Lotus Foundations

Small Business Server Appliance from IBM

IBM Lotus Foundations ‘Start’ is the first in the Lotus Foundations family of software appliances, designed to deliver simple, affordable, and essential IT infrastructure to companies with 5 to 500 users.

Features unique to Lotus Foundations
Versions
Distribution
References
External links

IBM Lotus Foundations ‘Start’ is the first in the Lotus Foundations family of software appliances, designed to deliver simple, affordable, and essential IT infrastructure to companies with 5 to 500 users.

IBM has designed the server appliance to simplify the IT problems typically associated with complex infrastructure level server solutions by automating the administration, configuration and server management.

IBM Lotus Foundations is also the first offering from IBM’s Blue Business Platform initiative designed to simplify the delivery and consumption of information technology to small and medium businesses. Lotus Foundations technology is based on a closed source Linux® core, but requires no Linux knowledge to administer. The IBM Lotus Foundations Start software appliance brings autonomic computing to the small & medium business (SMB) market space, providing self-configuring, self-managing, and self-healing capabilities. It also offers tightly integrated remote administration, integrated disk backup, firewall, VPN, SQL and network layer and antivirus and antispam protection. Its built-in disaster recovery system can complete a full system recovery within minutes. The software appliance is also designed to be installed within 30 minutes and requires little to no in-house technical resources to maintain. With self-configuration and self-management capabilities, Lotus Foundations Start offers a hands-off unique approach to IT.

IBM has also packaged office productivity tools (similar to Lotus Symphony) with Lotus Foundations Start to enable small businesses to work on spreadsheets, presentations, and documents without purchasing additional office software and upgrades. There are also additional 3^rd party Lotus Domino based applications available for VARs (Value Added Reseller) to offer their clients business applications in sales, marketing, and human resources.

The core technology behind Lotus Foundations Start was acquired by IBM in its February 2008 acquisition of a company called Net Integration Technologies, Inc. [1] and its key products, Nitix and NitixBlue. IBM has made numerous enhancements to optimize Lotus Foundations Start for the SMB market, including:

IBM Lotus office productivity tools
Integrated antivirus and anti-spam software, as opposed to a for-fee add-on option
The most recent version of IBM Lotus Notes 8 and IBM Lotus Domino applications
IBM Lotus Domino Access for Microsoft Outlook support for Outlook 2003 and 2007 versions
A fourteen-day trial for the IBM Sametime Unyte Web conferencing service
An enhanced user interface to simplify remote administration.
Lotus Foundations can be scaled up to 500 users.

Features unique to Lotus Foundations

With its automated installation process, Lotus Foundations Start self-installs onto the hard disks, performs the proper partitioning, and system setup. During this process it also performs a network scan, determining whether it should enable its DHCP server, finds its gateway and internet access, and automatically configures its firewall. For modifications to the installation process, a keyboard and monitor can be attached to the server and changes can be made on the console. Further modifications can be made through the web interface.

The web interface is designed such that no other access is needed for configuration modifications in most cases. From this interface, you can set up users, teams, and file access along with email and collaborate through IBM Lotus Domino. Lotus Foundations also bundles antivirus and anti spam and offers services such as; web sites, FTP, rsync services, NFS, Samba, AppleTalk; and more. Lotus Foundations Start also supports the nearly hands-free installation of Lotus Domino, touting no administrative headaches and automation of maintenance tasks. This hands-off approach can be a large step for small and medium businesses that previously did not have a realistic stepping stone towards the enterprise-level functionality provided by Lotus Domino.

Foundations Start's claim to fame is its proprietary integrated disk backup technology that performs continuous backups of the whole infrastructure, automatically backing up files, emails, and databases incrementally, as often as every 15 minutes. Backups are made to a hard drive located in the system that can be rotated to provide off-site redundancy. Restoring files can be done individually, by user or by entire system through its web-based interface. (U.S. Patent No. 7,165,154 )

Another feature known as Lotus Foundations Virtual Server allows for the hosting of additional applications on the system. The architecture for the application services on the Lotus Foundations Software Appliance allows for applications to run in a virtual server environment, completely separated from the controlled operating system OS environment. The Virtual Server is an RPM based file system which incorporates Yellow dog Updater, Modified as an application retrieval tool.

Another highly unique feature found in Lotus Foundations Start is its ability to plug right in within Windows, Macintosh, UNIX and Linux based network environments while remaining transparent to the client user. The IBM’s hardware appliance version also incorporates the server software on a flash based chip as well along with providing a LCD control panel.

Versions

Lotus Foundations Start is sold to a business partner distribution channel as either software-only, or on select hardware platforms. The software-only version is geared towards partners that complement their own third party hardware systems with Lotus Foundations Start. Lotus Foundations Start can also be pre-configured on select hardware systems. Hardware selection depends on number of hard drives and form factor.

Distribution

Value added resellers can purchase Lotus Foundations Start and resell it to end users as part of their complete solution, usually involving other IT services or custom made applications.