The world of online information retrieval continues to change. New software environments allow end-users to receive, analyze, store, and share information without venturing into the complex world of networks, arcane command-driven systems, or database structures. The Internet has burst on the scene and continues to grow at an explosive rate as new uses are found and more users get connected. Many think the Internet is the answer to their information retrieval needs, but it has significant difficulties--security may be lacking, navigation and finding information is difficult, and a knowledge of UNIX command structures may be required. Information retrieval, therefore, continues to be difficult for many end-users, and some may be doing without the information they need to make decisions and do their jobs.
End-users are not the only ones experiencing difficulties in the information industry. Information providers have long wished to sell their products and services directly to endusers. They have found it difficult to do so because of user-hostile interfaces, the need to be aware of and track a plethora of diverse databases, and lack of access to users' desktops.
A new genre of software, called groupware, shows considerable promise in solving the problems of information users and providers. Approximately four years ago, Lotus Development Corporation introduced its Notes software platform. Lotus Notes heralded the beginning of groupware, and since then, it has become the recognized market leader and a de facto groupware standard. Estimates indicate there are at least 500,000 Notes users today, and that Notes is responsible for more than 10 percent of Lotus' $981 million annual revenue stream (1). Notes usage is growing extremely rapidly. One indication of this growth is the increase in attendance from 3,000 at the 1994 Lotusphere conference, Lotus' annual event for Notes users, to 7,000 at the 1995 conference.
The primary use of groupware is collaboration--data and information sharing among communities of users. Using groupware, a community of geographically dispersed users can read, contribute to, or modify a database, and Notes keeps track of the changes through a process known as replication. If the user maintains a local copy of a database (on a laptop computer, for example), the local copy of the database can be updated by replicating changes made by that user or any other authorized user since the previous access. The entire database is not downloaded, thus saving the user a singnificant amount of time and possibly telecommunications costs. Not only does groupware cut costs but it significantly increases user productivity. Productivity increases of well over 100 percent have been reported by several research studies. (For an excellent nontechnical overview of how Notes works and how Notes applications are developed, see Lotus Notes at Work by DeJean and DeJean (2).)
Notes is used in a wide variety of business scenarios, such as tracking sales clients, delivering information to investment brokers, coordinating document reviews, improving work cycles, and shortening the sales process. The Boston Police Department even developed a Lotus Notes database of suspected gang members and used it to track their activities (3). Using their database, the Police Department was able to identify areas where increased police presence was necessary. They credited the use of Notes with helping to reduce violence on the city streets.
Groupware is also used in library and information centers to manage work flows, track user requests, and other tasks. Kristin Liberman and Jane Rich have described how Lotus uses Notes for these purposes in its own information center (4). Clearly, groupware, and Notes in particular, is used to enhance information sharing and meet very diverse business needs. Notes has achieved a remarkable penetration in the corporate marketplace, and leading companies in many industries have embraced it (some have bought licenses for tens of thousands of users!).
LOTUS NOTES AS A PUBLISHING PLATFORM
Lotus Notes was originally developed for workgroup sharing and document management applications. However, information providers soon discovered that its versatility makes it an excellent electronic publishing platform and information delivery channel because it facilitates easy information sharing through a friendly user interface. It allows publishers to achieve direct access to the user's desktop--long a goal of many information providers and database producers. Developing Notes applications, while not a trivial task, is relatively straightforward for a competent programmer. In fact, "Notes Applications Developer" has become a recognized job function in the software industry, and most organizations making an extensive use of Notes have hired individuals to develop Notes applications for their in-house uses. Similarly, information providers entering this field are also hiring or training programmers to develop Notes products for the information market.
As the number of Notes users has increased, many information providers have climbed on the Notes bandwagon and are rushing to develop and market their products as Notes applications. A new segment of the information industry based on Lotus Notes is quickly evolving.
