You never know what you might find when in search of a good coffee. RedMonk’s James Governor was none too pleased with the selection on the Walt Disney World “Boardwalk,” here at Lotusphere. With Gary Barnett of the Bathwick Group there was a solid attempt to hack an espresso machine in the deep caverns of the Dolphin Hotel’s subterranean show floor. That didn’t work. So we moved on to the GBS expansive show suite. And there we found espresso and GBS’s very impressive CTO – Jennifer Meade.

Gary had some familiarity with GBS and its AppBuilder solution that transforms data from Lotus and into ones that can be used with Lotus Connect, the IBM social business technology. There is a subtlety here that Meade gets into during the interview. An app can go on the Web. But there is not much upside if it still must be integrated with the desktop, the OS and supported browsers. It has to be universally oriented to a Web environment. Sometimes it’s not worth it to do an overhaul. Other times it is.

Meade explains:

The real transformation comes with tools like IBM’s XPages and the GBS AppBuilder, set to to come out later this year. AppBuilder gives non-programmers access to tools that allow them to build their own apps off the Lotus Notes/Domino platform.

Here’s a demo:

It’s evident that 2012 will become a year of transformation. Service providers that build tools to aid in this transformation should fare well.