Silicon exclusive: Papows on Lotus' future

NEWS In an exclusive interview with Silicon.com, Jeff Papows, outgoing CEO of Lotus, has talked of killing-off cc:Mail and how his successor, Al Zollar, will continue to implement the vision he created. Papows told Silicon that although Zollar, currently general manager of the Network Computing Software Division, has not had time to develop his own strategic vision for the company, so he hopes he will instead continue to follow his lead. "I think Zollar sees the company in the same cultural light that I do. Hopefully he'll emulate my management style and then as time goes by, will develop his own. The Lotus vision is very well laid out, so rather than developing strategy, it is just an execution issue of existing plans," said Papows. Papows also talked extensively about his plans to kill off cc:Mail by 2001. "We have supported it for longer than we thought we would because of Y2K and other activities. "We have developed a longer life cycle than we thought feasible, and no one was more surprised or grateful than me when told we sold 160,000 copies in the last fourth quarter," he said. At its height, cc:Mail's boasted 21 million users, but the figure has since dwindled to between six to seven million, said Papows. At present, around three million have upgraded to Lotus Notes through licence extensions or upgrades. The remaining three million may or may not migrate, he said. "We have certainly managed to keep it on the respirator longer than expected reasonable," he added. cc:Mail will be withdrawn from the market as of 31 October 2000. Development support will continue until 31 January 2001 while technical support will only continue until 31 October 2001.