Software Quarterly

Ozzie Speaks



As founder and president of Iris Associates, an independent affiliate of Lotus Development Corp., Raymond Ozzie has a unique outlook on how Lotus Notes was designed and developed by Iris. Notes was purchased by Lotus in early 1988. Interviewed by SQ magazine, Ray Ozzie -- the man behind Lotus Notes -- shares his outlook for Release 4 and the Notes phenomenon in general.


SQ: What's your personal perspective about Notes Release 4?

Ozzie: I'm extremely excited about Release 4. I've spent many, many years working on Notes and, after all the work that's been put into it, I'm very pleased with the results. Since we shipped Release 3 about two years ago, the results have been astounding.

SQ: How does the new release compare with previous releases? What specific features are you particularly proud of?

Ozzie: I feel very good about Notes's back-end message routing. In the past, we've been hampered by a less than contemporary user interface. But Release 4 has brought the award-winning cc:Mail interface into Notes. It's a great E-mail user interface, and anyone interested in the mail aspects of Notes will be particularly pleased.

Three years ago, we had a very strong inclination that those in the industry would rally around an external, interactive way of communicating with each other -- the Internet. We went ahead with what, at the time, were risky development efforts. As a result we have tremendously good integration with the Internet, its protocols, and its programming languages.

The mobile features in Release 4 represent substantial improvements in Notes. We also have great improvement in scalability, part of our effort to dramatically decrease the cost of managing a Notes environment. There's also LotusScript, which increases the application development head room tremendously.

SQ: Given the explosion in Notes seats late last year, all indications point to a big success. How do you think Notes will fare in the industry?

Ozzie: It's really difficult for me to speculate on growth. All I can tell you is I'm a very patient man. I've stuck with this thing for a long time, even though at times it's been tough. I can see an astronomical growth rate now, especially because the difficulty of selling Notes will decrease greatly because of all of the hype about the Internet.

SQ: A lot of people in the industry say the Internet will be big competition for Notes. How do you respond to that?

Ozzie: I think people have a big misperception. In the past, Notes has operated without any competition. Now that we have some competition, all of a sudden people are saying, "They're in trouble! They're in trouble!"

Yes, people are using a lot of different -- but simple -- Web publishing tools on the Internet. And then, when they see how easy it is, they start using them internally within their company. Then they take the next step, trying to make these tools do more. Once they start down that path, they realize they need mail and databases and views and forms and links and replication and on and on and on.

All of a sudden, they understand they're going to have to do a lot of programming. They begin to realize that things are a lot easier in concept than they are in execution. Pretty soon, they'll see why we developed Notes.

I don't want to sound arrogant, but we're good at what we do. I mean, it's taken us 10 years to get to this point. Other people trying to match it end up trivializing what it really takes. That's what happened with Exchange.

SQ: How does Notes compare with Microsoft Exchange?

Ozzie: Exchange started out as a good mail application. Then Bill Gates saw Notes taking off and realized that they'd better improve their mail product, if they were going to compete. So he took millions of dollars and lots of programmers and tried to do it all very quickly.

The problem is, something like this is very hard to do with a lot of programmers. You actually need as few programmers as possible. This is very complicated stuff, and you need to be able to monitor how every seam fits together at all times. Microsoft has a lot of smart programmers, but they realized their product was not coming out smoothly. Now they've gone back to a mail system. Notes will compete very vigorously with them in that space, but in that aspect only because Notes is much more than that.

SQ: What will Notes Release 4 mean for the way people will do business in the future? In the past, you've been quoted as saying it will eliminate the need for people to meet in person. Do you really believe that?

Ozzie: Let me say that quotes like those are very inaccurate. I'm into using the computer to assist collaboration. Technology augments people working together; it doesn't replace that. When you do need to have meetings, you can be more efficient because everyone has access to all of the resources and current documentation they need before the meeting. So people are able to get together and skip updating or providing background and get right to work. In no way does Notes eliminate the face-to-face aspect of people working together.

As for what it means to business attitudes, we'll see a big shift with Release 4. Previous releases were centered on internal business processes -- things like customer orders, inventory, and so on -- which are very specific internal functions. But between the early releases and now, the Internet has caught on.

Through all of the hype about the Internet, people are starting to see how we can bring people together that are outside their own companies.


Release 4 lets people talk company to company, business partner to business partner, supplier to supplier.


In the past, Notes had an intra-enterprise focus. Release 4 will focus on extra-enterprise more than ever before. For example, by using our Secure Pathrough, a company can reach out across the Internet and open up services available in other companies. But because Notes has been designed from the beginning to be very distributed-related, there will still be firewalls and security.

Finally, other technologies are catching on -- it's terrific!

SQ: How do you feel about the Lotus/IBM team?

Ozzie: Let me give you my opinion from the Iris, Notes development point of view. IBM's involvement is a very, very great thing for Lotus Notes. In fact, it saved us. IBM is permitting us to succeed by bringing in resources and an attitude that have helped us tremendously. From an organizational standpoint, Lou Gerstner and John M. Thompson have made sure we could continue on our path.

Our day-to-day operations haven't changed much -- we're essentially a culture within a culture. Jim Manzi recognized the importance of maintaining our culture when Lotus acquired Iris a couple of years ago. Lou has followed through with that.

I'm really looking forward to exploiting all of the IBM technology now available to us in future releases of Notes. That will help Notes's growth tremendously.

SQ: You've talked a lot about the future of Notes. Do you see yourself staying with the project?

Ozzie: [laughs] I have a tremendous commitment to Notes -- and have for a long time. I mean, I started on the specs for Notes in 1982, and I've been actively working on it since 1984. I'm not about to walk away from it right when it's about to finally take off!

Let me put it another way. When I started this project, my son was 18 months old. He's 12 years old now. I've been watching my son grow up over the years, and I've been watching this product in much the same way.

And I'm having a good time!

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