Computer Weekly: Hot skills: Lotus Notes and Domino

September 4 2008

The UK's Computer Weekly examines the current career opportunity space around Lotus Notes and Domino:

IBM's Domino server and Notes client are frequently treated as direct competitors to Microsoft's Exchange Server and Outlook. But while Exchange began as a messaging server, Notes and Domino originated as collaboration and application development platforms. They support calendaring and other groupware functions, but can also be used to develop client/server and web applications, particularly workflow and document-based. This may explain why analysts' figures for IBM's and Microsoft's shares of the messaging market differ so markedly, from giving the two suppliers near-parity, to awarding Microsoft a three-to-one advantage.

In August 2007, IBM announced Notes and Domino Release 8, with a move to the Eclipse development platform. Most Lotus announcements in the last year have concerned "Web 2.0" capabilities - RSS and Atom, representational state transfer (REST) application programming interfaces, mash-ups, social networking. A lot of businesses have been expressing enthusiasm about the potential for Web 2.0 technologies to cut IT costs and improve the quality of collaboration and feedback.
Interestingly, they also published one on Exchange today, and both have similar profiles..

Link: Computer Weekly: Hot skills: Lotus Notes and Domino >

Ed Brill Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Lotus  Add/View Comments [20]

Post a Comment

  1. 1  Vincent  | 9/4/2008 12:08:52 PM

    Now that I think about it, the number of head hunter calls I received has increased quite a lot after Notes 8 has announced and released. And yes, those opportunities were not about migrating Notes to M$ Outlook. :D

  1. 2  Henry Ferlauto http://www.geniusinside.com | 9/4/2008 2:09:07 PM

    All good "lagging indicators" that ND8 is a success and that the platform as a whole is on the rebound.

    Now if we can only get back to the good old days of admins making $150/hr! Ahhh....

  1. 3  Ben Poole http://benpoole.com | 9/4/2008 3:06:37 PM

    Good news indeed, although Computer Weekly's talk of "hot skills" has yet to be borne-out in their job advertisements!

  1. 4  Ian Scott  | 9/4/2008 3:39:55 PM

    Yep. There's definitely much more work around. Importantly, I think, is that a lot of it is for permanent staff as I think this indicates a commitment to the product.

  1. 5  Kerr  | 9/4/2008 5:20:26 PM

    As someone in the market for Domino dev work on the UK, this is the worst time I have ever seen. The last few places I have seen had an active policy to not do new dev on domino. Existing apps are replaced with java or .net as and when major upgrades are required. Often updating the domino app would give the business the functionality required, more quickly and cheaper. But the decision has been made. No new apps on domino. Wish it wasn't so. At this rate I'm never going to get the chance to use xpages in a comercial environment.

  1. 6  Sean Cull http://www.focul.net | 9/4/2008 5:57:23 PM

    @5, Kerr, I have come across this quite a lot in the UK although my anecdotal experience is that less apps get written because it is harder to do on other platforms.

    I think that there has been a very long tail to the poor image of Notes over the last few years and although Notes is so much better it may be too late for some.

    I also think that IBMs focus on new seats as opposed to retaining seats ( in addition to new seats ) doesn't help. There is also a focus on ISV solutions getting merit points for IBM Business Partners only if they run on IBM hardware.

  1. 7  Jeff Gilfelt http://www.jeffgilfelt.com | 9/4/2008 10:49:52 PM

    I find it a bit strange that the article has absolutely no analysis of the current job market. The rates of pay listed are at odds with the assertion in the headline that these are "hot skills".

    I agree with @5. My career as a Domino developer is at its lowest point right now. Fortunately it feels like there is so much momentum around other development platforms at the moment (not just for web, also mobile and RIA), that there has never been a better time for good developers to change focus.

  1. 8  Ben Poole http://benpoole.com | 9/5/2008 12:29:35 AM

    @5 agreed. In my experience, IBM are their own worst enemy: "no new Domino dev" is the mantra because there are these esoteric "Websphere experts" out there from IBM who can re-architect apps for the JEE world.

    Perhaps one day we might even *see* some of these mysterious apps...

