Notes is not exactly a new kid on the software block. Lotus shipped the first copy in 1980, five years after one of its stars, Raymond Ozzie, left the company to start working on Notes. Lotus backed Ozzie’s company, Iris Associates, and ended up buying the whole thing for $84 million of stock last year. Ozzie had been dreaming of a Notes-like program since his college days.
For the past six years, corporate America has been loading Ozzie’s child into computers faster than you can say “system crash.” Sales this year are expected to run a tad over $300 million, up 60 percent from 1994. But don’t count on running down to your local computer store and buying a box with Notes in it. This is heavy-strength industrial stuff designed for big corporations or big networks. You can get a scaled-down version- sort of a Notes Lite–for about $150 a user. The heavy-duty package runs about $400.
Is Notes worth this kind of money? Some experts believe it changes the workplace as much as the switch from centralized mainframe computers to PCs did. Why? Because Notes fills a gaping pothole in the Information Superhighway. Word processors and la-set printers help generate beautiful documents, but documents have to be physically moved from here to there. Not only can that take forever, but documents tend to get lost. You can’t spill coffee on electronic messages, which are convenient and quick-but unless users manage them carefully, they disappear, too. Databases help store and use things like mailing lists and product specifications, but they don’t help communicate, for example, what a prospect said during a sales call.
Besides providing e-mail and some simple word processing, Notes allows users access to a variety of databases. A regional sales manager might view a tabbed notebook on her computer screen. By clicking various buttons with pictures, she can find information about the company’s Northeast region; the notebook opens to a list of sales-call reports and discussion topics that salespeople and managers have started, with a list of notes and replies tucked under each topic.
She can sort the list by author, date or anything else she chooses, search the database for key words and collect any new intelligence on competitors. If she adds replies, Notes will automatically send copies to other participants. The program also allows managers to filter news stories and route them to the right people, store and retrieve images of contracts and send faxes.
Such features tantalize IBM. The company would like to climb higher in the computer food chain into specialized programs and consulting services. Traditionally, Lotus has introduced pioneering programs, such as 1-2-3, but hasn’t done a good job of marketing or updating them. Notes was no exception. The company had difficulty just explaining what the product did, not to mention getting customers to try it. Once Notes gained a foothold, though, the incredibly good word of mouth made it one of the hottest products in the computer world.
Will Notes survive in the increasingly competitive software marketplace? To ensure that it does, Lotus is already trying to mate the product with the Internet. If it succeeds, the result could be the ultimate information mover: a system that would allow almost anyone anywhere to send almost anything to anybody.
