THE SPECIALIST WITH A UNIVERSAL MINDANDREW VAZSONYI, Feature Editor, McLaren School of Business, University of San FranciscoClient/Server Groupware for the Network Corporation
by Andrew Vazsonyi, McLaren School of Business
Reengineering the corporation, downsizing, total quality control, all lead to the network and virtual corporation. Here the skyscraper metaphor of the organization is replaced by a ranch-type, flat structure, and the military metaphor of barking orders is replaced by traders in ideas. The business of managers is to create, store, transmit, and trade ideas, information, beliefs, and concepts. The new players in corporations do not fit the mold of the traditional "organization person." The traditional firm is a bureaucracy regulated by fixed, rigid rules. Today, bureaucracies are becoming extinct, and chaos and ambiguity reigns. Creative managers are organized into flexible workgroups, that is, temporarily organized systems of people, who know each other well, and have a track record of acting together. Central issues are not dealt by individual problem solvers, but by workgroups clarifying and resolving messy situations. Managers become self-reliant and decide on their own how to do their jobs. Information does not flow up, down, step-by-step, through the many layers of management anymore, creative ideas and concepts spread like wildfire. The traditional, chauffeur-driven, massive transaction systems, database management systems, management information systems are no longer adequate to support the new management culture. Modern managers need computer support to browse, store, transmit, and manage all the data, programs, software, information, ideas, used in their work. The system-server and user-generated programs must be integrated with the information highway, so geographic distances disappear. Vendors respond to this need with client/ server groupware, such as Novell's Netware + WordPerfect GroupWise, Microsoft's Exchange Server, Banyan System's Beyond Ware. But Lotus NOTES, a preview of future systems, is the most popular client/server groupware on the market. Last January, Business Week reported that about one million managers, at 45,000 companies, use the package. It has been reported that an important factor in IBM buying Lotus was NOTES. So, let us summarize the features of it. LOTUS NOTES Main Features
What Is NOTES Used for?
Primary Programs Notes consists of two primary programs: the Notes server and the Notes workstation. The Notes server provides services to Notes workstation users and other Notes servers. The Notes workstation communicates with Notes servers so you can use shared databases and program-bases, and read and send mail. Servers and workstations can be on a single local area network (LAN) or a number of LANs, or on a wide-area network (WAN). Three Databases
You access Notes databases via the workspace. Each database you add to your workspace is represented by an icon. When you're using Notes, you see either a window containing the Notes workspace, a database view, or a database document. Documents You add information to a Notes database by composing a new document, or editing an existing one. You can include text, tables, numerical data, graphics, scanned images, voice messages, and video messages. You can link to or embed data from other systems and view lists of documents. Replication means that new documents are immediately listed in one or more views and are available to anyone using that replica of the database. Users of other replicas will see new information after the next scheduled replication. Views are like tables of contents for a database, except that a view does not necessarily list every document in the database, and a single database may have multiple views, each organizing the documents differently. For example, a database could have the views By Date, By Author, and By Client. The Educational Challenge
Dr. Andrew Vazsonyi
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