THE LOTUS NOTES INFORMATION SERVICES MARKET
Since Notes is a good information publishing platform, Notes-based information services are rapidly being developed and brought to market. The current market environment is reminiscent of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Online databases were being developed at a furious rate, and databank services such as DIALOG competed strongly in a race to acquire and host as many databases as they could on their online information retrieval services. This article includes tables listing 24 information products currently available commercially in Notes format. Because of the speed at which the market is moving, these lists cannot be considered to be comprehensive. (Lists such as these become outdated almost as soon as they are compiled!)
The position of the players in today's Notes information services market mirrors the development of the traditional online services marketplace. Many companies and products that online information users have come to know and respect are entering the Notes information market. Some publishers have simply converted their databases to Notes format and added Notes to their repertoire of delivery channels. Others have developed new products by extracting portions of existing ones and combining them into a Notes database. (The evolution of the CD-ROM information market followed a similar path--first, existing information products were converted to CD-ROM, then entirely new products appeared.)
Today's information industry is composed of two major segments:
1) Database producers (also called content providers) who publish or collect original publications and build a database from them, and
2) Aggregators (also known as hosts or information providers) who acquire or lease databases and provide a common platform, search interface, and value-added services such as training and customer service.
The Notes world is remarkably similar. Aggregators, who are acquiring content in the Notes format and making it available, are emerging while other publishers sell Notes-based content directly to users.
THE INFORMATION INTERMEDIARY
The player that is missing from the Notes information delivery chain is the professional intermediary. An organization using Notes typically installs a server and purchases Notes clients, which are installed on users' workstations. Users interact through the clients with the server to access, search, or create databases. To them, retrieval and searching for information using Notes is simply another operation that works like other Notes applications.
There is thus little need for an intermediary to search Notes information products and deliver output to requesters as there has been with traditional online services. With Notes, the interface is familiar to the users, and the information services and products are delivered directly to them.
Information sellers, of course, are delighted with this situation--they have long been searching for a way to reach the end-user and have expended considerable energy and resources to achieve that goal. The Notes platform allows them to tailor their products for the end-user market and, given the extensive and growing Notes market penetration, expand their markets.
Intermediaries, however, should not be alarmed at this turn of events. By shifting their extensive and valuable skills to embrace the Notes platform, they will be able to perform a valuable service for their customers by developing Notes information applications. The emergence of Notes is just one more indication that the role of the professional information intermediary is changing and becoming more challenging (5).
PUBLIC NOTES SERVICES
Installation of Notes requires a significant commitment of resources by an organization. A special computer, or server, must be purchased, installed, and loaded with Notes databases. All users ("end-points" in Notes parlance) must have Notes client software, which controls their desktops and allows them to use Notes.
Notes users must not only invest financial resources to obtain the server, but they must also make a continuing commitment to establishing and maintaining the network on which those servers run. To access information services outside of the organization, information feeds must be acquired and installed, servers must be cross-certified (i.e., given permission to access one another), user access control lists must be developed, and communications links must be installed and maintained. Not only are significant hardware and software resources necessary, but the human costs of such an installation are also significant. Many organizations, particularly smaller ones, cannot or do not wish to purchase a server and devote the resources necessary to maintain it, as well as connections to its workstations and interfaces with the outside world.
Recently, these problems have been addressed with the introduction of publicly accessible Notes networks, which allow a user to purchase only the client software and then access a public Notes server to use Notes. AT&T has taken a lead in this area by forming a joint marketing agreement with Lotus to deploy Notes servers in its public network. The service, currently going through a controlled introduction phase, is called AT&T Network Notes (see sidebar). Information services are actively being recruited for AT&T Network Notes and the first one has already been announced (6).
STRUCTURE OF A TYPICAL LOTUS NOTES INFORMATION PRODUCT
As mentioned earlier, Notes uses a process known as replication in which the new information added to a database is sent to appropriate users on demand or at regularly scheduled intervals. Customized, regularly updated news services are particularly appropriate for delivery via Notes, and many of today's Notes-based information products are of this type. Several Notes-based newsletters and news services are already commercially available.
