Review of Enterprise.Com

Why is this review on the Notes FAQ site you may ask. Jeff Papows is the President and CEO of Lotus. His insights in Enterprise.Com indirectly gives readers hints about what Notes/Domino will be used for in the near future (unfortunately however, I didn't see very far into the future from the material covered in the book).

Companies which have no idea what the Internet can do for them should read this book (a lot of it was obvious to me, so this may be true of others who have been watching the evolution of the net as well). Jeff covers where companies are going with a term called the "Market Facing Enterprise". He goes on to give examples of how companies will strongly focus on Internet customer interaction more than the traditional phone and physical store support.

The chapter on Knowledge Management is also a must read for people responsible for directing Notes usage at companies. Jeff describes what he believes it is (and indirectly, what Notes R5 KM support will be used for). Knowledge can be summarized as the information necessary (know-how and know-why) to take action.

There were a few disappointments with the book. Jeff mentions a few cases where companies saved a lot of money by using groupware; however, the cases are not detailed enough as to how they did it and how they analyzed the results. Also, he covers how Notes was used during the Lotus/IBM merger, but doesn't describe the steps during the process. I was curious about this because I was working at Lotus at the time and we had our own hints (like an IBM contractor mysteriously getting recalled and ordered to leave without telling us :-) Lastly, it would have helped to have a bibliography for further reading on topics like KM.

I should also mention that I got Jeff to sign the book at Lotusphere (thanks Jeff). However, this did not influence this review at all since I had finished reading a week before Lotusphere started.

Ken Yee