IBM's Inexpensive Notes/Domino Push Against MS

Deviant writes "Speaking as an IT consultant, the one big gap in the Linux stack is in messaging / collaboration. MS Outlook with Exchange is a fine product on which many businesses truly rely, and it is almost impossible to match on Linux — server or desktop. The one competitor to MS in this space has been IBM's Lotus Notes / Domino, which has always had the general reputation of being expensive, bloated, and unfriendly. I certainly wouldn't have considered it for the small businesses that we usually sell on MS's SBS server product. That is why I was truly surprised to hear about the new Domino Express Licensing and Notes 8. This is a product that has native server and client versions for both Mac and Linux. Notes 8, now written in Eclipse, also includes an integrated office suite, Lotus Symphony. This could conceivably let a user do all of their work in one application. And you can now license the server and client components together for as low as $100/user. It's packaged for companies of 1,000 seats or fewer. Is this the silver bullet to take out the entire MS stack — server, client, and Office? Or will IBM drop the ball yet again?"

Comments

Screenshots of Notes 8

[Deviant]

A review with many screenshots of the new Notes 8 interface - http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9019476/

Re:Screenshots of Notes 8

[MishgoDog]

I'm using the beta of Notes 8 (I work at the big blue), and I can say that it's significantly improved from a UI perspective, and even a bit from a response perspective (which has always been my gripe with Notes)

Re:Written in Eclipse?

[The_Myth]

You can use the base code from Eclipse as the starting point for any gui-type application - be that a word processor or graphics program or in this case an email client. Both the Netbeans and Eclipse IDE's allow you to extend them to create other applications outside of programming applications. The difference between the two is mainly do you want your application to use SWT (IBM) or Swing/AWT (SUN) for your GUI controls.

At the end of the day though it means that its written in Java.

I disagree.

[Petersko]

"Baloney. (MS Outlook with Exchange) is a terrible product. It just happens to be ubiquitous in the corporate world because of Mcrosoft's monopolistic practices combined with a lack of good competition."

I don't habitually defend Microsoft, but I completely disagree with you here. At work we're migrating away from Notes (thank the maker), and I happily volunteered to be one of the first users during the beta stage. I live my programming life on Solaris, and in G2, and I'm a fan of UNIX in general. I've run umpteen versions of linux in my life. I've used a dozen or more email clients with some regularity, and a number of calendars. And over the years I've realized this:

Outlook and Exchange Server make me happy.

Have you seen the Web Acess client? There's NOTHING out there that compares. The ridiculous bag of inconsistent behaviour and busted UI design that is Lotus Notes is something I'll be glad to see the tail end of.

Re:I disagree.

[pstorry]

So you're eager to move away from Notes.

(Although you don't say which version of the client you're using, so it may not be a fair comparison. The R8 client is a major upgrade, especially in interface terms.)

However, your eagerness to move to the client tells only half the story.

The server side - well, frankly, Exchange is a pit. A big money pit. It's fine for 100 users in a small business. Past that, its storage systems show the strain.

It's not as scalable, it's not as robust, and it gives far less functionality than a Domino server. It's a mail system that was designed to beat cc:Mail in 1995, and is still straining at the architectural limitations that brief imposed upon it.

And your response will no doubt be "I don't care, I only see the client" - fair enough. But the quote was "MS Outlook with Exchange" - so you're already replying out of context.

Oh, and speaking of web access clients, the Domino Web Access client (formerly known as iNotes) is no slouch either...

Re:I disagree.

[iamhigh]

Agreeing with the AC...
We have Exchange 2003 running on 5 year old hardware, with about 200 mailboxes. I have seen SBS with almost 100 mailboxes and everything else on that server. I have no doubt that a brand new server, maybe with a SAN or something, could handle 2000 mailboxes with no problem. And since I know for a fact it does serve many more than that, I just don't know where the GP gets the idea Exchange isn't for a mid-large sized biz.

Re:Written in Eclipse?

[pstorry]

It's a really bad bit of phrasing.

What they mean is that it's now using the Eclipse Rich Client Platform.

Most of the core code is still C/C++, and was already somewhat cross-platform. For instance, the database code already runs on Windows, AIX, Solaris, Linux, OS/400 and the z-Series mainframe. This is because IBM tend to use the same code on the client as they do on the server - it reduces maintenance, and increases reliability.

However, over the past few versions of Notes (R5 to R7), the Notes client had become more Windows-centric as it put in place or improved various features that IBM's clients were asking for - such as Dial-Up Networking support, better OLE support, etc.

In fact, those versions didn't ship Unix clients, and the Mac client often lagged behind in terms of both shipping and functionality.

IBM's solution has been to rework the Notes client so that it uses the Eclipse Rich Client Platform. It's given them a common UI and OS abstraction layer across their three target platforms - Windows, Mac, and now Linux too.

With a common platform and common libraries, IBM should be able to support multiple operating systems without crippling development costs - and it's benefiting the Eclipse project, because a lot of the work that IBM has done to get it working properly on the Mac platform (for example) is going straight back into that project.

(In fact, IBM's commitment to Eclipse is so strong of late that some people feel they've become dominant in the project, which is a bit of a sticky political situation for them.)

Eclipse isn't perfect, and it's a bit heavy on the system resources at present. But as with most heavy applications, what's large and slow now will be small and svelte on the latest machines in a year or two's time.

Meanwhile, the ability to mix Eclipse plugins with traditonal Notes functionality - especially in workflow applications - is something that's extending Notes in some rather interesting directions...

Big gap?

[miffo.swe]

I dont know, there are a wealth of options for collaborating on Linux. Zimbra, Novell Teaming+Conferencing, Groupwise, Google Apps and all the various open source projects out there. The choices are pretty endless with both very mature products and cutting edge stuff in all priceranges. IBM adds something for the nervous enterprise CIO who wants someone to blame when things gets b0rked.

Re:It's more than that

[miffo.swe]

It all works just wonderful except for one little detail. It all demands your organization works just as Microsofts products are designed. As soon as you try to change something you are in for a world of hurt and all the nice "plugging in" becomes a real nightmare.

if you add up what Exchange/Outlook/Sharepoint costs and multiply it with your users you can have a tailormade solution adapted to your companys needs instead of trying to turn your organization around on a dime and start working the MS way (tm). Its a one-size fits all solution that Microsoft sells.

Microsofts solution also demands a hefty number of it and support staff to keep it all running.