Notes/Domino's Long-Term Prospects

Yes, there is a Notes/Domino Version 7.0 in beta, and IBM's glossy product road map commits to a Version 8.0 thereafter. I got a glimpse into just what the next release will offer at Lotus' office in Cambridge, Mass., last month. There's lots of presence-awareness capability scattered throughout the inbox and calendar, and for the first time partners can embed IM inside custom Notes applications they develop. There's better Web-services support for calling into Domino data, and improved tools for partners to enhance the scalability and manageability of the platform, so fewer servers are needed.

And, yet, anyone following the messaging and collaboration space closely can see that it is the component-oriented Lotus Workplace, not the legacy Notes/Domino, where IBM is going to commit its resources long-term. Workplace is less expensive, is Web- and/or rich-client-based, and is built in the J2EE-based WebSphere environment. IBM probably won't kill Notes/Domino altogether. (Eliminating platforms is not an IBM forte—can you say OS/2?) There is sure to come a day when IBM isn't selling new versions of Lotus' groundbreaking client-server software, which has lost momentum to Microsoft's Outlook/Exchange juggernaut in recent years. It's more likely that IBM will grudgingly support those in the Notes installed base who won't migrate their applications to the new platform, but continue a long-term development investment. I just don't see it.

To many partners, this trajectory seems obvious, but today IBM continues to position Workplace as a Notes/Domino complement and/or alternative collaboration environment for SMB customers or underserved users. That certainly makes sense short-term, but as the open-standards-based Workplace gains steam, what remains as the impetus for customers to lock into an expensive, proprietary platform like Notes/Domino? Even IBM preaches openness as its overarching mantra today.

The other element at play is less acknowledged but makes sense. The WebSphere platform on which Workplace components are based is primarily homegrown IBM—the pride and joy of the software group. For some time, the company has pitched WebSphere and its J2EE underpinnings as the foundation for all of its software offerings. It's unlikely that the apple of Lotus' eye, Notes/Domino, will trounce WebSphere as the favored platform.

What IBM is doing with Notes/Domino 7.0 and other products seems to telegraph where the company is headed. With 7.0, IBM for the first time provides native relational database support for DB2, creating an alternative storage base for Notes data and applications. Currently, Domino servers use the proprietary Notes Storage Facility (NSF) to store all data, which keeps these mail servers essentially siloed from the rest of an enterprise. Workplace data is already stored in DB2, so this more closely aligns the data sets.

Earlier this year, IBM unveiled a tool that provides Domino back-end users with access to Outlook on the front end. To date, 100 customers and partners are piloting Domino Access for Microsoft Outlook, according to Lotus.

One ISV I spoke with said he thinks the battle between Exchange and Notes/Domino is essentially over, with Microsoft winning. But the competitive situation is nearly meaningless; Notes and Exchange are "like Coke and Pepsi," he said, "swapping shelf space over and over." For partners, the challenge will be in deciding to brush up on Java and WebSphere skills and moving Workplace front and center in their Notes practices, or taking a look at the next version of Exchange Server and Office System, which sports innumerable collaboration tools. But Notes/Domino? I'm not so sure that's the platform of the future.