The Lotus position

10 February 2006

Large IT companies arent generally known for their flexibility and quick time to market. Its more likely that young start-ups will employ the most innovative solutions. So when in 1995 software behemoth IBM bought collaboration and email software provider Lotus, it was no great surprise to anyone that the product entered a period of stagnation that saw it remain virtually unchanged for some years.

Large IT companies aren't always renowned for product innovation and speedy time to market. So when in 1995 software behemoth IBM bought collaboration and email software provider Lotus, it was no great surprise to see the Lotus Notes and Domino product lines fall into a period of functional stagnation.

Twenty-year-old Lotus, which made its name first with the 1-2-3 spreadsheet and then as the pioneer of 'groupware' with Notes, found itself looking like a has-been, with its core technology stuck on a client-server architecture as the rest of

Case study: BNP Paribas

When French banking giant BNP Paribas started a company-wide technology consolidation effort in 2002, its systems infrastructure was in a bit of mess, admits Philippe Axus, head of the bank's group information systems unit.

With more than 500 intranet sites spread across a number of geographical locations, IT infrastructure costs were spiralling out of control and BNP was finding it difficult to handle data across such a matrix of systems.

The bank chose IBM Lotus to reduce the proliferation of internal sites, to enable consistent corporate communication and employee collaboration, and to transform its information-only intranet site into a transactional one. In January, at the LotusSphere user conference in Orlando, Philippe Axus spoke with Information :

Information Age (IA): What collaboration infrastructure has BNP put in place?

Philippe Axus (PA): We implemented IBM WebSphere Portal running on IBM AIX, with Lotus Team Workplace (formerly Quickplace) and Lotus Instant Messaging (Sametime) applications, which provides a centralised platform for access to all our internal sites.

IA: What response has the new system received from users?

PA: Employees really like the web-based collaborative workspace, Lotus Team Workplace. It is actually very well developed. Users can now enter content automatically, while technical staff can do this with an XML-based tool called Epic [from software developer Arbortext]. Content management is also easier - users can now tell where their documents are.

IA: What are the project benefits?

PA: It has resulted in greater control of information and faster access to data. We have also achieved a 20 % reduction in the number of internal sites, and a reduction in the associated maintenance and development costs. Another benefit is in development time - we can now develop our applications/functionality needs in three weeks; this previously took between three and seven months.

the IT world was quickly moving to more flexible and lower-cost web architectures.

That did not detract from Lotus' fundamental concept - of creating a virtual, networked community - but its PC-hosted groupware applications for sharing documents, coordinating projects and other collaborative functionality, and the local and wide area networks that supported them, started to look outdated.

That was not helped by its longevity and the depth of its market penetration. With an installed base of many millions of Lotus Notes/Domino users worldwide and a developer community experienced in the strengths of the Notes Client, and later the Domino Server, any change to the system's underlying architecture could create customer disaffection.

But in recent years the market has become considerably more crowded. An influx of content management companies, web conferencing vendors and portal vendors - not to mention the increased ambitions of Microsoft - has forced Lotus to try to move fast and decisively to the next level.

In 2003, the company announced plans to transition its huge Domino installed base to a new platform centred around IBM's Internet software platform WebSphere, the DB2 relational database and its Tivoli systems management platform. That is something of a watershed, as Lotus has historically had its own development environment, its own (object) database and its own management tools.

At stake is the long-term success of Lotus. A successful transition to a WebSphere-centric collaboration platform will provide a broader alternative to the integrated collaborative functions Microsoft has added to the latest version of its Office suite.

Difficult task

A key feature of the Lotus attack includes the introduction of a collaborative portal-based platform known as Lotus Workplace. The move is intended to capitalise on the company's core collaborative functionality, within a flexible, web-based environment and will help fend off competition from vendors in the portal market, such as Plumtree and Vignette. "Collaboration is more than just an integrated desktop," says Ambuj Goyal, general manager of Lotus. "Collaboration is a strategic approach to doing business that enables our customers to work in teams across all boundaries and better integrate end-to-end business processes."

