For decades, children grew up with what was commonly referred
to as the three R's -- reading, 'riting, and 'rithmatic.
Now that those children have grown up and are members of the business
world, they're about to be schooled on the next alliterative catch
phrase, the three C's. Communicate, collaborate, and coordinate
-- the watchwords of what we are coming to know as groupware and
team computing -- summarize the driving force behind Lotus Development's
new Lotus Notes Release 4.
What's so special about a new software release?
While nearly business professional could tell you that pooling
resources is integral to success, the Notes development team was
among the first to act on the concept. Driven by groupware visionary
Ray Ozzie, Lotus Notes is teaching the rest of us that team computing
means looking beyond corporate walls to include business partners,
suppliers, and customers as members of the overall team.
"Businesses used to focus almost exclusively on intra-enterprise
issues," says Ozzie, president of Iris Associates, a wholly-owned
subsidiary of Lotus. "In the future, we'll have to have an
extra-enterprise focus more than ever before."
That's what the three C's are all about. "Lotus Notes
lets people communicate with colleagues, collaborate in teams,
and coordinate strategic business processes," says Tim Dempsey,
director of Notes marketing at Lotus.
Lotus Notes set the standard for developing and deploying strategic
groupware applications on client/server platforms, enabling companies
to better manage their strategic business processes within and
beyond their organizational boundaries. Since its initial release
in 1989, Notes has become the world's best-selling messaging and
groupware software -- doubling its install base in the past six
months alone. Today, more than 7,000 companies and 4.5 million
users benefit from Notes's innovative approach to doing business.
That momentum is only expected to gather strength now that Release
4 is on the market. Jeff Papows, Lotus's executive vice president
and chief operating officer says, "The record gathering of
independent software vendors, systems integrators, application
developers, and consultants (at Lotusphere) is testimony to the
vibrant industry that continues to grow around Lotus Notes and
is further proof that Notes is far ahead of any other groupware
or messaging product -- or any client/server product in the market
today."
"With Notes Release 4," Papows continues, "Lotus
has delivered the open, secure, reliable, and scalable infrastructure
that businesses need to build for the future. Equally important,
we believe this new version makes Notes truly the central access
point where users in organizations of all sizes will want to go
every day to find and share all the information they need -- whether
it's located in E-mail, relational databases or host-based systems,
a favorite desktop application, or on the World-Wide Web."
The latest version of Lotus Notes offers literally hundreds of
improvements for end users, application developers, and administrators.
The enhancements fall into six key areas.
The bottom line for the new release is simple. The headline for
the product review in InfoWorld magazine (Jan. 22, 1996)
summed things up nicely, saying: "Notes 4.0 is mightily improved."
Reviewer Patrick Marshall says, "My testing of the Notes
4.0 client software shows that the program has taken several giant
steps forward, especially in usability."
Caught In The Web
Perhaps the most exciting enhancements -- and the most controversial
-- revolve around Notes's integration with the Internet through
the InterNotes Web Navigator and Publisher. Says Papows, "Through
newly integrated Web browsing and publishing capabilities, Notes
Release 4 not only accesses the World-Wide Web (WWW), but also
turns Notes into the premier distributed authoring and deployment
platform for strategic business process applications."
A controversy swirled around the issue of Notes's relationship
with the Internet in 1995. The issue gained prominence when media
pundits -- and Lotus competitors -- speculated that the Internet
may in fact be more of a competitor than a collaborator with Notes.
In reality, the two elements combine to provide the ideal working
environment, and some observers have seen the light.
"The Internet has tremendous potential to transform the way
companies conduct business. Lotus's plan, with Notes and its InterNotes
products, is to extend Notes's capabilities to the Web, and provide
features the Web is currently lacking," says Michael Zisman,
executive vice president and CEO of Lotus Development. "By
adding Notes's capabilities -- such as programmability, local
data storage, replication, support for mobile use, and security
-- to the Internet, companies can more effectively integrate the
Internet into their core business activities."
