InformationWeek

This feature of eRoom--its ability to serve as a platform for custom applications--is also important for the traditional messaging and groupware packages. "As the market continues to fragment," says Collaborative Strategies' Coleman, "the more traditional groupware tools are finding more value as platforms for applications built on top of Exchange or Notes."

According to Coleman's figures, Lotus' groupware and messaging product--the Notes client running on the Domino server--leads the market with more than 50 million installed seats, compared with Microsoft's Outlook/Exchange offering, which has about 30 million installed seats. At about $4,400 for a basic package containing a Domino server with 25 Notes client licenses, that's a significant market and market share.

And a small application, used on the Notes/Domino base, can make a big contribution to collaboration within a company, says Carol Anne Ogdin, founder and president of Deep Woods Technology Inc. Ogdin, who specializes in the cultural issues of business collaboration, contends that not all collaboration in an organization is obvious.

For example, building managers in a large company could use an application running on Domino to track office moves; that application could also update the company's centralized database of contact information--keeping office numbers for the company's personnel up-to-date. "It doesn't sound like an application with a big payoff," Ogdin points out, "but in terms of finding people, it's outstanding."

Joel Manfredo, director of information services for the Rouse Co., a large real-estate development and management company in Columbia, Md., is another Lotus user who has taken advantage of Notes/Domino. Rouse responded to a consolidation in the market by implementing what Manfredo calls a "mission-critical application" built on the Notes/Domino messaging-groupware base.

The company's Leasing Management System, which went live in May 1998, integrates data from 13 or 14 large databases relating to 14,000 leases across the United States. About 900 agents find information--from sales history to physical attributes--about a retail location and then check to see whether other deals are pending in that space and how far along those deals are.

Back in late 1995, Rouse started small. "Phase 1 was how to send E-mail, use the calendar, and use shared folders," Manfredo says. "While people were in class, a team converted their desktop messaging systems to Notes." Now about 97% of their users use the calendar features, a compliance level that has translated to the Leasing Management System. "You can't go outside the system to conduct a transaction," Manfredo says. "It's successful because of that and senior management support." Rouse has more than 60 applications in project management, workflow, and information dissemination, all of which use the Notes/Domino base.

This summer, Lotus is scheduled to release a beefed-up knowledge-management product called Raven. Ogdin says Raven could make it easier for people in a company to connect--users can find experts on a particular topic in an online expert base or search data that records that expertise.

Sometimes archived data or E-mail messages just aren't enough to make collaboration work. Synchronous collaboration tools--such as the instant-messaging function in eRoom--can help. According to Coleman, instant messaging is the fastest-growing collaboration tool, with more than 3 million chats occurring per day.

Companies that want more functionality than instant messaging can take advantage of other synchron-ous technologies, including Web conferencing. With PlaceWare's Conference Center 2000 facility, as many as 1,000 users can conduct or participate in meetings with just a Web browser and a telephone line.

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