One observation is that Microsoft provides a veritable flood of communication and collaboration tools either bundled with the Windows OS or as free add-ons. With Windows 98 and available for download, Microsoft gives away free the following items, and more:

• Microsoft Outlook email and calendaring client;
• the Internet Explorer browser with Outlook Express for Internet mail and news;
• Microsoft Chat, a text chat client;
• NetMeeting for IP-based text chat, voice, and video conferencing;
• a Personal Web Server and FrontPage Express which together enable users to make information on their workstations available on the Web;
• Dial-up networking client and server software providing remote access to computer networks.

At another level, there are also Microsoft technologies, such as Active X, that claim leadership in the standards area and that could indirectly shape the future of Web-based collaboration and e-commerce. It may seem surprising that any company or product line can compete with Microsoft's avalanche of free Internet-oriented communication and collaboration applications and technologies. This becomes even more seemingly apparent when considering the vast distribution channel that derives from piggybacking on top of Windows and linking every user of Windows on the Internet to Microsoft's Web site. Nonetheless, Microsoft has yet to match the collaborative computing functionality offered by Lotus.

In my opinion, the reason why Microsoft has been unable to catch up with Lotus in the marketplace is that Microsoft's free client applications, while well-suited for ad-hoc departmental or small office information sharing, do not comprise a sweeping strategy for enterprise communication and collaboration. Many of the Microsoft tools are well-suited for personal computer users whose only network connection is the Internet. In my opinion, Microsoft's grab bag of Internet-oriented communication and collaboration tools do not qualify as groupware because they lack deep integration both at the desktop and at the server.

Microsoft's plan seems to be to provide seemingly countless applications with no consistent integration strategy outside of a common underlying OS. Lotus' client integration strategy appears to be the precise inverse. Rather than attempting to deliver every possible application and protocol, Lotus provides generic thin and thick client interfaces that work with many different server-based applications. The difference--and the power--of Domino is that all applications except the Notes client or browser reside on the server.

Lotus client strategy is much better for larger organizations because it gives customers the ability to build and deploy virtually unlimited applications throughout the Domino infrastructure worrying about what specific software is installed on the PC desktop. While the Notes client itself may have a substantial footprint at the workstation, it is ultimately economical because the bulk of applications and data normally remain at the server. At the same time, applications developed within the Notes and Domino framework can be tightly integrated with each other and multiple applications can seamlessly access data within the Domino server. The power of Notes and Domino stems from the client/server model of multiple server-based applications with one client, rather than the typical Microsoft model of multiple locally installed client applications (and multiple servers).