Tech Update: Now that things are moving things back to the server, it starts to even increase the importance of five nines availability and scalability, doesn't it?

Zollar: Absolutely.

Tech Update: One of the places where Exchange has penetrated, and some of the other competitors like iPlanet IMS, is in the ISP space. Is there any interest in that space at all?

Zollar: Well, we really haven't targeted that as a space that Lotus has an offering in. But it is something that we are looking at. There are a lot of different ways to address that need. But I think that there are problems with that space. This notion of a free mailbox is actually a notion that was caught under the euphoria of the dot-com craze. You and I both know that those mailboxes ain't free--they just got paid for by advertising. The last time I checked, there were fewer people willing to do that. There's an expectation that's been put out into the marketplace by a lot of folks that e-mail is a commodity. It's free. Well, think about the value of a corporate mailbox. Obviously, the value of a personal mailbox is also very important. But, think about the value of a corporate or a business-oriented mailbox in a government or a public sector setting. Think about the way that that has to be dealt with, and provisioned from the technology standpoint--compared to this "free mail" kind of environment. I have some real concerns with the economic models that are in that marketplace. That's why, if you look around, there's nobody making money there by providing mail. They're not making money. They're doing other things maybe to subsidize it.

Tech Update: But they're getting new customers.

Zollar: But they're not making money there.

Tech Update: Over the last decade we've gotten some pleasure out of watching IBM run the systems at the various Olympics. The first go-around was quite painful for Lotus. The second go-around was a lot better. Is Lotus still involved with the Olympics?

Zollar: Well, IBM's not sponsoring the Olympics. Actually, in that first go-around, as I recall it, the problem was with the bandwidth and telecommunications facilities used by the press. Of course, that's the wrong audience to have a problem with. That was the root cause of that problem. We've obviously learned a great deal. IBM and Lotus have been a part of that because our Notes and Domino capabilities have been part of the IBM deployment in every Olympics that IBM has supported since Lotus has been part of IBM. We've learned a lot from those events. First of all, we have learned a lot about the kind of total cost of ownership availability, scalability issues that we've had to take on. Our WebSphere capability has probably benefited most from what we learned. The ability to support high-volume Web sites like eBay, I think, is in many ways linked to what we learned at the Olympics. So, it's been a tremendously valuable proposition for IBM, in terms of our learning. But, the decision was made to move on and I hope to have a great 2002 Olympics and beyond.

Tech Update: Favorite book?

Zollar: Well, the one I most recently read is "Winning Through Innovation". It's a book by Michael Tushman It's about this concept of how you make an organization and a team ambidextrous. That is, the ability to live with a current capability while a market is shifting, and then creating new capabilities.

Tech Update: Like changing the tires, while the car is still rolling?

Zollar: Yes. It's a little bit of the innovator's dilemma stuff. But it is much more pragmatic, I think, in terms of the kind of advice it gives.

Tech Update: You have an engineering background, right?

Zollar: Well, Mathematics. Applied Mathematics. And my business background has been engineering oriented.

Tech Update: So it must come in very handy running an operation of your own. What does that mean?

Zollar: Well, we've been making a lot of changes at Lotus. These changes are about getting into an operational model that allows us to leverage IBM. Almost every software provider in the world is knocking on IBM's door, trying to figure out how to leverage it. Lotus in the past didn't really take advantage of the resources that IBM brought to the table. So we have made a number of changes. I call it "creating the new Lotus, internally." And I've always liked that phrase from Gandhi. [Editor's note: the white board in Zollar's office was blank except for this quote from Gandhi: "You must be the change you want to see in the world."] It reminds me that you've got to live the change. You can't just say the change. You have to live it.

Tech Update: In other words, it's all about execution?

Zollar: It's all about execution. In fact, the other reason why I liked this Tushman book is that it makes the point that you can have strategic thoughts. You can come up with all these wonderful innovative things. But how do you get an organization to execute? Oh, and if you want go from the heavy-duty Harvard case study approach to the parable approach, the book "Who Moved my Cheese?" is a great one.

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