Lotusphere accomplished that with great style. But the general sessions were lively and many of the breakout sessions we attended were so technical that you had to be writing code to really care. Lotus expects the two groups to grow to 10 Million by the end of this year. There are now 8,000 Notes partners and more than 5,000 Notes network customers. If Lotus continues to grow at merely a linear rate, there would be about 20 Million users in the 1997 time frame, but Lotus has more ambitious plans.
Lotus is on a roll.
More detailed analysis may be in order. At the end of 1994, Lotus happily reported 1.35 million Notes users. This means that if Lotus had no new competitors and growth could be depended upon to continue at this highly acceptable linear pace, by 1997, there would be more than 15 million Notes users. But growing markets don't work that way. Lotus has figured out that 1995 is a critical year, because so many vendors are now entering the groupware market.