See why over 118 million people use Notes!

Discover what Lotus Notes is and what it does, the difference between Notes and Domino, how affordable Notes is, and why so many organisations choose it.

What is Lotus Notes?

Lotus Notes is far more than just an email system!

Notes/Domino is an integrated email, applications development and workflow system.

'Lotus Notes' versus 'Lotus Domino'

Lotus Notes is the client software, i.e. the software that your staff would have on their desktops.

Lotus Domino is the server software that Lotus Notes interacts with. Lotus Domino is also a web server, which means that your users can use a web browser to interact with Domino applications, and therefore not need to have Lotus Notes on their desktops.

What Does Lotus Notes/Domino Do?

Lotus Notes/Domino enables organisations to not only send and receive emails, but also to:

Build applications to manage unstructured data (e.g. text, MS Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, etc)
Deliver web-enabled applications to users over the internet
Build workflow-enabled systems by integrating their applications with email
Secure data so that it can be accessed by authorised users only
Access email and applications off-line (e.g. on a laptop) without needing to be connected to the internet

This article from IBM gives a good overview of why Lotus Notes was first developed, and its progression since its first release: http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/whatisnotes.

But Isn't It Expensive?

Not any more! With their Express Portfolio range of products, IBM has ensured that every organisation can afford Notes/Domino - check out the pricing for yourself.

Note that purchasing a Lotus Domino Collaboration Express licence gives you the right to use Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino - for less than two hundred dollars!

Why do Organisations Choose Lotus Notes/Domino?

Organisations around the world choose Lotus Notes/Domino for many reasons - here are a few of them:

Proven Performance

When IBM purchased Lotus in 1995, there were about 2 million users of Notes worldwide - today, according to IBM, there are over 118 million: http://www.lotus.com/engine/jumpages.nsf/wdocs/notesdomino.

Read about the continuing growth of Lotus Notes/Domino in press release dated 18 May 2005 from Ambuj Goyal, IBM General Manager of Workplace, Portal and Collaboration Software.

Clearly the Lotus Notes/Domino platform delivers!

Stability

The Lotus Notes/Domino platform is extremely robust and stable. It is quite common for Lotus Domino servers to keep running for years at a time without ever needing to be re-started.

How often are you unable to access your email or applications because 'the server is down'? If your technology isn't working, then neither are your staff - and your organisation is losing money. If this is happening frequently in your organisation, then you should be looking seriously at Lotus Notes/Domino.

Collaboration

When it was first released, Lotus Notes was called 'groupware', as it was the first software application designed to make it possible for users to work together and share information.

Today we use the term 'collaboration' instead of 'groupware', but the meaning is the same. And over 20 years later, no other software company has ever released any software which offers the same degree of collaboration!

Support for Remote Users

Long before the internet became prevalent, Lotus Notes has enabled people to work remotely (e.g. on laptops, on home PC's, etc), and to easily synchronise all of their data and applications with the Lotus Domino server over a phone line.

Today the internet makes this process even easier - and cheaper!

The beauty of the Lotus Notes synchronisation process (called 'replication') is that users can replicate all of their applications at the same time (including their email and all the files and documents that their applications contain) - simply by clicking the Start button on their Replicator page.

Backwards Compatibility

Lotus has always been extremely successful in ensuring that new releases of Lotus Notes/Domino support the earlier versions.

This saves your organisation a great deal of money, over the years, as it means that you can upgrade to newer versions at a time that suits your business, and be assured that none of your previous investment will be wasted.

Exciting Future

IBM/Lotus has mapped out an exciting future for Lotus Notes/Domino that will see it become part of the J2EE-based Lotus Workplace family of products.

To date, most small to medium-sized organisations don't have the resources to move their applications and infrastructure to a Java/J2EE platform. However by choosing Notes/Domino now, they can be confident that when the time is right for them, they will be able to seamlessly migrate into the open, standards-based J2EE world.