Lotus Notes, Groupware Category, Turn Twenty

Plans for the revolutionary collaboration software, or "groupware," were announced Dec. 7, 1984. Five years later to the day, Lotus Development launched Notes Release 1.0—developed by Iris Associates, Ray Ozzie's startup, but backed by Lotus.

Since Notes was initially a direct sale, the partner story took a bit longer to develop. But develop it did.

Peter O'Kelly, who was on the Notes team and is now a Burton Group analyst, said the direct-only enterprise sales strategy was "catastrophic." Ozzie, himself, now chairman and president of Beverly, Mass.-based Groove Networks, acknowledged Notes' growing pains.

"Twenty-twenty hindsight is great, but at the time, it was difficult to explain its value relevant to various enterprises," Ozzie told CRN.

David Via, vice president of business development at longtime Notes partner Wolcott Systems Group, Fairlawn, Ohio, concurred. "IT didn't 'get' Notes in the beginning because they were too hung up on trying to figure out exactly what it was," Via said.

The partner groundswell started around Version 3.

"Suddenly, VARs were creating solutions that we never could have created in a million years," Ozzie said. "We didn't have the domain expertise or the customer knowledge." VARs were essentially building sales-force automation (SFA) and CRM systems atop Notes before the acronyms were even coined.

In particular, Ozzie remembers star VARs such as Lante's Mark Tebbe, MicroSolutions' Mark Cuban and MFJ International's Mark Johnson. "I don't know that Notes would have died, but it sure would have languished if integrators had not picked up on it," he said.

As for the solution providers themselves, many are still hanging in, nearly 10 years after IBM bought Lotus.

"Lotus was successful in growing an ecosystem," said Ron Herardian, CEO of Global Systems Services, Mountain View, Calif. "It's eroded somewhat under IBM, but since IBM itself is such a large channel, it's hard to compare with the stand-alone Lotus organization. Under Lotus, Notes thrived and so did the community."