The zombie that will not die.

As part of the runup to yet another LotusSphere at mickey's dolphin world :The Long Goodbye for Lotus Notes

Politically, Notes apps reside on the borders between business units. Notes HR apps are the J. Edgar Hoovers of the enterprise, capturing the sensitive details of where the corporate bodies are buried. Notes' seminal delivery of secure replication allowed sales force automation to establish interconnected mapping of complex relationships that could survive individual personnel changes and the loss of rainmakers to competitors....

But don't count Notes out. Being dead has been good for the architecture that inspired the Web. As long as IBM keeps the porting path open;from those original Notes apps to Domino to Lotus Workplace portlets to a DB2 alternate store in Domino 7 to an Eclipse assembly tool in 2006;it keeps Global Services busy and profitable.

Also Microsoft is trying to, skin the cat, at least give it a new home:

Microsoft Zeros In on LotusOver the next six to eight months, the Redmond, Wash., company plans to roll out a series of initiatives, including a tool kit, due this summer, that allows Domino developers to create Notes- and Domino-based Web services using Microsoft development tools such as Visual Studio .Net and Visual Basic....The as-yet-unnamed tool kit... creates the .Net Web services, they will be consumed by Microsoft applications such as the Office suite, SharePoint and Exchange.

All this in the bigger picture of what IBM/Lotus is planning : IBM Beefs Up Lotus Workplace Platform

A point release of Notes and Domino, 6.5.1, is planned for the first quarter of next year. Then in the second quarter, IBM plans to release Workplace 2.0 featuring a rich client built on the Eclipse framework, collaborative document management and Workplace Builder, an application development toolkit for Workplace.

At the same time, support for team workspaces and document management will be added to Notes and Domino.

By the fourth quarter, Workplace will get a disconnected client and mobile development support in its 2.5 version, while the 7.0 version of Notes and Domino gets integration with Workplace, enhanced portlets for WebSphere and support for DB2 as the data store.

The 8.0 version of Notes and Domino, likely for some time in 2005, will allow Notes users to access non-IBM applications, such as a Siebel Systems Inc. call center application for example, from within Notes.

By far the biggest problem is expecting IT managers and theibossesss to digest all this and plan out the next 2 or 3 years.