InformationWeek

"This gap between the rate of change and the rate of learning, and the way it impacts organizations of all sizes, is a problem that someone has got to step up to the plate and solve with technology," he says. "This gap is the opportunity for Lotus."

Zollar, five months into his job as president and CEO of Lotus Development Corp., in many ways represents the latest iteration of an 18-year-old company that was one of the first packaged PC software vendors, a former leader in the spreadsheet market, the foremost proponent and developer of groupware technology, and, since 1995, an arm's-length subsidiary of IBM. Zollar, a 23-year IBM veteran, is charged with leading Lotus into its next high-margin opportunity: becoming the "franchise player" in the markets for collaboration, knowledge management, and distributed-learning software.

Franchise player. These are Zollar's own words, yet they're also applicable to the role he finds himself thrust into-returning Lotus to pre-eminence in an industry it helped create. With Microsoft, its long-time archrival, making Lotus sweat to keep its Notes/Domino client-server groupware in the lead in the collaboration software market, Lotus is strongly in need of standout technology.

Low-key and genial, Zollar is light years removed from Lotus' previous chief executives: the McKinsey-trained and Microsoft-obsessed Jim Manzi, who headed the company from 1986 to 1995; and the dapper, hard-charging Jeff Papows, who left Lotus early this year under a cloud of controversy. Zollar is closer in temperament to Lotus founder Mitch Kapor. And just as Kapor had a flagship technology in Lotus' 1-2-3 spreadsheet program, Zollar is counting on a product now under development to propel the company to the forefront of the database and document-management discipline known as knowledge management.

Code-named Raven, it's an integrated system that, when completed later this year, will provide users with three key knowledge-management functions: an expertise locator for identifying people within a company who possess knowledge in a particular area; a content-management system for helping users find data, documents, and other materials; and portal technology to pull these pieces together. The software builds on the collaboration capabilities of messaging and groupware tools, such as Lotus' own Domino server and Notes client, to provide users with access to the personnel and other resources required for a given project via "knowledge windows" in E-mail, calendars, or Web sites (see story).

Shaw Pittman, a Washington law firm, hopes to use Raven to replace a rudimentary knowledge-management application and contact database it built on top of Notes four years ago. Cindy Thurston, application development manager at Shaw Pittman-a beta site for Raven-likens the software's expertise locator to "a directory, like a Yahoo of expertise," that offers attorneys an efficient way to find colleagues who specialize in a certain area from the firm's 388 lawyers. "Law firms are a knowledge business," Thurston says. "But law firms are behind consulting firms when it comes to keeping track of their knowledge." Thurston says the Raven technology will help fill that gap. "Lotus' direction on collaboration and knowledge management is the same as ours," she says.

That's in line with Zollar's philosophy. Customers who have met with Zollar are impressed with his interest in their needs. "Zollar is a pretty customer-focused person. We're encouraged by what we see so far," says Tony Scott, chief technology officer at General Motors Corp. During a one-hour interview, Zollar uses the phrase "creating value for our customers" several times.

Zollar appears to be on solid ground in focusing the company's strategic direction on knowledge management and distributed learning. The worldwide market for knowledge-management software is poised to grow from $515 million this year to $3.5 billion by 2004, according to a recent report by market researcher Ovum. U.S. companies spent more than $3 billion on technology-delivered training last year, according to IDC, a research firm. By the time that number reaches $11.5 billion in 2003, Lotus hopes its Learning Space E-learning software will command a healthy share of the market.

To ensure that it does, the vendor last month joined forces with its parent company to create a 4,000-employee business unit, called IBM Mindspan Solutions, to help companies set up online training services. "Knowledge management and distributed learning are getting a tremendous amount of attention within Lotus," says Laura Sanders, a VP of Mindspan Solutions. Though grouped under separate business units, the technologies are inextricably linked, she says. "We view distributed learning as 'knowledge transfer,' a key pillar of knowledge management." Lotus already has incredible mindshare in knowledge management and E-learning, Zollar says; now, "our challenge is to turn that mindshare into market share."

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