Am I happy with where Notes is from a technical standpoint ? Yes more than ever 

Sean Cull  18 June 2010 14:13:03

I have just recorded a podcast with Stuart McIntyre, Darren Duke, Sharon Bellamy, Matt White and Bruce Elgort and it got me thinking.

Although I have commented on some blogs over the last week I have not posted anything myself so here goes.

Am I happy with where Notes is from a technical standpoint - yes more than ever.

My company focuses on a "double niche" - organisations that are in the manufacturing sector and have a pre-existing Notes infrastructure. With XPages we can now think of it as less of a double niche because we can design once for the web and the Notes client at the same time. This is a huge advance and as someone pointed out on the podcast pretty unusual in terms of platforms. Notes has always been much more capable than the vast majority of its users know and now this is even more the case.

We are developing our first application which will run as an appliance at a customer site that is non notes. But it also runs as a local replica in the Notes client - how cool is that ? Think Google Gears but better ( and still supported ). I might regret this but here are the daily and weekly builds ( sorry Andrew ! ). Trust me it looks the same in the Notes Client.

I deliberately used the phrase "where Notes is technically" because I am not as happy around the non technical side. Its not that it has suddenly got worse rather that the gap between "what Notes can do" and what people "think Notes can do" has got much wider and so my frustration has got greater.

I will openly admit to having looked to see if we can offer solution on the MS platforms as well as Domino and I have always come away confident that for what we do Notes has very limited competition. So what are the issues ?

IBM has got to value retaining clients

Reps need to be incentivised for renewals - it will stop companies on < 8.x thinking the product is dated.

Its a virtuous circle that will ensure that IBM customers get better value from Notes through applications, DAOS, servers running faster on existing hardware etc.  and IBM spends less time fighting a rear guard battle against a mail platform and a file server.

People often talk about life cycles - what is IBM's view on the lifecycle of a customer ?

IBM has got to be wholistic about Notes being a development platform

If I sell a 10K Xpage app to a company with <1000 employees the whole project is 12K ( 2k for the utility express server ). If I sell the same App to a company with 1001 employees the whole project costs maybe 25k. This means that I can't be competitive in large companies - that just seems daft.

At the same time pricing by individual users is not the answer either - for example if I write an app that manages brochures or safety data sheets the client will absolutely not pay £X per month for each customer just because they are listed in a NAB somewhere ( in reality it drives you to LAMP or to use a daft email based system with response parsing to avoid the restrictions ).

I honestly don't know the answer but the current scheme is not helpful. There may be ways and means around this but if so this should be open and transparent or people will just not bother.

IBM needs to lower the threshold for existing and "net new" developers to start using XPages

While I applaud the work by individuals in IBM the whole documentation piece is very very poor and the learning curve is much too steep.

The Wikis are a nice idea but they are too diverse - new users want focused examples and tutorials. For example follow this link to look at the wiki articles on  XPages in the client - a strategically important area for Lotus ?. While again I applaud the work of the individuals who made the entries the formatting alone makes it unpalatable. If IBM is going to depend on Wikis they need to employ some editors.

IBM needs to bundle 2 or 3 really good Apps with Domino

so that businesses get more value and so that they can see how good Notes can be in terms of Business Applications.

I would caution that this is not an opportunity to deploy sexy Composite Apps because businesses need to be able to dissect the bundled apps and learn how to put new ones together - in most uses cases Composite apps are too expensive. If there was a good Holidays Management App wouldn't most customers use it ?

Some people will argue that OpenNtf does this. While I have huge respect for the IBM employed OpenNtf developers the Wiki as an example is not fit for production ( test being would you encourage the CXO to use it ). It is a marvellous thing for developers to use and dissect but it is too buggy and incomplete to give to a customer. I say this as someone who uses them a lot. I would say the same of the Blog template as well ( although Steve Castledine did recently seek feedback on this one ).

Just a couple more observations :

IBMs current methods to promote Notes do not work -  I think that is a statement many people would respond "A strongly agree".  Einstein said

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results"

IBM also wonder why LAMP, Ruby etc.. get such uptake when they don't have marketing either. To me the answer is in the barriers to adoption. If, for example, the on premises suite from IBM was available free for up to ten users would the Lotus community grow much ? Would the public perception of Notes improve ? I am not wedded to this idea, I don't think that it would directly create work for me, but it would require a shift in mindset on the part of IBM and I think that is what I am really looking for. It would also have negligible cost ( this licence would be unsupported) . Yes I know that there is a downside to giving away fee stuff, been there and had my fingers burnt, but it should be considered - think about Einstein's quote above.

The action list above is all "IBM to do". People will say two things - "what about you Mr Business Partner, ISV etc.. ?" and "look, just use another platform ?"

To the first I would say yes we all need to do more but our passion needs to be matched by IBM, not just Ed, IBM. There also needs to be a clearer roadmap about Notes as a design platform. People have rightly cautioned against building careers and businesses around a single vendor. I agree and it is a concern for me but to be good at what you do it is sometimes necessary. The thing that scares people away is not seeing a shared roadmap for the product. I don't understand the roadmap for Notes as a design platform and the lack of a sensible licensing structure sometimes makes me wonder if there is a roadmap.

To the second point I would respond that the platform is very very good and from a technical perspective is the best choice for me and my work. The hardest part is getting over the general lack of confidence in the platform that exists in the wider IT community.

Lastly ( I'm impressed your still here ! ) I think that some rebranding should be considered. I love Lotus Notes but "Lotus Notes" has negative connotations for too many people.

I personally would like to see "IBM Xpages" being pushed as a brand for non mail web delivered applications. It is easier to say to potential customers that the solution is based on IBM XPages rather than on Notes ( I think hardly anyone outside of this audience has heard of Domino ). Xpages could be positioned as an "Add-in" to Notes. I also like the idea of a better XPages specific development environment in addition to DDE. I feel like I've just publically disowned a child !

Anyhow, in conclusion I am hugely pleased with Notes, it is so much better than Exchange + sharepoint, I think the IBM developers are doing a fantastic job with the resources that they have but this misguided public impression of Notes needs to be addressed and the old ways are not working.

p.s.I know nothing about marketing so all of the above could be rubbish !

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