InformationWeek

November 23, 1998

The Domino Theory

continued...page 4 of 4

Conscientious Objectors
If you are an existing Exchange customer and your chief concerns are groupware, Intranet team collaboration, or extranet deployment, Domino release 5 offers an advanced security model you can deploy cross-platform and over the Internet. Beta 1 doesn't have the full complement of application templates, but the shipping product will leverage document library, threaded discussion, registration, and Instant Teamroom templates to do real work out of the box.

If you're standardized on GroupWise, you're already sitting pretty: directory-enabled, with good search tools; mature messaging, calendaring and scheduling; and robust document management that would cost more with the Domino. Doc add-in. Lotus has halted NetWare server development, leaving very little reason to switch unless a Novell shop has already started a migration to Windows NT.

In Play
In Play shops are waiting for some solution to show a clear advantage over all others. For most of these companies, the economic impact of the Web and the perceived value of knowledge management are the governing factors in making such a structural choice.

Domino-Notes release 5 now has enough infrastructure for capturing and channeling corporate intelligence, deploying rich Web-based messaging-enabled applications, and wiring together online workgroups to clearly dominate any other solution in the near term. Given the speed of Internet time, if the calculation is that your project is mission-critical, go with Domino for both rapid application development and an open security model that's deployable now while standards-based protocols catch up.

With the year 2000 clock ticking and forcing messaging migrations, release 5's improvements in its cc:Mail look and feel may keep cc:Mail shops in the Lotus camp. Some others will be attracted to Domino's groupware sizzle, but nothing here will blunt Microsoft's gains with Exchange and Outlook. The lion's share of messaging In Plays will be carved up between the two leaders, with Novell retaining its installed base through its advanced usability.

Domino's IIS integration gives Lotus a chance in Microsoft shops as an application server with threaded discussions, dynamic views, and personalization capabilities not found from third-party vendors or in Microsoft's catalog--though Office 2000's Web discussions and FrontPage 2000's Categories features come close. For shops looking to standardize internal development on Java and/or Corba, Domino makes the right noises.

Happy Trailers
Domino provides quick development, but not at low cost. The market is booming for qualified Notes developers, and shops not interested in Internet applications won't get their programming dollars' worth. Deployment is much improved over earlier versions, but so are GroupWise and Microsoft's products. Some shops may buy into Netscape's ISP outsourcing strategy.

In the end, while it's a serious and rewarding release for a large segment of the market, release 5 is not such an overwhelming story that Happy Trailer shops will reallocate people from SAP implementations to roll it out. Those shops, when they finally get around to considering groupware, will find other platforms, both strategic and tactical, to choose from. Third-party solutions such as Instinctive's eRoom and Changepoint's Involv Intranet--which leverage the Microsoft and Domino platforms--may prove quicker and cheaper to deploy, albeit with fewer features and less customizability.

The Bottom Line
For the DomiNoters and their dedicated Lotus shops, missing this release would be paramount tomfoolery. For the In Play and Escapee groups, Lotus has done what it must do to stay in the game. But it's too early to judge whether what's in the shipping version of release 5 is going to be enough to cement Lotus' isolated position of strength, the last non-Microsoft bastion in the industry. We will follow up with more testing when a fully featured beta version arrives.

Steve Gillmor is director of Southern Digital Inc., a Charleston, S.C., consulting firm. He can be reached at sgillmor@southerndigital.com. Jeff Angus is a senior technology editor at InformationWeek.

return to page 1, 2, 3