Boston - Lotus Development Corp. loves Microsoft's ActiveX - inside its firewall.
In a keynote today at the Internet Commerce Expo, Lotus President and CEO Jeff Papows said that interoperability problems with ActiveX - it was designed as a Windows-only technology - meaning Lotus could not risk deploying applications that its customers might not be able to use.
"Lotus is very ActiveX-centric within our firewall, but not outside on the Internet or extranet," he said. "There is a new world order for interoperability, and we don't always know what platform people are using ... ActiveX does not hold water; that's why Java is here to stay."
Papows also said the future of electronic commerce lies not in consumer Web sites, such as amazon.com, but in business-to-business applications.
He pointed to the Boston Market fast-food chain as an example. He said Boston Market uses its extranet to deliver up-to-date information to its franchisees about products and real-time applications for its stores to place inventory orders.
"E-commerce is not about someone sitting in his living room ordering side orders for their chicken," Papows said. "It's about business-to-business applications."
By the year 2000, business-to-consumer 'Net commerce will account for $7 billion while business-to-business will be worth more than $150 billion, according to International Data Corp. in Framingham, Mass.
Papows gave a quick rundown of the groupware and e-commerce market over the past year, starting with Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) browser.
"IE [used to be] something you yelled as you jumped from a building," Papows said. "Netscape was supposed to be everywhere." Instead, Netscape Communications Corp. and Microsoft Corp. are arguing over who has the minimal lead in the browser market.
"Netscape was going to take over Microsoft, but it's not going to happen," he said.
But Papows did complement Netscape on its ability to catalyze the market. "Because of Netscape, Internet standards have become 'real standards'."
Papows pointed to some predictions that failed to come to fruition, including the thin-client model, companies producing a new beta every two weeks and the insurmountable hype of push technology from Marimba, Inc. and PointCast, Inc.
"We in the industry were stepping over each other to be in on the friends and family of those IPOs," he said. IPOs that never came to be, he added. "Marimba is repositioning itself as a software distribution company." PointCast is going from being the "screen saver company" to knowledge management, he said.
Papows said there are other obstacles, in addition to standards, that have been hurdled in the past year, including security. "We've now eclipsed those concerns and can concentrate on e-commerce," he said.
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Papows also pointed to the importance of knowledge management in helping the Web to grow. Again citing IDC's findings, Papows said IT spending on knowledge management applications will grow from 3.2% today to more than 8% by the year 2000.Companies have to find innovative uses for the technology, he said. For instance, Lotus has added a way for call center representatives to see who is available in their workgroup via "Prairie Dog," which will be released in the next version of Lotus Notes. Prairie Dog checks the network to see who is working and who is on the phone, offering graphical representations for each, he said.
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