Erik Brooks

  I just wanted to echo some earlier sentiments in my own words:

"Lotus Notes is the ultimate enterprise-scale custom application development platform. Oh... almost forgot: it also includes integrated messaging and scheduling capabilities."

If Notes is an email system that, oh, by the way, also allows for creation of custom apps, its market share and feature set will forever be compared to Exchange, GMail, and any other platforms of that ilk that have yet to emerge.

If, on the other hand, Notes is a custom application development platform that, oh, by the way, also just happens to include a very competent messaging and scheduling framework that integrates seamlessly into the custom application framework because those features are developed using the same languages and underlying architecture that run your custom applications... then it's a whole other ballgame. Notes is then measured in terms of market share and feature set in comparison to PHP, ASP, Ruby on Rails, and a whole host of other languages and application development frameworks. Notes is a leader if customers can more rapidly deploy and more easily maintain custom applications that are more secure, more reliable, and more intuitive than what they would have had to settle for had they developed it using competing technologies.

If application development is the focus and email is an afterthought - as it has already become for an entire generation now on the brink of entering the workforce - then Notes offers a host of capabilities that dramatically distinguish it from most, if not all, alternatives. If email is the focus and application development is the afterthought... then IBM will forever be attempting to distinguish it from other messaging systems, limited to the scope of what any messaging system can do: for example, Notes makes it slightly easier to follow a "reply to all with history" thread, or its archiving options are slightly more robust, etc. The differences between these types of features are, by their very nature, infinitesimal... but the chasm between what Notes allows developers to create - and at what pace - and what the same number of developers can produce in other platforms in the same timeframe is astronomical.

So go for the easy win: if a potential (or existing) customer insists on discussing messaging, reassure them that Notes can handle their messaging needs because, well, everyone does messaging; messaging is easy. But then, as rapidly as possible, steer the conversation back to what Notes does that NOTHING ELSE CAN. :)