Dear Lotus, c/o IBM:

I am writing you to explain why Microsoft Exchange/Outlook are still on the market and have not been completely blown out of the water by Lotus Notes/Domino.

We all know that Lotus Notes/Domino is an amazing product! There is no other enterprise collaborative (once called “groupware”) system that combines all of the elements that Notes has AND includes email, calendar and IM AND is a dynamic web server AND has such powerful administration tools AND has a solid security structure AND exposes many of the core elements directly to developers AND integrates with other applications easily AND AND AND…

It pains me to hear/read/listen to people compare Exchange and Notes. Its kind of like comparing a record player to Microsoft Windows: sure they both play music but Windows does much, much more (and yet stops short of being as cool as a Mac … more on that later).

This week I met with 8 people from a well known company based in Minnesota. The company has been using Lotus Notes for nearly a decade and have kept current with upgrades (they are on version 7.0.1). However, the purpose of meeting with them was to show them very basic applications my company developed in Notes over the course of the last few years, so as to give them an IDEA of things they could consider building.

They left excited and made comments about finally understanding the value of Notes beyond just email. They were blown away with the tools we had developed over time and are anxious to get started. They had one question: how?!

And there lies the problem.

Here’s a company that has already invested in Notes and kept current with versions yet haven’t had anyone (until that meeting) evangelize the power of Notes and get them excited about the things it can do for them … and then outline a plan for how they can get started. — Don’t worry, I think I got this particular company pointed in the right direction, but I’m sure there are many more like them out there.

So here’s an action plan YOU (Lotus/IBM) can implement to start to turn this around:

1. Execute a new marketing campaign that speaks to all current users of Notes, reminding them why they should keep using Notes and showcasing new & future tools to keep them interested.
2. Focus a larger portion of IBM (perhaps the growing Global Services Group) to be focused on Lotus technologies. No, not Lotus and WebSphere, just Lotus. Charge them with the responsibility of showcasing its power and building on business partner relationships for small and med-businesses.
3. Revamp Lotusphere (and local/mini-Lotusphere-type events) to offer “starter” and “basic” Notes sessions to make it easy for companies to jump-start into building Notes applications or purchasing basic (read: “not the kinda thing that wins Beacon awards”) Notes apps to get them started.
4. Call Apple. — The Notes UI was (apparently) once based on an Apple-esque interface but needs some help. Apple can do that. PLUS, they could benefit from a corporate email system like Notes … that partnership could be GREAT for both companies. Call me, I’ll explain how.
5. Once that new partnership is established and a sweet new UI has been developed, let’s go back to #1 and repeat the steps. Marketing works… but it has to remind people that are deep into Notes that they’ve made the right choice AND convince “email only” shops to dive in deeper AND intrigue Exchange users to at least check out the other side.

It’ll work, trust me.