This comparison should be based around a groupware discussion. That is where Office 97 is going, and that is where Communicator wants to go. That is what makes Lotus, MSFT and NSCP direct competitors in the suite market. All of the suites are coming equipped with heavly collaborating, publishing and communciation tools (most of which practically didn't exist in the products previous incarnations).
This is where I feel that NSCP may fall short. It is going to be very difficult to match the productivity gains achieved by Lotus' suites and Office through new technology that they start from scratch (or purchase from a smaller company like Collabra). Both MSFT and Lotus have entrenched and mature groupware products, and once the browser becomes a commodity (incorporated into the OS) the groupware battle will be the only batle there is. NSCP will have to allow their product to actually accent and simultaneously coopt the functionality of the competitors products, which will be very difficult when the competitors have more resources, established code, and maturity in their products. It is much easier to make the suites a groupware product than to make the groupware product a suite. On top of that, both MSFT and Lotus have their own very competant groupware products with which they can, and probably will merge into their productivity suites if NSCP gets to successful.
Who knows, maybe NSCP will get the Java Wordperfect line from Corel, whose shares are dropping horribly, and rewrite it as an ultra functional, crossplatform groupware suite powered by their Communicator/Collabra technology. This would give them considerable leverage against the OS monopoly, and a standardized, loyal user base (I still can't get over the lawyers using Wordperfect 5.0 for DOS in 1996 - I don't even think you can buy that stuff anymore). |
