Lotus shapes up for the ebusiness era

IBM's Lotus unit said it intends to provide users with a way to close the so-called knowledge gap at its annual Lotusphere user conference in Berlin late last month.

The software company also unveiled the first fruits of its delayed Raven knowledge management project and K-station front end, while announcing that its application service provider (ASP) solution pack was now available in Europe.

Lotus' chief executive Al Zollar, a long-standing IBMer who took over from previous head Jeff Papows in February, said that Europe is leading the way in mobile and wireless communication standards and that Lotus was building applications to try and meet business needs in that area.

He added that the supplier's knowledge management and electronic learning software would help Lotus' installed user base to close the knowledge gap arising from the fast pace of change brought about by the move to ebusiness.

"Enterprises have made a commitment to our infrastructure as they look for messaging and collaboration functionality. They now want more value out of that infrastructure," he said.

Problems in store
But some analysts believe the announcements reveal the more immediate problems being faced by Lotus and IBM. Dave Nelson, a senior industry analyst at Giga, said: "As we move into ebusiness areas, Lotus and IBM need to co-ordinate better on product positioning, particularly on Websphere versus Notes and Domino versus K-station. They need better co-ordination on product development as they are pretty autonomous groups at the moment."

But Nelson acknowledged that Lotus was listening to its vast installed user base. "Lotus is addressing issues with functionality in Domino 5 and things like mobile devices, which is what enterprise companies want," he said. "Lotus is going through some turmoil and has some staff turnover, and there is a little concern over what it will accomplish in the short term. But it is listening. Zollar understands what needs to be done."

The announcements coincided with Microsoft's launch of its .Net enterprise server family, which includes Exchange 2000, the software giant's challenge to Lotus' dominance of the messaging and collaboration market.

But Zollar claimed that the complexity involved in deploying Exchange 2000 and Active Directory, combined with Lotus' dominance of the groupware space, will ensure that the company's products remain the favourite choice for users.

"The evolution of the internet is really about a cluster of devices that need to interact in a very seamless and integrated fashion, with a server base set of infrastructures, not just the PC. The fact that we are delivering products today that have the kind of capability that most people would predict Microsoft won't deliver at least for another two years is a demonstration of that," he attested.

According to a report by market research firm IDC, Lotus Notes has more than 20 million users in Europe compared with Microsoft's Outlook and Exchange installed base of 11 million. The study also shows that the Notes user base is growing faster than Microsoft's.

The other big announcement at the conference concerned Lotus' ASP strategy, which is aimed squarely at small and medium sized business users. Lotus' ASP Solution Pack includes Lotus Host Management System, Lotus Domino, Lotus QuickPlace and IBM Websphere.