However, Notes is not appropriate for real-time interactive searches of large databases. Since the largest single database that can be accommodated on a Notes installation is one gigabyte, one would not expect large online retrieval services such as those offered by LEXIS-NEXIS or Knight-Ridder Information to put their databases up on Notes. Instead, such information companies can be expected to develop new products especially designed for the Notes market. (LEXIS-NEXIS has already announced a Notes-based information product.)
Typically, a Notes information product consists of a database of articles that are indexed under broad categories and displayed to the user as a series of views--organized presentations of the information. The views allow the Notes user to look at the information by subject, date, publisher, or in any other way that the application developer has structured the product. Some Notes databases are also full-text indexed, providing a basic searching capability to the user. (The search engine included with Notes is Verity's TOPIC (7).) Creation of the views is done by the application developer, thus giving the database producer full control over the appearance of the product--a capability not generally available with traditional online retrieval services. (Notes, therefore, has enabled a fundamental shift in information delivery, moving control from the online host to the publisher.)
FIRST! FOR NOTES
To illustrate a typical Notes information product, some screen shots from an AT&T subscription to First! for Notes, a service offered by INDIVIDUAL, Inc., are shown. (First! is a subscription service, delivering news on topics of interest to the subscriber in a variety of formats, one of which is Notes. For further information on INDIVIDUAL and its products, see the article by Wiegner (8).)
Figure 1 (page 64) shows a view of the database by subject. Clicking on topic 2, "National Information Infrastructure," brings up the screen shown in Figure 2 (page 66). One can select a more narrow topic of interest (here, "The Internet" was selected), to arrive at the screen shown in Figure 3 (page 66). Note that items replicated into the database for each day are shown, and if one were to click on one of the titles, the full text of the item would appear on the screen. (The stars on the left show items that have not been opened by the user--by this means, it is easy to track which items have been accessed and which ones are new to the database.) One can also view the database by company, as shown in Figure 4 (page 66). Figure 5 (page 71) shows the results of a search. The search term ("Network Notes") is entered in the area immediately below the toolbar, and a list of hits, ranked by relevance (notice the shaded bar to the left of the titles) appears. Clicking on a title brings up the full text, with the search terms highlighted (Figure 6).
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
CONCLUSION
Basic data about currently available Notes information products are shown in the tables that accompany this article. Table 1 (page 68) lists aggregators providing access to a variety of products, and Table 2 (page 69) lists Notes products available from single-source publishers and sold directly by them. In general, producers or publishers of individual Notes-based titles are not included in the tables if they are available through one of the listed service aggregators. Only publicly-available or announced products have been included in the tables, and, as noted earlier, these cannot be considered exhaustive lists. Several entries were taken from The Lotus Notes Guide, a useful directory of Notes applications compiled and published at regular intervals by Lotus.
Table 1 Lotus Notes Information Aggregators
Company Name & Address
CompuServe Inc.
5000 Arlington Centre Boulevard
Columbus, OH 43220
614/529-0220; 800/440-9604
Product Name(*)
CompuServe Lotus Notes
Information Service
Product Description & Status
CD-ROM database supplements for Notes and access to public Notes servers. Contains financial listings, access to LEXIS-NEXIS, access to the Internet and USENET newsgroups, Comtex news services, and access to CompuServe Forums.
Company Name & Address
Lotus Development Corp.
55 Cambridge Parkway
Cambridge, MA 02140
617/577-8500
Product Name(*)
Newsstand
Product Description & Status
Currently in market trial phase. Will provide access to a wide variety of publications such as newsletters, magazines, etc. Also provides tools for publishers to create Notes-based content.
Company Name & Address
SandPoint Company, L.L.C.
One Canal Park
Cambridge, MA 02141
617/441-2200
Product Name(*)
Hoover
Product Description & Status
The Hoover software is an information agent that gathers information from a wide variety of sources and presents it to the user as a Notes database. Provides a gateway into non-Notes information services from the Notes platform. Products include real-time news feeds and integrated research such as company profiles, on-demand searches, and Notes versions of over 1,500 business publications available on a flat-fee basis. Users are also able to integrate their internal data with information publicly available through the Hoover service.
