The main opportunity for Lotus Notes and Domino moving forward is in the intranet and extranet spaces. Domino 5.0 in particular promises to boost Domino's viability as Web-based collaborative computing development environment. While Domino is unlikely to become a major Internet web server platform it can make great progress as an intranet and extranet server platform. In this area however, Lotus faces mounting competition from 100% standards-based products and technologies. Netscape and other Web vendors are already focused on the intranet and extranet opportunity.

Knowledge management overlaps both the infrastructure and Web spaces and constitutes a strong marketing strategy for Lotus moving forward. Although the opportunities are vast there will be strong competition across the board even in the knowledge management area where vendors like SAP AG can overlap, as well as complement, Domino-based knowledge management applications.

Ron Herardian is CEO and Chief Technical Consultant at Global System Services (GSS). You can reach him via email at rherardi@gssnet.com. Visit his web page at http://www.gssnet.com.