Two recent acquisitions by IBM will help enable this end-to-end environment - web content management software company Aptrix and document management software provider Green Pastures.

"The ability to integrate collaborative capabilities into business processes is an extremely powerful idea," says Ashim Pal, vice president of technical research services for IT analyst company Meta Group. For example, call centre agents can now use email, instant messaging or IP telephony tools as part of a collaborative workspace to quickly resolve customer queries.

While Lotus is championing the virtues of the new architecture, it will still have a hard task convincing millions of users that a switch from Notes/Domino is desirable. "Version 1.0 [of Workplace] was a stinker in terms of installing and getting it to work. We didn't see anybody deploy it in production," says Meta's Pal. "Workplace is currently functionally inferior to the Notes/Domino combination. There is no compelling reason for users to migrate to the new product."

That opinion is backed up by the experience of Lotus' biggest client, French banking giant BNP Paribas. With some 80,000 Lotus Notes users worldwide, BNP adopted IBM WebSphere Portal running on the IBM AIX Unix flavour across its global intranet and Internet sites in 2002, primarily for consolidation of its IT architecture. The company also installed Lotus Team Workplace (Quickplace) and Instant Messaging (Sametime) to enable collaborative working across the business.

While BNP is happy with the solution, it is wary of moving too quickly to the newer architecture. "When we started we had problems with the portal. It couldn't cope with the volume of users," says Philippe Axus, head of group information systems at BNP Paribas. The problem was eventually solved with the help of IBM Global Services, but Axus had, by then, learnt his lesson. "I like the idea of Lotus Workplace, but we will have to evaluate the product [further] before making a decision," he says.

One benefit of the new technology is that it provides a very solid capability for lightweight mail, solving a business need for less complex email systems. "Lightweight mail is one of the few growth areas left in the fairly saturated mail market," says Meta's Pal. "There is room for a company in this space that has market credibility and reach."

There have also been significant changes to the latest Workplace release, version 1.1. Presence awareness and web conferencing features are now standard, and users will soon be able to integrate IP telephony. The portal solution will provide greater functionality, and the single screen access will ease the administrative burden and simplify the user experience.

The new solution also provides a long overdue open-standards approach, including support for J2EE and web services. Users can now also support databases other than those from IBM.

That Lotus had to change its collaboration technology is not in doubt, but the reality is that any architectural overhaul creates an opportunity for competitors to poach customers. Microsoft, for example, is touting new collaborative technologies that are comparatively inexpensive, easy to deploy and, ostensibly, do not lock users into a set of proprietary technologies.

Take-up

As a result Lotus has been very careful to ensure that it keeps existing users on side. "Our competitors claim that we are walking away from Notes/Domino users. Let me tell you categorically nothing could be further from the truth," said Lotus' Goyal at the company's recent annual user event.

Lotus is offering user migration at two speeds: for those that want to upgrade slowly, or that are sceptical about the new architecture, Domino will continue to be supported. And for those that are faster adopters, or perhaps have a greater investment in IBM technologies, there is the portal solution.

The ongoing support of two separate product sets clearly creates complexity for Lotus, but it has no real choice in this matter. Nor are users looking to migrate to the new system immediately, as full integration between the two is not expected until version 8.0 or beyond - due in mid-2005.

Lotus is asking a lot from its customers. "The ability to migrate applications will be the one significant thing that spells the difference between success and failure for Lotus in taking users from Notes to Workplace," says Meta Group's Pal.

Lotus is certainly aware of this problem and has provided help in the form of Workplace Builder, a sister product to Domino Designer - an application development and design tool that has many supporters and has been a key competitive differentiator for the company. Significantly, Microsoft doesn't have a similar tool.

"Workplace 1.1 looks much better and we are starting to see people deploy it," says Meta's Pal. However, it will take a few more releases and tighter integration between Notes/Domino and Workplace for a clear picture to emerge.

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