Company Name & Address
WorldCom
1001 Fannin, Suite 2000
Houston, TX 77002
713/650-6522; 800/774-2220
Product Name(*)
Product Description & Status
Publicly accessible Notes servers. Connections via dial-up or the Internet. Approximately 50 information products, including news feeds and publications in the business, marketing, taxation, and computer areas.
(*)Most of the product names are trademarks of their respective producers.
Table 2 Lotus Notes Information Products
Company Name & Address
Bureau of National Affairs (BNA)
1250 23rd Street
Washington, DC 20037
202/452-4132; 800/862-4636
Product Name(*)
Daily Tax Report
Daily Environment Report
Daily Pension & Benefit Report
Product Description & Status
Daily newsletters on the indicated topics
delivered through Notes.
Company Name & Address
Carthage International
2501 Oak Lawn Avenue, Suite 275
Dallas, TX 75219
214/526-7990
Product Name(*)
Carthage Today
Product Description & Status
Customized news and information
delivered in Notes format. Subscribers
interact with a service representative
who creates their interest profile which
is then updated daily.
Company Name & Address
Commerce Clearing House (CCH)
2700 Lake Cook Road
Riverwoods, IL 60015
312/463-0074
Product Name(*)
CCH Tax Day
Advance ReleaseDocments
Product Description & Status
Daily updates of federal and state tax
developments replicated to Lotus Notes
users.
Company Name & Address
Component Software Industries Corp.
P.O. Box 201
Rocky Hill, NJ 08553
609/497-4501
Product Name(*)
Lotus Notes Business Report
Product Description & Status
Newsletter for Notes users.
Company Name & Address
DataTimes
14000 Quail Springs Parkway
Oklahoma City, OK 73134
405/751-6400
Product Name(*)
News Pipeline
Product Description & Status
Customized news information on
business-related topics drawn from
DataTimes' database and delivered
through Lotus Notes. Subscribers
interact with an information specialist to
create an interest profile.
Company Name & Address
Desktop Data
1601 Trapelo Road
Waltham, MA 02154
Product Name(*)
NewsEDGE for Notes
Product Description & Status
Provides real-time access to over 300
newswire feeds. Subscribers can watch
the headlines as they arrive, or they can
be customized and categorized according
to the subscriber's interest. Real-time
alerting when a story of interest arrives
is also available.
Company Name & Address
Disclosure, Inc.
5161 River Road
Bethesda, MD 20816
800/945-3647; 301/961-2789
Product Name(*)
Access Disclosure for
Lotus Notes
Product Description & Status
Index of SEC and other company filings.
Complete documents can be ordered for
delivery from a Disclosure fulfillment
center.
Company Name & Address
Faulkner Information Services
114 Cooper Center
Pennsauken, NJ 08109
800/843-0460; 609/662-2070
Product Name(*)
Faulkner Reports
Product Description & Status
Database of market research reports
on the computer systems, software,
networking, and communications
industries available in Notes format.
Company Name & Address
Product Name(*)
Faulkner-Flash
Product Description & Status
Biweekly updates of product
announcements in the above industries.
Company Name & Address
Forrester Research, Inc.
One Brattle Square
Cambridge, MA 02138
617/497-7090
Product Name(*)
Forrester Research for
Lotus Notes
Product Description & Status
Forrester's research reports on the
computing and networking industries in
Lotus Notes format. Data extends back
to 1991; updates are approximately
monthly. The database is organized into
eight views and is full-text indexed.
Company Name & Address
Gartner Group
56 Top Gallant Road
P.O. Box 10212
Stamford, CT 06904
203/964-0096
Product Name(*)
Gartner on Lotus Notes
Product Description & Status
Full text and graphics of all Gartner
Group Research Notes and Strategic
Analysis Reports in a Lotus Notes
database. Data are organized in five
views and are full-text indexed.
Company Name & Address
Derwent, Inc.
