A notification is a way of communicating where a party can send a message to another party without having to identify itself and without expecting a reply back from the other party. It is entirely up to the other party to decide how to react upon receiving the notification. An e-mail is a good notification example.
Aware IM allows sending notifications from a business space to intelligent business objects defined in the business space, for example sending e-mails to customers. It also forwards incoming notifications into relevant business spaces, for example when an incoming e-mail arrives or a user logs into the business space in the operation mode.
Notifications, like business objects, have attributes to hold communication information.