In essence, Lotus has taken a two-pronged strategy in integrating Domino with the Windows 2000 platform. Its first move was to get Domino up and running on the Windows 2000 platform. Its second move will most likely be to include changes in a subsequent release that will take advantage of the many Windows 2000 features.

The first part of this careful strategy was the release of version 5.0.3 earlier this year. It was the first version of Domino R5 to be supported on Windows 2000. At the moment, there are no plans in place for any version of the 4.5x or 4.6x code streams to be supported on Windows 2000.

Why the wait?
The thinking behind the Lotus strategy is that most customers will not be moving en masse to Windows 2000 for some time yet. Some may be waiting six to twelve months or more until they feel they sufficiently understand the implications of the new features of Windows 2000, particularly Active Directory. At the same time, the code should then be mature and stable enough to deploy.

In retrospect, we can see that Lotus has been proven correct. Microsoft may have sold over a million licenses of Windows 2000 to date, but industry analysts are making the point that many of these are for the Professional version (the new name for the workstation product) rather than for any of the Windows 2000 Server versions.

Domino version 5.0.3
Domino version 5.0.3 was released soon after the launch of Windows 2000 and represents the first supported version of the Domino server and the Notes client to run on this platform. This also includes Windows Terminal Services' support for the Notes client to run on Terminal Services clients.

Lotus has performed extensive testing on this version and reports that all existing integration continues to function. This includes all of the integration features introduced in version 4.5 and the Domino for IIS functionality added in R5.

Platform integration features
Specifically, the following platform integration features have been verified by Lotus on the Windows 2000 platform:

• Notes User Manager extensions, which can create or delete users and groups;
• Domino Upgrade Services to import Windows NT 4.0 users into Domino;
• Single Sign-on for the Notes client;
• Domino integration with IIS's HTTP stack;
• Using the Event Log as a destination for Domino event reporting;
• Using System Monitor (formerly called Performance Monitor) to monitor Domino statistic counters;
• Using IE as an integrated browser within the Notes client;
• Access to Domino server objects via a COM interface.