Release 4 directly and natively supports key WWW protocols, such
as hypertext markup language (HTML) and Java technology, allowing
users with either Notes clients or Web browsers to benefit from
the full range of Notes's team-oriented applications. InterNotes
Web Publisher Release 2.0 automatically publishes Notes documents
and forms submitted using the Web, incorporating it into Notes
business process applications.
At the same time, all Notes 4 clients are fully "Web-enabled,"
which means Web pages can be accessed anywhere in a Notes application
using doc links or LotusScript commands. Previously, doc links
only linked documents in Notes databases. With Notes Release 4,
a doc link now can be a Web uniform resource locator (URL) which
is automatically detected by Notes clients and converted to a
"hot spot" or doc link.
Ray Ozzie, The Man Behind
the Team Behind Lotus Notes
What's the Big Deal?
"The most complete Internet strategy for corporations I have
heard so far is Lotus's. That's for the simple reason that Lotus
has the best product to marry the Internet -- Notes," -- John Dodge,
PC Week, Dec. 18, 1995
At a Glance: Lotus Notes v. Microsoft Exchange | Lotus Notes | Microsoft Exchange |
Available Today | Yes | No |
Years in Market | 6 | None |
Replication | Unmatched | Untested |
Number of Users | Millions | None (~30,000 in beta) |
OS Independence | Yes | No |
Heterogeneous Environments | Yes | No |
Mobile Support | Unparalleled | Minimal |
Application Development | Robust | Minimal |
Workflow | Yes | No |
Inter-Enterprise Data Sharing Replication | Yes | No |
Internet Integration | Industry Leading | Minimal |
Communication Requirements | Flexible | Minimal/Strict |
For example, when an E-mail message contains a URL, the URL is automatically detected and highlighted when the message is displayed. When a user clicks on that "hot spot," the Web page is retrieved and displayed. These pages are rendered as normal Notes documents.
As efficient as this process is, Release 4 doesn't forget about the team-computing element. When Web pages that have been retrieved by Notes clients are forwarded or stored in a Notes database, the pages are still "live." For example, when other Notes users receive forwarded Web pages in an E-mail message, they can click on the hyperlinks in the displayed page, which are automatically processed by the client.
In addition, the Notes client provides a Web browsing facility. Much like standard Web browsers, a user can key in a URL and it will be processed and displayed. Moreover, the local Notes database of Web pages can be full text indexed and searched. If it isn't locally available, it's fetched from the Web on demand.
I "C" What You Mean
Support for this software and all of its capabilities has, understandably, been overwhelming. Its leadership in the industry is propelled by the additional backing of more than 12,000 Lotus Business Partners who offer hundreds of off-the-shelf applications, custom development, deployment, and maintenance services.
Thanks to Notes's ability to operate in completely heterogeneous environments, the application will gain even more widespread acceptance, especially when compared with other products like Microsoft Exchange that attempt -- but fail -- to compete on Notes's level. Notes Release 4 will support 20 different national languages as well as 16 computing platforms, including AIX, OS/2 Warp, HP-UX, Sun Solaris, Novell NetWare, and Windows NT servers. Client support includes IBM AIX, HP-UX, Sun Solaris, OS/2 Warp, Macintosh Power PC and 68K, Windows NT, Windows 95, and Windows 3.1 platforms.
Among the thousands of customers already planning to install Notes Release 4 is General Motors/EDS, which already is the world's largest Notes user, with more than 100,000 licenses installed.
"Our extensive use of Lotus Notes on all major computing platforms spans GM operations in over 50 countries and enables communications with many GM dealers and suppliers worldwide," says Don Hedeen, director of information delivery and deployment for GM. "We're especially excited about Notes Release 4's sophisticated replication features, which will allow our mobile users to synchronize all their Notes databases with a single phone call."
In other words, GM and thousands of other companies around the world are realizing the true potential of communicating, collaborating, and coordinating on a daily basis. It's something Ray Ozzie and a team of developers at Iris Associates foresaw more than 10 years ago.
See also:
The Man Behind Notes