NotesWon't Bring "Immediate Miracles," Manzi Says
 
Copyright (c) 1989, McGraw-Hill, Inc.
SAN FRANCISCO (Microbytes Daily News Service) --- Lotus CEO and
president Jim Manzi took time out during his speech at the
Personal Computer Outlook conference earlier this week to promote
Lotus' new Notes groupware program. "We think it's a remarkable
product," he said. "The only problem with Notes is how to market
it and how to support it."
 
"Notes is not a product that you can just buy and put it up on a
screen and expect immediate miracles," Manzi said. "It's not even
clear to us that Notes is even a product. It may in fact be a
service in itself. In fact, one of our earliest customers will
use it to deliver service to its customers."
 
(That customer is Reuters Information Services, which is using
Notes to deliver personalized news feeds to its subscribers. The
Reuters system uses Notes to sort news stories and present the
subscriber with information according to prespecified criteria;
it would collect and deliver all stories related to computers,
for example.)
 
Lotus has formed its first direct sales force to sell Notes.
However, Manzi admitted the new groupware product isn't something
you "put on the shelf at Egghead Software" and expect customers
to snap up.
 
"One of the people who developed Notes compares it to the
telephone," Manzi said. "Like the phone, Notes will help solve
problems that people didn't even know they had."
 
                              --- Jeffrey Bertolucci
 
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