sametime is now IBM Connections Chat and Meetings.

So, we have IBM Connections Mail and the IBM Domino Application Platform.

[Update] A colleague informed me that there are two other name changes:
Lotus Notes Apps will be known as IBM Connections Domino apps, and
SmartCloud for Social Business will become IBM Connection in the Cloud

[Note: this is not the first time that IBM has changed product names. In fact, Sametime was changed to Lotus Messaging and then changed back.]

I have a 20+ year history with the Notes name so I will miss the name but not what it can do for me, I'm all for the branding consolidation if it leads to better unity and vision across the IBM portfolio.

There was no mention of the Notes client or the Domino server other than a brief mention that IBM will be hosting Domino Apps in the cloud.

Microsoft is sure to pronounce what they have been trying to get their customers to believe for years, that Notes is dead.  Notes is most certainly not dead, but it is evolving and I will be watching to see what roadmap IBM presents for the future.

Meanwhile, IBM showed off a new vision for the mail client - their Mail Next vision. While new and shiny, it looks like it will be quite distracting to actually use when you just want to get work done.  There no way to actually use this product (if it is yet a product) and it will likely be some time before we can try it first hand so time will tell on that front.

Speaking of new and shiny, it's going to take some work to sift through the marketing speak and shiny screen objects to find which new features flaunted at Connect 2014 will actually lead to a boost in worker productivity and which are, well, simply shiny...

[Update #2: Apparently, Jeff Schick said that there will be continuous support and ongoing development for the Rich Client formerly known as IBM Notes]