Lotusphere, the company's annual conference.

ORLANDO, Florida -- Lotus wheeled out an impressive range of new products before more than 10,000 attendees on the first day of Lotusphere on Monday.

Among the products shown off were the next version of Lotus Notes (version 5.0) and a new Java based thin client application suite known as eSuite.

Before the products were unveiled, attendees were treated to a spectacular light and sound display, aimed at emphasising the conference's theme of "cultivate your senses'', referring to the business and technical sense that empowered Lotus Notes users have.

Lotus reviewed its overall business plan and the relationship advantage that it has been able to forge with IBM. With the backing of IBM, Lotus Notes has been able to expands its dominance in the messaging market to a total of 24 percent of the worldwide market or a total of over 20 million seats. Lotus has shipped over 10 million seats this year. Lotus is also making impressive inroads in new technology advancements like products like Lotus eSuite.

Lotus eSuite is a set of Java-based products that can be used within browsers or on network computers. Lotus is the first general application vendor to release a set of robust Java "office-alike'' applets. These are small, compact and fast.

Doug Wilson, the chief architect of eSuite said: "Code budgets are an absolute priority when building these classes. We were not trying to mimic the function of a 1-2-3 or (Microsoft) Office and found through usability testing, that users actually use a very small subset of the total feature set.

"We are trying to live the 80/20 rule, where users get 80 percent of the functionality they need in the first 20 percent of the size and function. We measured the key usability features and put those in eSuite.'' There is a full set of office automation applets included in eSuite. These include work processor, e-mail, spreadsheet, calendar, address book and presentation graphics applets. They are all built in Java. A client and a developer version are available. The developer version can be found at http://esuite.lotus.com With products like eSuite, businesses will be able to give users a full set of light applications on a computer that costs about $1,000 including the monitor. The computer will be centrally upgradable and have a very low total cost of ownership. These same applications will be able to be used from within a browser on a standard PC.

Developers will be able to write once and deliver their applications on the platform that best suits a company's needs.

Lotus also previewed the new Notes 5.0 client and server. With Notes version 5.0, Lotus is going to separate the client and development environment into two separate products. This has been a long-awaited feature for system managers who want to limit the people who can actually perform development.

The early signs for Notes 5.0 look very positive, as there have been great improvements in the user interface, email and scheduling. At this point in early alpha mode where the code is still being modified daily, the scheduling does not seem ready for the big leagues yet, but should be in better shape for the release of 5.0. Both the development team and senior executives acknowledge the scheduling is vital.

The conference continues tomorrow with a wide variety of breakout sessions ranging in scope from "Domino on Unix'' to "Managing your corporate enterprise''.

With products like eSuite and Notes 5.0, and the partnership with IBM, Lotus seems sure to be a renewed leader in the business marketplace.