Software Quarterly

As Easy as C, C, C
Lotus Releases Notes Release 4.0

by Marcy B. Present


For decades, children grew up with what was commonly referred to as the three R's -- reading, 'riting, and 'rithmatic.


Ray Ozzie, The Man Behind
the Team Behind Lotus Notes


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."

What's the Big Deal?

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 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


"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.

At a Glance:
Lotus Notes v.
Microsoft Exchange
Lotus NotesMicrosoft Exchange
Available TodayYesNo
Years in Market6None
ReplicationUnmatchedUntested
Number of UsersMillionsNone (~30,000 in beta)
OS IndependenceYesNo
Heterogeneous EnvironmentsYesNo
Mobile SupportUnparalleledMinimal
Application DevelopmentRobustMinimal
WorkflowYesNo
Inter-Enterprise Data
Sharing Replication
YesNo
Internet IntegrationIndustry LeadingMinimal
Communication RequirementsFlexibleMinimal/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


Marcy Present, a marketing consultant and writer with Technology Source Inc. in St. Louis, MO, specializes in high-technology industries.


Photography: Mark Alcarez SQ









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