We were not wrong (with one exception).

The buzz is back at Lotusphere, Hannover officially became Lotus Notes and Domino 8, products Quickr, Connections and Sametime 7.5.1 were launched, and a lot more happened as well.

The Workplace prediction we made was wrong, but nobody's too sad about that one. I'll discuss the apparent demise of Workplace a little further on in this article.

This is the first of four articles I've written on Lotusphere and all the new Lotus announcements. In this article, I'll talk about the event itself, and provide some of the broad strokes of what was announced. In the next three articles, I'll go in-depth on each of the key announcements and provide you with some perspective and analysis.

Read on. There'll be a picture of a giant swan boat at the end of this installment. You know you're not surprised. It's Lotusphere!

The buzz
I was just about to say that Mike Rhodin, Lotus General Manager, opened Lotusphere, but that's not correct. The Opening General Session was actually started by the Ultrasonic Rock Orchestra, and as a warm-up act, they did just great. Lotusphere now officially starts on Sunday, with JumpStart and hands-on sessions, which occurred before Mike's opening session.

But, anyway, Mike Rhodin got the opening session rolling by describing a remarkable Lotus performance over the last two years, and a particularly good 2006. We said last year that Lotus is back, and this year really confirmed that: 127 million seats of Lotus Notes in total, double-digit growth for Notes over those two years, a 30% growth in Notes shipments for Q4 2006.

With Lotus Notes now growing faster than the overall the messaging market, that means that Lotus is taking market share hand-over-fist from somebody, and we all know who that is!

All of that is great news for the whole Lotus community, and it showed.

There were happy faces in the audience, and happy faces later in the Product Showcase, secure that their corporate and personal investments in Notes and Domino are safe and will grow.

Indeed, when I asked Penny Scharfman, Program Director for Lotus Notes and Domino Products, just how many more Notes versions we could expect, she said "there's another 20 or 30 years of this stuff".

Compare Notes 1 of 1989 with Notes 8 of 2007, 18 years later. What will the Notes 16 or so of 2025 look like, and will it still run on Vista?