The article chides Lotus for repositioning Domino and Notes several times. As Giga has pointed out in the past, Lotus continues to be intellectually ahead of the market and must maintain two messages, one for e-mail and one for collaboration and knowledge management. However, because the have the more sophisticated capabilities of Domino they must maintain a marketing message that positions them in accounts that are prepared to leverage all of Domino's capabilities. As for talent loss, this is not an unusual occurrence, and in fact Lotus retained its senior talent longer than many acquisitions, allowing more time for Ray Ozzie and his team to transfer both skills and vision to other employees. Lotus continues to dominate e-mail, though Microsoft is providing stiff competition.
Lotus continues to provide intellectual leadership in collaboration and knowledge management.
Lotus continues to invest in its core e-mail engine to make it more open, robust and reliable. Giga information shows that administration costs related to mail are less or on par with Exchange. And finally, within days of the Forbes article, Creative Networks, Inc. released their 1998 customer satisfaction survey, which was dominated by Microsoft Exchange last year. Last year's Exchange champions had only used Exchange for an average of 8 months. 12 months after the honeymoon period scalability of Exchange and NT and other performance issues have driven down Exchange's ratings.