Taking customers away from Exchange
There are many things IBM could do to win email and messaging business against Exchange. Here are few obvious ways IBM might try to re-build the momentum of Lotus Notes and Domino and take customers away from Exchange:

• Improve the directory services capabilities of Domino by developing an identity management strategy based on server-side directory integration rather than client-side single sign-on.

• Bundle Domino Everyplace and extend it to support the SyncML standard making Notes and Domino an out-of-the-box wireless messaging solution.

• Embed SameTime so every customer would be a Lotus Instant Messaging customer. Making wireless and instant messaging more accessible and attractive would make an enormous difference competitively.

• Leverage Domino's built-in capabilities, workflow, and messaging related APIs, to build in integrated regulatory compliance monitoring and enforcement capabilities.

• Lotus' enterprise search technology could at the same time be re-launched as a legal discovery tool with live search of message stores and archives.

• Extend Domino's real-time collaboration tools to make it easy for Notes customers to connect with each other, instead of using WebEx or NetMeeting.

• Support the PST file format under the Notes client for better integration with and easier migration from Exchange solutions.

• Buy J2 Global Communications and integrate eFax with every Domino client and server, making a new push into unified messaging.

• Integrate an X.509 PKI certificate server as part of a new directory services initiative so that customers could easily leverage the Domino directory for standards-based email security and perhaps provide an option. In Domino 9, to use 100% PKI technology for authentication and encryption.

The list goes on. The problem at IBM is a lack of willingness to aggressively and directly pursue the email and messaging business. What is clear, however, is that maintaining focus on Notes-based collaborative applications is a loosing proposition versus WebSphere and other J2EE application server platforms, not to mention the entire Microsoft arsenal.

Incremental improvements
Most of the new features in recent releases of Notes and Domino have been incremental improvements focusing on existing capabilities, solutions and customers. They haven't focused directly on the competition or trying to break new ground within the email and messaging market.

Internal improvements to a mature product have virtually no impact competitively. The differential between IBM's focus and what's happening in the email and messaging market might be described as insular or "out of touch". At the same time, IBM's current positioning of Notes and Domino looks to be little more than a holding pattern: a rear-guard action that they cannot possibly win versus Microsoft -- following other Lotus products into the virtual grave.