A Lotus Software official this week reiterated the value of the IBM unit's pending update to its venerable Notes and Domino software after a top executive revealed during an interview that the underlying architecture would be revamped for subsequent releases. Notes/Domino 6, also known as R6, is due for general release during the third quarter of this year.

Ferris Research analyst David Ferris says comments made recently by Steve Mills, senior VP and group executive of IBM Software Group, detailing plans to overhaul Notes/Domino's infrastructure and data storage will lead Lotus customers to wonder whether an upgrade to R6 is a wise investment. "If there's uncertainty, decision-making tends to slow down as people evaluate the options," says Ferris. "That's bad for Lotus, which has had difficulty getting people to upgrade to new versions of Notes/Domino. The uncertainty now introduced will have the effect of further deferring upgrades." Ferris suggests that if customers are facing a migration to a new infrastructure with the next release, they may wait for that release and save themselves the pain of an upgrade in the interim.

But Ed Brill, senior manager of enterprise messaging at Lotus, says the 1,000 new features in R6 designed to improve employee productivity should be enough to convince customers that the upgrade is warranted. Brill says that no matter what architectural changes might be planned for subsequent releases, customers who upgrade to R6 should feel comfortable that doing so won't represent a short-term investment. He points out that Lotus will continue to provide support for Notes/Domino 4, released in 1996, through 2003, while there's still no scheduled end to support for R5, released in 1999.