Lotus Notes Release 4 was officially launched in Hong Kong last Wednesday with a special appearance by the program's creator.
Ray Ozzie, the president of Iris Associates, the development company owned by Lotus that created the first version of Notes back in 1990, said he hoped Asia-Pacific could become a major market for the groupware and messaging program.
'This market is just booming,' Mr Ozzie said.
'If there is any market in the world where I really want to concentrate our efforts on, it is this one.' Lotus claims more than 4.5 million people use Notes to improve key business processes like customer service, sales, account management, and product development.
Notes is classed as 'groupware' along with Novell's GroupWise and Microsoft's Exchange program because it helps speed up the flow of information among individual users and teams.
The number of users of Notes in Hong Kong will double this year compared with the number of users in 1994, Alfred Tsoi, Lotus Hong Kong's general manager, said.