By Dan Jones
Lotus Development Corp is hoping that last-minute Y2K-related sales of its Notes messaging software will bolster license revenues in the countdown to the year 2000. Despite all the blather and hype concerning the (late) release of Lotus’ Notes client and Domino server version 5 groupware in Orlando, Florida next week, recent research has highlighted how companies are unlikely to attempt ambitious rollouts of new software environments with the Millennium bug looming on the corporate horizon (CI No 3,571). This unwillingness to start building enterprise-wide ‘bespoke’ groupware systems – document sharing systems with custom applications built on a Notes base, for example – may see Lotus – among others – feeling the bite. Indeed, Jim Moffat, product marketing team manager, concurs that Lotus isn’t exactly clear about how Y2K will affect its revenue curve yet. However, Moffat claims that the company is sanguine about its prospects for the next year. This is because Lotus is expecting to bolster license revenues when firms with aged and non-Y2K compliant email systems panic buy new messaging systems. He claimed that replacement email systems represented the bulk of early sales for Notes this year. And research from Electronic Mail and Messaging Systems shows that Lotus is back on top in the messaging sector – the company sold 3.4 million Notes licenses in the corporate email sector for the third quarter 1998. Against this, Microsoft Corp sold 3.2 million licenses of its rival Exchange messaging product. Lotus – despite trying to reposition the Notes/Domino family as knowledge management systems – reflects this reliance on its core messaging market in its pricing model. Moffat said that a user essentially pays for the messaging/email element of Notes/Domino, which bundles all the software on one CD-ROM with an all-in-one workstation license.