1420 Spring Hill Road, Suite 525
McLean, VA 22102
703/790-0400; 800/451-3451
Product Name(*)
US Patent Library Server
Product Description & Status
The US Patent Library contains 20 years
of bibliographic patent data. Derwent
and IBM have announced a joint
venture to make this data available with
a Lotus Notes interface. Data will be
updated weekly, and automatic ordering
of full text of patents will be available.
Company Name & Address
INDIVIDUAL, Inc.
8 New England Executive Park
Burlington, MA 01803
617/273-6000
Product Name(*)
First! for Notes
Product Description & Status
Customized news and alerting service
drawn from INDIVIDUAL's over 500
data sources and delivered as a Lotus
Notes database. Subscribers interact
with a service representative who
creates their interest profile which is
then updated daily with data from over
12,000 stories received by INDIVIDUAL.
Company Name & Address
LEXIS-NEXIS
P.O. Box 933
Dayton, OH 45401
800/227-4908
Product Name(*)
Trackers for Lotus Notes
Product Description & Status
Daily update of articles of interest on
selected topics (e.g. industries or companies)
from LEXIS-NEXIS databases.
Subscribers receive headlines
automatically; full text is readily available.
Company Name & Address
Product Name(*)
PubWatch
Product Description & Status
Notes versions of various business magazines.
Company Name & Address
Market Analysis and Information
Database (MAID)
750 Lexington Avenue
New York, NY 10022
212/750-6900
Product Name(*)
MAID for Notes
Product Description & Status
Offers separate Notes databases each
containing information on one of ten
subject areas. Data are drawn from
MAID's comprehensive online databases
covering the business and marketing
areas, as well as its news feeds from
Predicasts and Reuters. Data are
replicated and updated daily. Users can
establish customized company and
industry profiles which are built using
information retrieved from MAID's
databases.
Company Name & Address
Legi-Slate
777 N. Capitol Street
Washington, DC 20002
202/898-2303; 800/733-1131
Product Name(*)
Nationbase
Product Description & Status
Legislative tracking service providing
updates of legislation in all 50 states,
DC, PR, and the U.S. Congress. Contains
complete text of bills and status updates.
Company Name & Address
OneSource Information Services, Inc.
150 Cambridge Park Drive
Cambridge, MA 02140
800/554-5501
Product Name(*)
CD/Notes
Product Description & Status
A comprehensive set of business and
financial information products available
on a variety of platforms, including
Lotus Notes. Contains financial and
general business information on publicly
and privately held companies, text of
SEC reports, data from the Investext
Reports and Disclosure databases, and
articles from the Predicasts PROMT
database and several business
publications, all organized in a series of Notes
databases. Corporate Monitor retrieves
data on user-selected U.S. companies
from several databases and organizes
it into a Notes database.
Company Name & Address
Price Waterhouse
55 E. Monroe Street, 30th Floor
Chicago, IL 60603
312/419-1565
Product Name(*)
PW/Wire
Product Description & Status
Access via Lotus Notes to Price
Waterhouse and third-party tax
information. Includes daily tax reports,
newsletters, discussion databases, and
tax templates.
Company Name & Address
Reuters Information Services
1333 H Street NW
Washington, D.C. 20005
202/898-8300
Product Name(*)
Reuter Business Alert for
Lotus Notes
Product Description & Status
Reuter Business Alert (RBA) gathers
data from publications, stock, and
foreign exchange data and organizes it
into a Lotus Notes database.
Company Name & Address
Tax Analysts
6330 N. Fairfax Drive
Arlington, VA 22213
703/533-4400
Product Name(*)
TaxBase
Product Description & Status
Tax news service and full-text documents
on taxes updated and replicated daily via
Notes.
(*)Most of the product names are trademarks of their respective producers.
Lotus Notes is making a significant impact on the electronic information marketplace. Information producers have correctly discerned that Notes is a viable platform for information publishing as well as for workgroup sharing. The current activity in this segment of the market is exciting and shows that this new platform is well on its way to becoming a major force in the future of the information industry.
