PDAs including Palm devices and IBM WorkPads have finally taken off. This is not your father's Sharp Wizard anymore. Everyone with an IT budget or a personal toy budget has one, either because they are a real-life traveling professional or because they are just too important to not be seen with the latest technology (of course, there are a few people that really find the things useful). On the other hand, real-life mobile professionals are far from out of the woods. Now, they cart around a notebook computer with all the extras, and a PDA, and the stuff to hook the two together. What's another two pounds when you can just buy a bigger computer bag?

MSD
So what do chiropractors and the Borg-like equipment arrays of so-called mobile hardware have to do with Lotus? Well, until recently, not much. Of course the Notes client on a Notebook computer has always been able to communicate with a Domino server, from a remote location, using a modem or a LAN protocol. But, until late 1999, the only Lotus product targeted at the mobile market was EasySync for Notes, which provided synchronization between Notes databases and Notes mail with devices running Palm OS (Palm devices and the IBM WorkPad). More recently, Lotus shipped Mobile Services for Domino (MSD) 1.0 signaling a bold new strategy aiming at the wireless market. MSD runs on Window 4.0 NT Service Pack 4 or later and requires Domino 4.65, or 5.01 and above.

Domino is so capable and so flexible that it has always been a product with an identity crisis. What is it? Is it workflow and forms; email and discussions/news; Web server; personalizable intranet server and virtual workplace; database server; document management system; PKI deployment and management system; middleware linking PCs with legacy databases; or realtime collaboration and instant messaging? And now, incredibly, Domino has somehow begun to morph, yet again, into an ASP (Application Service Provider) infrastructure technology.