The Notes programming environment provides a rich set of programming functionality inside Notes and Domino while extending this groupware-oriented programming facility outward to external, general-purpose programming tools and a variety of APIs.

At the time that Iris Associates developed Notes, Lotus and other companies faced the growing challenge of Microsoft's secret monopoly: software development tools. Lotus' strategy was to make Notes a development platform so that cross-platform applications could be developed to run within the Notes client and server--rather than directly on top of the workstation or server OS.

Essentially, this allowed one programming environment to be used for all client platforms while at the same time taking application development entirely away from the OS vendor. Interestingly, Lotus cross-platform application development technology--achieved through server-based applications interacting with a thick client--can be seen as an early precursor of Java, which some claim to be perhaps the single greatest threat to Microsoft's OS monopoly. The Domino programming paradigm moves both applications and development into an increasingly open and extensible client/server computing environment.

Although Exchange is marketed as a groupware development platform, it offers few built-in capabilities to work with documents. Microsoft's Routing Objects technology was implemented only recently while Lotus Notes and Domino represent five or more years of document-savvy technology evolution. The lack of a document-centric development paradigm in Exchange underscores the lack of maturity of this platform in the groupware area.

Conclusions
Lotus' client integration strategy leverages the strength of the Domino server and development environment as well as the Web. In practical terms this could mean that there are fewer visits to the desktop to deploy applications, that applications can be managed from the server, and that an overall a conservation of workstation resources may be achieved as compared with an environment where there are multiple client-side applications.

Lotus' server-side approach to integration strategy provides server-side applications and unifies security, directory services, and intranet application technologies. Broadly speaking, Exchange is a less mature, messaging-centric solution with limited Web functionality while Domino is a mature, collaboration-centric solution with extensive Web capabilities. At the same time, Domino provides a single, consistent administration framework. While Microsoft Exchange Server is a strong product for messaging and simple collaboration, Exchange does not provide the degree of technological or administrative integration that Lotus Notes and Domino deliver.

While Microsoft offers a broad range of development tools and a plethora of APIs, Microsoft does not offer a single groupware-oriented development environment for both Exchange Server and Web or Intranet applications. While Microsoft bends its general-purpose development tools towards Exchange and the Web, Lotus offers a specialized but rich and extensible groupware and Web application programming environment directly within Notes and Domino.