Lotus foundation start v.1.0

I juts ran into IBM Lotus Foundation Start pagehttp://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/foundations/start/

where it says “IBM® Lotus® Foundations Start is a complete software appliance…” can someone with knowladge of this piece of software explain hoe to understand “applience” word here without me wasting time on downloading and installing it? is it some sort of pre-build of i.e. domino for vmware or something similar?

TIA

Subject: Lotus Foundations Start…

…is more than just a “pre-build” Domino Server. Here is a good description from the Lotus Foundations website:

What is Lotus Foundations Start?

About

IBM Lotus Foundations Start is an on-premise software appliance and a complete solution for businesses with 5-500 employees who have limited or no in-house technical resources. It can be launched within 30 minutes and leverages self-managing and self-healing capabilities that minimize the need for human intervention. It enables customers to do email, create and share documents, centrally manage files, store and secure business data, control access to information, connect offices and employees and protects their network and systems from unwanted disruptions and intrusions.

Highlights:

Full featured software appliance

Self-managing, self-healing system

Email and advanced webmail

Office productivity tools (Read Lotus Symphony)

Network level firewall, antispam & antivirus protection

Remote connectivity and VPN

File and print services

Central file management

Automated disk backup

Disaster recovery

“Software appliance” doesn’t mean that it has to be running as a VMWare image. It basically means, that you don’t have to install and manage all the bits and pieces seperately. See the documentation at http://kb.nitix.com/1 for details. There’s also an upcoming technical workshop about Lotus Foundations: https://www-304.ibm.com/jct09002c/isv/spc/events/description.jsp?event=99A944C0B1E0138F8525749F005C9B64

Subject: RE: Domino Appliance

From what I saw at LS 08 it is a Hardware box preconfiged with Domino server