Mike Rhodin, Lotus General Manager, opening the OGS, explored Emergence, and touched on some numbers, noting that everything that was promised at 'Sphere 2007 shipped as expected, and more, helping Lotus to 9% revenue growth in 2007. Unless existing customers have had serious budget expansions, which given the expanded portfolio in 2007 was possible, some or most of that 9% must represent a net gain of market share for Lotus against its competitors.

And that, along with just about everything else at Lotusphere 2008, bodes well for us Notes and Domino professionals. Indeed, as we'll see, the announcements made showed that times should be good for us to expand and extend their skills as we do ever more valuable things for our companies with all these new and enhanced products.

I said that the conference was significant for what was not said, too. I'll tell you why all that it was so significant in a later installment of my 2008 Lotusphere Analysis. Before I do that, I do need to tell you about all the various announcements and try to put them into some sort of context, so that you'll be able to see what I mean.

In this article, we'll talk about Notes and Domino as it is now. In the next, we'll talk about Domino 8.5. Then we'll move on to even more excitement over the next month. There's a lot to explore.

Notes and Domino
I don't know how many times it was stated that Notes is the core of the Lotus product portfolio, and that all of IBM is now fully behind the Notes and Domino family. Notes ain't dead yet, and there's no sign of its demise any time soon. I mention this because it's almost become an anti-tradition at Lotusphere to claim this is the year Notes is dead. And each year, Notes just gets stronger and stronger.

The first thing you'll see is Notes 8.0.1, due, I'm told, on the 15th of February. If you are using Notes 8.0, you need this release, and if you aren't, you need to download it to find out what all the fuss is about.

8.0.1, you say -- just a point maintenance release, you say. What's all the fuss about, there's never anything on x.0.1 releases but fixes? Well, not this time. Notes 8.0.1 Standard, that's the Eclipse/Expeditor based client, has some very cool and important new features. I'm also told by some beta program members that it also fixes the rather stately performance of 8.0 and pretty much all the UI quirks that were present in there too.