More Executive Reshuffling Afoot at Lotus : Computers: A senior VP resigns and the top technical officer is rumored to be leaving.

Just two days after the abrupt resignation of Lotus Development Corp. Chief Executive James P. Manzi, another of the company’s top executives has quit and a third is expected to follow as new owner IBM exerts its control over the PC software pioneer.

Robert K. Weiler, Lotus’ senior vice president of the desktop software and international sales--and a close ally of Manzi’s--resigned Thursday. Richard Landry, the company’s chief technical officer and a longtime business associate of Weiler’s, is rumored to be leaving shortly.

The departures bring to six the number of Lotus executives who have left since International Business Machines Corp. acquired the company in July for $3.5 billion. A generous severance package offered to top-level managers has encouraged some to leave.

IBM said Friday that Manzi, who announced his resignation Wednesday, was being replaced with a two-person office of the president. It includes Michael Zisner, who was named an executive vice president of IBM and chief executive of Lotus, and Jeffrey Papows, now an IBM executive vice president and chief operating officer of Lotus. Both had been senior vice presidents of Lotus’ communications software unit.

IBM executives and some analysts said the sudden executive exodus would not harm Lotus so long as key programmers and other creative people remained in place.

“With a software company the executives are almost interchangeable,” said Karl Wong, director of PC software for Dataquest Inc., a San Jose market research firm. “It’s the key technical people that you want to keep.”

And so far, IBM has been successful in persuading them to hang on. Raymond Ozzie, the lead developer of Notes, the software program that allows computer users to communication and collaborate--and the primary prize in IBM’s purchase of Lotus--said in statement Friday that he is “committed to the future.”

“The key thing for us is to have the development side of the house stay,” said an IBM insider who asked not to be identified.

Hanging onto Ozzie in particular is considered crucial. Lotus is scheduled to release a new version of Notes by year’s end, and sales of Notes have slowed as customers hold off on purchases in anticipation of the new release, according to Wong. Questions surrounding the acquisition have also done little to help Notes.

While Notes sales are seemingly stalled, competitors are coming on strong. Many in the industry believe that as the software and security features of the Internet’s World Wide Web grow more powerful, it will be able to offer many of the same capabilities as Lotus Notes for far less money. In addition, long-time rivals Microsoft Corp. and Novell Inc. are beefing up their electronic mail products by adding the ability to share documents.

“IBM has an 18-month window to really boost market share,” Wong said. There are about 2.2 million Notes users today, and Manzi had said his goal was 20 million by 1997.

There has been speculation that Ozzie, who has an unusual relationship with Lotus--he works miles away from its headquarters in Cambridge, Mass., and only recently became a company employee--is under an 18-month contract that would keep him for yet another version of Notes. Neither Ozzie nor IBM will comment on his working arrangements.

Manzi said Wednesday that after some soul-searching he had concluded that he was ill-suited to be a division head at IBM. But sources said he had tried--and failed--to persuade IBM Chairman Louis V. Gerstner Jr. to put him in charge of Big Blue’s entire $12-billion software operation.

Instead, Gerstner decided IBM veteran John Thompson would oversee all IBM software. Zisner and Papows will both report to Thompson, and the other Lotus executives who had reported to Manzi now report to the office of the president.

Zisner, 46, is a relative newcomer to the company, having joined in 1994 when Softswitch, the communications software firm he founded, was acquired by Lotus. Papows, 41, was hired by Lotus in 1992, after serving as the chief operating officer of software maker Cognos.

Zisner stressed that IBM wants Lotus to be autonomous. But it seems likely that Thompson will play a large role.

Thompson said Landry has not resigned, although his role is undefined.