Notes as team
Notes is synonymous with collaboration and teaming (if companies aren't using it for this, shame on them!). Too many of us work in teams and have no place to keep our critical documents, share information, track project activities, and, well, collaborate. Notes can, of course, provide this. And, while we're at it, why do we need to be in the office to work with this information? Teams meet on many fronts (conference calls, video conferencing, conference rooms, lunch, chat rooms, you name it) and members all need to track their information. Telecommuting doesn't mean you can't meet in person -- it means that you should still be able to access the information from your meeting while you work remotely, while you're on the conference call, or while you're on a plane. We should be able to collaborate off line as well as on; this is critical for a telecommuting strategy and, I believe, for a successful team.

Notes as messaging
Yes, Notes does mail, but it does so much more. Well, in this case, it's critical to bring up Notes as a messaging foundation. I say this because messaging, particularly mobile access to messaging, is absolutely critical to a telecommuting strategy. And, as Lotus keeps reminding us (and I agree), Notes is wonderful at messaging. Email is increasingly becoming the lifeline of communication within companies -- while managers like to have you near them where they can see you, they would prefer to send you an email detailing their requests rather than tell you. It makes sense because email provides a paper (less?) trail. Thus, when you're mobile, email becomes critical in maintaining your link with your team, managers and company. As a telecommuter, I dial in and replicate my email several times a day. You never know what might be waiting.

Notes as a date book
Notes is also a calendar, and while this is completely self explanatory, I will say this from the telecommuting vantage point: the telecommuter may not be around to check schedules with others when scheduling lunches, meetings, etc., nor should he or she be. Electronic calendaring eliminates this issue by allowing anyone to check anyone's schedule and request and schedule events or appointments which will later be approved or not.

Notes as Borg
The Borg is a semi-robotic Star Trek species whose entire reason for existence is to assimilate (incorporate and overwhelm) other species. Their stock saying is "Resistance is futile."

The hidden beauty of Notes from the telecommuting standpoint is it's borgness -- Notes has the ability to integrate virtually anything into itself, and, at least in theory, to run on virtually anything. From a telecommuting strategy perspective this is absolutely critical in terms of integrating various systems and providing access to them to the mobile user, who, through Notes, can take advantage of Notes' remote access capabilities (for example, replication and security).

Through any number of add on products, such as NotesPump and the other back end connection tools, a telecommuting solution can grab data from any number of legacy systems or other data sources and can port them into the same front end. Separately a number of other products can allow that same information to then be re-routed; sent to fax machines, voice mail and phone systems, pagers, digital cellular phones, PDA's like the Palm computer, and more. All of this can be done from within the Notes and Domino umbrella.