Arvin Kamboj, Systems Consultant--Business Development at Foedero Technologies Inc. (at http://www.foedero.com), on the other hand, believes Domino is a shrinking market segment. "IBM should not focus a lot of attention on Domino; they should use it internally, if anything." Kamboj continues, "We feel that Lotus Notes is an awesome email and database application. I would like to see it in more companies. More active marketing to the SMB market will increase awareness of Lotus." As for WebSphere, meanwhile, he believes it's a good Web application server but over-priced. Addressing IBM, he says, "Most of our employees are ex-IBMers. Our consulting group provides our customers with service for their IBM products. We have a great respect for IBM and have acquired extensive knowledge of IBM products and services. We have also followed the Java route, developing scalable and portable applications on the Linux platform."

Gary M. Cole of Marin Research (at http://www.marinres.com) says that they really like IBM's J2EE/Web services direction, saying, "We can't understand why Lotus does not move more rapidly to embrace WebSphere."

Sethuram S, Vice President--Sales at Cybernet Software Systems (at http://www.cybernetsoft.com) believes Lotus and Domino are here to stay. "I am confident IBM also believes that and will continue to do whatever it takes to keep their Lotus customers feeling protected and ensuring they benefit from Lotus solutions."

M7 Corporation, Inc. (at http://www.m7.com) is an application assembly platform provider that delivers solutions designed to develop enterprise-quality J2EE Web applications. M7's Vice President of Marketing, Zack Urlocker, thinks IBM is an amazing company. "They've continued to innovate with new products on a regular basis. For a large company, they move pretty fast, and I think WebSphere and Eclipse are proof of that."

Sherry Weinstein of Eclipse Education, Inc. (at http://www.eclipse-education.com) says too many of their customers simply don't understand the power and flexibility of the Domino tools they already own. "Too many of them think it's just email, when it is capable of meeting business requirements too numerous to mention here. We all know by now that WebSphere is out there and the whole world should be using it. The focus needs to be more along the lines of how to implement the best solutions." As such, collaborative computing equals Lotus, Web Application Server equals WebSphere, and Instant Messaging equals Sametime, etc. From there, it's necessary to make them all operate together in a seamless fashion. "I know that's the strategy, but we sure don't hear a lot about the Domino piece of the puzzle," she says. "About all we hear is how the Domino tools are being incorporated into WebSphere, and that's scaring a lot of people."