REFERENCES
(1)Johnson, Andrew. "Battle Lines for Groupware." PC User, No. 236 (June 1, 1994): p. 22.
(2)DeJean, David and Sally Blanning De Jean. Lotus Notes at Work. Lotus Books, 1991, 271 pp.
(3)Kremers, Ann, Bronwyn Fryer, Gilles Guignat, and Catherine Kenny. "Notes from the Front Line." PC World 12, No. 2 (February 1994): pp. L4-11.
(4)Liberman, Kristin and Jane L. Rich. "Lotus Notes Databases: The Foundation of a Virtual Library." Database 16, No. 3 (June 1993): pp. 33-46.
(5)Hawkins, Donald T. "The Information Professional in the Electronic Information Age: Where Have We Been? Where Are We Now?" In Making the Connection: The Electronic Frontier, p. 83, Information Science Section, Australian Library and Information Association, 1993. (Proceedings of the 7th Australiasian Online and On Disc Conference, Sydney Australia, January 19-21, 1993.)
(6)"SandPoint Announces Hoover for AT&T Network Notes." Press release, SandPoint Company L.L.C., January 23, 1995.
(7)Cisler, Steve. "Searching for a Better Way: Verity Inc.'s TOPIC Software." ONLINE 12, No. 6 (November 1988): pp. 99-102.
(8)Wiegner, Kathleen K. "All the News That Fits." Forbes (April 30, 1990): pp. 174-175.
Network Notes is a service mark of Lotus Development Corporation.
Lotus Notes is a trademark of Lotus Development Corporation.
AT&T is a registered trademark of AT&T Corporation.
DIALOG is a trademark of Knight-Ridder Information, Inc.
First! is a trademark of INDIVIDUAL, Inc.
UNIX is a trademark of Open Systems Corporation.
RELATED ARTICLE: New Solutions to Old Information Retrieval Problems
New services currently under development by AT&T and its partners have the potential to solve many problems of information users and information providers. AT&T has joined forces with Novell, Inc. to develop AT&T NetWare Connect Services, which will provide value-added capabilities: security, user registration and validation, navigation, and directory services, as well as access to powerful applications to both users and information providers. Novell's LAN technology is the foundation of AT&T NetWare Connect Services. AT&T and Novell will expand connectivity beyond a single enterprise to suppliers, customers, and partners while maintaining the security and integrity of the data communications process. A major function of AT&T NetWare Connect Services will be access to and retrieval of electronic information.
The first application of AT&T NetWare Connect Services is access to the Lotus Notes platform. As described in the accompanying article, information retrieval is a significant application of Lotus Notes, and many well-known information providers are developing products that can be delivered on the Lotus Notes platform.
Installation of Notes requires a significant commitment by an organization. Many end-users wish to use the Notes platform but prefer to avoid making a large investment in a server, networking technology, or the human resources needed to maintain the hardware. Likewise, information providers may wish to use Notes to deliver their products but prefer to focus on their core areas of expertise without the need to maintain servers and networking interfaces.
AT&T Network Notes directly addresses these problems. Notes servers will be installed in the public data network and will be accessible to AT&T Network Notes subscribers on a dial-up basis or through their LANs. Users are freed from the necessity of purchasing a server and maintaining it and its connecting networks. AT&T and Lotus Development Corporation have entered into a joint marketing and development agreement, under which the AT&T Network Notes service will be developed and marketed. Lotus is developing simplified Notes client software to access the publicly available servers.
Information retrieval is an important application for AT&T NetWare Connect Services and AT&T Network Notes. The groupware environment transforms the end-user's workstation from an isolated entity to a powerful entry point on the network, and the value-added AT&T NetWare Connect Service features make information, processes, and resources easy to find and use. Users can form workgroups and collaborate, conduct discussions, and access information. They can use Lotus Notes without acquiring or maintaining costly server networks and can access applications such as electronic mail and online databases in a secure environment. Information providers gain direct access to end-users and cost-effectively expand their markets.
NetWare Connect is a trademark of Novell, Inc. used by the AT&T Corporation under license from Novell, Inc.
