BERLIN--More than 4,000 business executives, information technology analysts and journalists from around the world gathered from Oct. 25 to 29 in this historic capital of Germany to participate in one of the largest IT events in Europe: Lotusphere '99.

Raven stole the show. Raven--introduced by Lotus president and CEO Jeff Papows--is a new breed of software for knowledge management (a means of better managing the knowledge and skills existent in a company). Raven aims to provide virtual places where people and content are brought together to improve company responsiveness, speed, enhance employee competency and efficiency. It provides a single portal for users to find useful information and applications on a given subject. Raven also aims to make users aware of other knowledgeable people in the company.

Papows began the conference with a bang--announcing Lotus' lead over rival Microsoft. He also announced Lotus' largest new investment focus in the distributed learning arena, Lotus' joint business opportunities with Nokia in the emerging Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) and the company's largest offering in knowledge management.

"The solutions we are presenting here in Berlin will lead to successive waves of e-business transformation and organizational effectiveness," said Papows.

Thousands who couldn't physically make it here joined the gathering through simultaneous online web broadcasts to catch a glimpse of new technological innovations software and services company Lotus Development Corp. has come up with to help improve company operations. The event's goal is to make companies' operations faster, and to make their systems more efficient.

Before a jampacked crowd at the International Conference Center at Messedamm, Lotus revealed one of Raven's many design capabilities. Previewed was its capability to automatically translate different languages during users' interactive conversations. The language translator, developed by IBM, will be integrated in other Lotus products. It was clearly an attempt to remove all language barriers in globally evolving companies. Lotus claims it has a long-standing focus on multilingual capabilities aside from other areas that affirm the company's commitment to messaging and collaborative solutions.

Papows was particularly proud of Lotus' significant share lead over rival Microsoft, "despite Microsoft's big push into the marketplace." He presented an International Data Corp. slide projecting the worldwide share positions for the end of the year 1999 in what IDC describes as the Integrated Collaborative Environment Market or ICE (or what is traditionally called the groupware market).

The IDC pie chart showed Lotus Notes' worldwide share was at 41.6 percent, followed by Microsoft at 34 percent. Running third is Novell with 17.7 percent and Netscape closing the foursome with 6.7 percent.

"The clear message in IDC's research here is that the market is truly consolidated around the industry's two leaders_Lotus and Microsoft," Papows said.

He added that the third quarter performance of Lotus surpassed the company's projections. Papows said Lotus has gained 5.5 million new Notes users in the third quarter alone.

"That surge brings us past 46 million total Domino and Notes users and positions us to surpass our goal of 50 million users as we end this year and enter this new millennium," he said.

Earlier, Lotus Development Asia Pacific vice president Raphael Tan showed the Inquirer an Asia Pacific study also by the IDC. The study showed the market share of Network/Web ICE or groupware in 1998. It showed Lotus' Domino Notes leading in sales--securing more than half of the Asia Pacific groupware market.

"IDC estimates that Lotus had a 52.3-percent groupware market share last year in the Asia-Pacific region compared to Microsoft's 23.7percent," said Tan.

Papows added that with the exception of Lotus and Microsoft, all the other share positions in the market for collaborative infrastructure have been declining.

Papows said, however, that it has agreed to integrate Microsoft's media player with Lotus' Notes client.

"This is consistent with our long-held belief that we simply must optimize for all Microsoft operating system services at every level_both for the client and the server," he said.

Papows stressed that it has been the practice of the leadership of both companies--Microsoft and Lotus--to continue to work aggressively to ensure these types of agreements will mutually benefit the consumers.