Lotus Notes is the client of a collaborative platform originally created by Lotus Development Corp. in 1989. In 1995 Lotus was acquired by IBM and became known as the Lotus Development division of IBM and is now part of the IBM Software Group. IBM describes the software as an "integrated desktop client option for accessing business e-mail, calendars and applications on [an] IBM Lotus Domino server." Prior to release 4.5, the term Lotus Notes referred to both the client and server applications.
Lotus Notes is a multi-user client-server cross-platform application runtime environment, it is the primary user-interface or client of the Lotus Domino/Notes suite. It can be used as an email client without a Lotus Domino server, though this is unusual.[citation needed]
Lotus Domino/Notes provides a broad range of integrated functionality including email, calendaring, instant messaging (with additional IBM software voice&video conferencing and/or web-collaboration), discussions/forums, blogs, an inbuilt personnel/user directory and IBM Lotus Symphony, a full office productivity suite. In addition to these standard applications the organization may use the IBM Lotus Domino Designer development environment and other tools to rapidly develop additional integrated applications such as request approval / workflow and document management.
Because of the application development abilities, Lotus Notes is often compared to products like Microsoft Sharepoint. The database in Notes/Domino can be replicated between servers and between server and client, thereby allowing clients offline capabilities. It is often classified as a NoSQL database, as it is document centric and not relational.
Whereas typical email applications such as Microsoft Outlook are programmed to be an email client, Lotus Notes is an application platform, where mail is just one of many possible applications. Lotus Notes may be used to access a document management system, discussion forums, document libraries, and numerous other applications. Lotus Notes is similar to a web-browser in that it may run any compatible application that the user has permission for.
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