In todayÆs environment, IBM defines its product Lotus Notes as ôthe premier integrated messaging and collaboration client option for IBM Lotus Domino« serverö (ôWhatÆs Newö). When Lotus Notes was first released in 1989, the Domino server had not yet been developed, but still over 35,000 copies were sold in its first year (ôThe History of Notes and Dominoö). Lotus Notes 1.0 provided several applications that were built in and ready to use, such as Group Mail, Group Discussion, and Group Phone Book, as well as templates for assisting the user in building custom applications (ôThe History of Notes and Dominoö). The ability to design customizable applications was a key advantage of Lotus Notes, and today there are thousands of companies that build their own software products that run on top of Notes, even though it was not originally envisioned as a developersÆ product (ôThe History of Notes and Dominoö). The functionality of Notes, though, was somewhat revolutionary for its time; it included encryption, signing, and RSA public-key technology authentication, which allowed the user to mark a document such that its recipient could tell for sure whether it had been modified during transmission or not (ôThe History of Notes and Dominoö). It also had dial-up functionality, import/export capability, and its own electronic mail system that sent a receipt to the sender of an e-mail when the receiver had opened it (ôThe History of Notes and Dominoö). A screen shot of the release 1.0 screen is shown below, with tabs visible for ôImportant,ö ôLotus,ö ôNotes,ö ôJunk,ö and ôPersonalö categories plus the menu bar at the top (ôThe History of Notes and Dominoö).
Many releases later in 1996, the 4.5 release of Lotus Notes came out with the brand name of the Notes 4.5 server changed to ôDomino 4.5, Powered by Notes;ö this release was shipped with the Domino 4.5 server and the Notes 4.5 client (ôThe History of Notes...