Obviously, Notes was outnumbered: enter IBM WebSphere with a long list of related products for Internet and intranet solutions.

The Lotus line
In comparison to Microsoft's barrage of separate products (nine and counting), Lotus Notes and Domino currently represent a less complex, better integrated solution from the standpoint of IT customers, but one that is capable of delivering similar applications on intranets by leveraging the integrated server platform of Domino rather than a variety of different products from the same vendor.

Nonetheless, Notes and Domino cannot challenge major J2EE application server platforms.

Comparing them
In general, Microsoft based solutions that can do everything Notes and Domino can do, but they require a massive, 100%-Microsoft infrastructure; not only Exchange and Outlook but Active Directory, SharePoint, SQL Server, etc., etc. The glaring fault in many analyst studies comparing Notes and Exchange, (in particular, those infamous Microsoft-sponsored studies), is that they only compare the cost of the Exchange and Outlook products ignoring the other 5-7 products that will be required to deliver the same breadth of solutions.

The massive infrastructure (often dozens of dedicated servers) is not a problem for IT organizations already committed to Microsoft as a standard -- and accustomed to managing countless Windows servers to support their intranets -- but clearly this would be a questionable strategy for other companies that might benefit far more from Notes and Domino.

When Notes and Domino make sense
When Notes and Domino make sense, most IT customers can readily see the many benefits. In fact, for most IT customers Lotus Notes and Domino have compelling advantages including:

• Maturity and stability resulting from a consistent architecture
• Choice of hardware platform
• Choice of operating system platform
• Superior scalability
• Superior security
• Deep integration of Internet standards
• Upward and downward compatibility
• Easy to use, built-in clustering
• Tightly integrated, groupware-specific development tools
• Support for multiple programming languages, including Java
• Modular, extendable server design
• Rich APIs

With all of its strengths one might wonder why Lotus Notes and Domino have not fared better in recent years against Microsoft Exchange and Outlook. Why hasn't Notes taken market share away from Exchange instead of the reverse?

IBM marketing
The answer, unfortunately, is that the worst enemy of Lotus software has been not Microsoft, but IBM. For example, when IBM decided not to support J2EE on Domino they signaled to customers and business partners that Domino -- which was literally the first application server product -- had no future as an application server platform. The beneficiaries of this decision included not only IBM WebSphere and Microsoft SharePoint, but as a consequence Microsoft Exchange.

Generally, once Lotus Notes was removed as a platform for Internet and intranet applications, it was also eventually removed as a messaging solution. The (false) perception created is that Domino is a technology belonging to the past. Where IBM has lost the application business, they have also tended to loose the messaging business.