Lotus is still a very prevalent and common intranet platform. In fact, it might be the most common platform in a highly fractured marketplace that includes custom built, portal products, content management systems, e-commerce engines, etc.
John Roling has written a decent article on open source options for those that use Lotus-Domino or are considering it as a new intranet platform:
In addition to creating custom applications yourself (which you can always do) you can easily leverage the work that has gone on in the Notes and Domino open-source community.
OpenNTF.org is an online community of open-source Lotus Notes and Domino programmers. Their projects cover almost every aspect of Notes and Domino-based intranet functionality you may be looking for. I'll introduce you to a few of the projects here today, and in the coming months I'll go into more detail on what some of the individual applications can do for you and your company.
John cites a number of key applications up for grabs including:
I’ll be honest, I’m not a fan of Domino as an intranet or portal platform, but am hugely respectful of Lotus as collaborative work tool. Though, I give IBM credit: the move towards open source is very worthwhile for Domino. Domino however still has a huge uphill battle… © 2006 Toby Ward - Prescient Digital Media