Tech Update: So, talking about AOL, and Instant Messenger. Microsoft's MSN Messenger now requires users to establish single sign-on with Microsoft's Passport Authentication servers. Companies are beginning to recognize the importance of this network presence. You've just mentioned how you have different realms that trust each other. So, in terms of single sign-on, companies seem to be choosing between Passport and the Liberty Alliance. Some important companies just went with Liberty: AOL, MasterCard, and American Express. Given that most of your technologies require authentication, how long can you sit this out, and you are leaning in any particular direction?
Zollar: Well you know, being IBM, we get invited to talk to all those groups. It's not just Lotus. And, we really believe in interoperability. We think that a lot of the schemes out there today don't represent the kind of openness that we should have. In many ways, the Liberty activity has been kind of a response. I think that, over time, this will really sort out. We will have the kind of alliances in place that allow the kind of interoperability that we really believe in. If you look at the notion of companies signing up, what they're really doing is endorsing a direction today. Nobody's really deployed this stuff, because it is not deployable in terms of being able to deliver real capability--certainly in the customers that we focus on inside of enterprises. So what we focus on--probably more so than the groups you hang out with--is: What do, we do to make sure that our customers can have the open interoperability inside of enterprise settings that will likely be required with all these different schemes. Or at least these two major different schemes. We'll see how this evolves, and we are watching very closely.
Tech Update: That also applies to some companies that are using your platforms for e-business, right? Because if there's a segment of customers out there who have Passport, and a segment of customers who rely on Liberty, Lotus may have a customer that wants to grant access to those people.
Zollar: Yes. I do this every day with our services capability. We authenticate our authentication systems with those from a lot of other companies in the industry. So, if the only way we can integrate with an authentication system is to join an alliance group, then it really hasn't turned into an open initiative. So, we saw those needs with our customers today across many different authentication and security frameworks that our customers have. It would be nice to see convergence. In the meantime, we're focused on doing what's right for customers as they pragmatically attempt to use these systems in the business scenarios that are important to them.
Tech Update: There are some key hearings coming up in February and March. The legal eagles representing Microsoft, the DOJ, the opposing states, the settling states: they're all very busy right now. Witness lists are due in February. Public comments are due at the end of this month. Has either side asked Lotus to participate in the proceedings? Or has Lotus contributed to the public comments?
Zollar: No comment on any of that stuff, for two reasons. One, it really wouldn't be appropriate. Secondly, my view is that there is a competitor out there--at least in the space that I work. It is actually interesting because in this crazy world that we live in, we are allied with Microsoft [Editor's note: a huge portion of Lotus' customers run in Windows environments]. But in the Outlook Exchange portion of their business, we clearly compete. I just place them in the marketplace and stay focused on trying to beat them in the marketplace. That's the thing that I put my attention on. Whatever governments or legal authorities or authorities with jurisdiction decide to do; to the extent that any of those decisions become a reality, we'll deal with them then.
Tech Update: One could say that Netscape has an argument for keeping the browser out of the operating system. Lotus could make an argument for keeping a mail client out of the operating system.
Zollar: They have one integrated with the Windows platform. Certainly you can anticipate them doing further integration, because nobody's telling them they can't. So, we are really focused on making the [e-mail] clients one aspect of the value chain. We believe that there's a need to deliver specialized client functionality for certain users--users who get 400 messages a day, or who have to deal with very heavy meeting volume, or who have lots of coordinated databases. A specialized client for that kind of knowledge worker is where Notes really fits best. But there are going to be a whole rash of client uses that are a part of this collaboration and context--or maybe even commodity access via a browser. So, it really shifts our value statement--more from the client to the server. Again, that's one of the things that we'll be playing on, at Lotusphere. We are an organization that provides a range of collaborative services on servers. We are taking advantage of this new evolution of the industry--Web services--to make these deliverable in a bunch of different ways, more so than just sitting inside of a sort of static collaboration container.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
