• Email: Domino is a world-class email solution with many unique and superior features compared with other offerings.

• Notes: Although Web browsers have come a long way, the Lotus Notes client still offers advantages to developers and to users, especially power users who take advantage of easy-to-program Agents.

• Replication: Domino is totally unique in its ability to neatly distribute, circulate, and synchronize subsets of corporate data across applications and throughout the enterprise.

On the WebSphere side, there are many capabilities not found in Domino. At last count the WebSphere platform incorporates approximately ninety different products. One thing that sets these products apart is that they are all industrial-strength software designed for use in large-scale, massively scalable solutions.

Domino can best be leveraged as an IT infrastructure solution for internal email, directory services, calendaring, and distributed groupware applications. If we consider how extensively Domino customers use Domino for departmental and workgroup applications it's inconceivable that these numerous, rapidly developed, and low-cost applications can or should be provided by WebSphere. To understand where Domino stands relative to WebSphere we have to step back from intranets and internal IT infrastructure.

Some of the key areas in the future of the Web and e-business are application servers, middleware, Java, and Web Services. Sun and Microsoft are fighting for control of Web Services with Microsoft pushing .NET on one side and Sun pushing Sun ONE on the other.

The .NET platform aims to dominate enterprise Internet, extranet, and intranet infrastructures with Microsoft servers and tools. Aside from control of the Web and e-business, what's at stake is the future of Java. If Microsoft were to dominate Web Services without Java technology, the future of Java would certainly be in doubt. In fact there are only three significant threats to Microsoft outside of anti trust litigation, and they are (1) Java, (2) Linux, and (3) Open Source software in general.

Sun's Sun ONE platform is a Java-centric point-by-point competitor to .NET but as a company Sun doesn't have the software savvy or the market muscle to beat Microsoft directly--all that Sun can do is drive Java technology and support their strategy through alliances and industry initiatives. Like many other companies, Sun is currently focusing on their core business-selling server boxes-in a struggle to stabilize the company in the face of adverse economic conditions. As a result, IBM is the de facto champion in strategic technology competition with Microsoft, and Java is the key to breaking Microsoft's hold on developers: proprietary development tools and APIs tied to Windows.

In terms of application and database servers and Java, IBM has everything they need in WebSphere and DB2, but the Lotus software community can rest assured that IBM's suite of core IT server products comes in a yellow box with just one product name: Domino. At the same time Domino is certainly not the IBM platform for Web services, nor is it a Web and e-business platform equal to the task of competing with .NET and Sun ONE.