The next iteration of this cycle is light apps for wireless/mobile devices like Blackberry. In fact, our clients are already looking to us for solutions directed at the PDA.

David: What does workflow really mean?

Scott: In its simplest form workflow is the intelligent electronic routing of documents for review, approval and/or action by people involved in a process.

David: There are some commonalities all workflow applications?

Scott: There are. After building 40 or 50 workflow applications from scratch, you realize that they more or less have the same underlying components.

You've got basic infrastructure of authenticated users, security, email notification and business processes -- and you pretty much get these fundamentals out of the box with Notes. Then you've got the business rules, a means of sequencing events, how roles and players are identified and who's tasked with what when. Finally, you have the details that make a workflow application unique to the business process like customized email notifications, escalation, and the like.

After a while you realize these same components are in pretty much every application. The differences are more in how they are applied than what you actually need to do the work. It's a little like woodworking. Carpenters use many of the same tools to frame a house as they do to build a cabinet, but the difference is how they apply them, and in what sequence. Workflows are a lot like that, too.

David: Why would a company want workflow capability?

Scott: Actually, it's not a question of wanting it. All companies have workflows, just maybe not electronically. When someone needs expenses reimbursed, they may walk down the hallway with a pile of receipts to the accountant's office and that's a form of workflow. But done right, workflow applications yield three qualities very attractive to all companies: speed, efficiency and oversight capabilities -- which invariably result in a healthier bottom line.

David: Tell us about some of the weirdest workflow experience you've encountered. Give me a good story.

Scott: Well, this might not be weird, but it was unusual. We were working on an investment approval system for a global chemical manufacturing company. Their routing was so complex that at one point one of our guys calculated the number of different permutations an approval could go through. It turned out to be one octillion variations -- for you math fans out there, that's a 1 followed by 27 zeros. So our challenge was to figure out how to take that kind of complexity and make it manageable by mere mortals. It was tough, but we did it.

David: Is it better to manage workflow with Notes/Domino than Outlook/Exchange? Why?

Scott: We're at a point now with such tightly competing platforms that email and calendaring have become commodities. But application development is so much faster on the Notes platform with its integrated messaging and security, that it's hard to compare the two. Add to that the complexities that workflow brings to the table and the scales tip even further in Notes' favor.