Needless to say, some of our readers did a little bit of flipping out.

So, while we respect Mark and SearchDomino, I thought it'd be useful to give you some perspective. Here then are five things you should think about as you plan your future.

1. IBM is friggin' huge.
In 2002, IBM sold 81 billion dollars worth of stuff. Now, it was a bad year for everyone, and like everyone, their numbers were down from previous years. In 2000, they made 88.3 billion dollars. As of today, they have a market cap of 166 billion bucks.

Even though Microsoft is big, they only made 28 billion in fiscal 2002, which gives them less than a third of the sales of IBM. What's probably annoying the crap out of IBM shareholders, though, is that even with a third of IBM's sales, Microsoft has a market cap of 286 billion.

IBM is a company with 315 THOUSAND employees, as compared to Microsoft's 51,000 or even HPs 142,000. Three hundred and fifteen thousand people work for IBM. When you have a company that big, there's bound to be a ton of projects, a ton of initiatives, and a ton of different customer demands that need to be met.

In short, a company as big as IBM can handle all the WebSpheres, Dominos, Linux's, and Workplaces it can come up with.

2. It's not about the developers.
Most folks we hear from are the Domino and Notes developers, rather than the customers who use Domino to run their businesses. While a company like IBM needs an aftermarket, their primary market is what drives the ship. In a sense, the aftermarket (all the developers, business partners, VARs, magazines, and camp followers) are tolerated and encouraged only because, even with 315,889 employees, IBM can't fill in every nook and cranny of customer demand.

But here's the thing. To get to 81 billion dollars of sales in one year, you gotta sell a whole lot of stuff. And that means you've got big customers. And it's not whether IBM decides to drop Notes or Domino, it's whether those big customers lose interest.