  1. 9  Devendran  | 9/5/2008 3:30:32 AM

    Am i in time machine and 15 years back! I am living in Singapore with a decade of Domino experience. Since, i am nicely settled in my company(no opportunities outside)i am not serious. But, my friends who were desperately looking for change are not able land in job with decent salary where a 2 yrs old java programmer is getting. So, Hot skill, is still cannot en cashed.

  1. 10  Pedro Quaresma http://playroom3.wordpress.com | 9/5/2008 7:08:33 AM

    I agree with everything Kerr (@5) said, and I would even replace "UK" with "Europe"

  1. 11  Roger Zander  | 9/5/2008 8:28:51 AM

    I'd replace with 'UK' with the word US as well. Just look at www.DICE.com. In the end, how many positions (or the lack of) are listed on DICE trumps some of the hype and kool-aid Lotus wants us to drink.

  1. 12  Bob Balaban http://www.bobzblog.com | 9/5/2008 8:05:28 PM

    Ed, so what's with this "3 to 1" 'advantage' of Exchange? Where does that come from, and is it anywhere near accurate (I hope not!)

  1. 13  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 9/7/2008 9:39:43 PM

    @12 Bob, I don't know where they got their numbers... Gartner's Dataquest and IDC both show IBM with 35%+ share as of end of 2007.

  1. 14  mike  | 9/9/2008 12:35:18 AM

    @5 Same in AU, well most of Government, no more dev in notes. :(

  1. 15  owen b  | 9/9/2008 1:12:02 AM

    So what is IBM doing (other than great product : ) to help create demand for domino programmers?

    how do we get the Notes development platform back on the IT and general management funding radar?

  1. 16  Ben Rose http://www.jaffacake.net | 9/9/2008 4:00:15 AM

    The collaboration team here who handle Notes/Domino has doubled headcount in the last 12 months.

    A good sign.

  1. 17  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 9/9/2008 4:01:00 AM

    @15 comprehensive program being developed now, with 8.5 as a catalyst to get things going again from a focus/resources perspective inside IBM. I'll check in with that team and see where progress is at.

    Interestingly, one of their early outputs that I thought was going to really help show that IBM is serious about Notes as an app platform again, the "cookbook" on composite applications, elicited exactly one on-topic comment here three months ago when I announced it. { Link } Positive or negative, it would be helpful to know why that didn't really hit the mark.

  1. 18  Dave Armstrong  | 9/9/2008 9:35:58 AM

    @17) Composite applications aren't hitting the mark for my team mostly because they aren't solving a critical business need. My team certainly sees many potential uses for them, but those uses are more along the lines of bells & whistles than critical functions. This is partially because SharePoint is our intranet portal, so when we need to mash data together, we do it on the MS side. You would know better than I if we are an anomaly, or if that is common.

    But I would also hazard a guess that you could explain to me exactly why I should be passionate about it. Odds are, that 70 page paper probably does exactly that.

    But let's be realistic... your average corporate developer like me doesn't have time to read 70 pages. If you cannot incite passion in one page, we aren't going to get motivated.

  1. 19  Ben Poole http://benpoole.com | 9/9/2008 9:43:51 AM

    @17 you mention composite apps. The fact is, for the majority of developers I've spoken to, composite apps ignite... well, nothing. We are FAR more excited about XPages, so please don't take CAs as some kind of indicator of wider techie interest in the 3rd party developer market.

    (Ditto for sidebar apps: until there's a stable usable API there, interest will also be very limited).

  1. 20  Sean Cull http://www.seancull.co.uk | 9/9/2008 1:27:28 PM

    I agree with Ben and Dave based on my experience of putting Apps into <500 people sized organisations.

    The only obvious Composite apps would mean integrating into SAP or similar and neither us not the customers have the expertese to do that cost effectively - plus its very much a diminishing returns situation as the ERP system development would probably take much longer than the Notes RAD work.

    As I see it composite apps into ERP systems etc.. will only be viable for very large organisations with their own development teams or ISVs who specialise in integration with ERP systems

    Simplier composite apps into other Notes applications or the web ( like google maps ) might be more relevant but again its a case of bells and whistles rather than core functionality

    X pages and DXL however are much more attractive. XPages might allow us to put apps into currently non notes customers via the express utility model ( and possibly foundations once we can run apps on it ). DXL would make it easier to customise and patch applications