Farewell, Notes/Domino 6.5
April 30 2010
Well, today's the day. Notes/Domino 6.5, and thus the 6.x release of the product, have reached their end of service date. IBM promises to provide standard support for our commercial software for a minimum of five years; in the case of Notes/Domino 6.x, that support ran for seven and a half. Our support engineers will not simply hang up the phone if you call with a 6.5 question next week, and extended support is available for a couple of years more, in a variety of options.
My second tour through product management was where I had the opportunity to write the business plan for Notes/Domino 6. The 6.5 release represented an attempt to realign Notes to customer and market requirements, and represented the first attempt at iterating and alternating between client and server focus. That's generally worked since then -- 7.0 was a server-focused release, 8.0 a client-focused release, and 8.5 again a server-focused release.
6.5, or more specifically 6.5.1, was also the one moment where Lotus as a brand decided to align product releases. Quickplace, Sametime, and Domino.Doc all got updated within a 90 day cycle, with the idea of running and supporting all of them concurrently. That made a ton of sense for those customers invested in multiple or all of the Lotus products, but as a strategy, it was extremely limiting for the go-to-market plans for those products.
Though at one time, 6.5 was the vast majority of the Notes/Domino installed base, our support tracking data shows that less than 6% of all PMRs opened in March were related to 6.5. I know, as I've traveled around to LCTYs and user groups recently, there are still customers running 6.5, but planning to upgrade. There are plenty of business partners and our own Lab Services available to help those of you still running 6.5 to move on up.
Post a Comment
- 3
Erik Brooks | 4/30/2010 6:48:56 PM
Congratulations, in a way. The more guns brought to bear on the current releases, the better. And anything that serves as a kick in the butt to upgrade to 8.x is definitely a Good Thing(tm).
- 4
Michael Kobrowski | 4/30/2010 10:30:17 PM
We are working on the upgrade ;-) 6.5.4 clients (many) and a couple of 6.5.6 FP2 servers left too...
- 5
norm van bergen | 5/1/2010 8:04:03 AM
We upgraded this year our 14 Domino servers to 8.5 (from 7.x) and are in the home stretch of doing the same for 3000 or so clients (mix of 6.5.x and 7.x). It's really turned around some perceptions about Notes, particularly surrounding email. 8.x is a great release and getting better all the time. Too bad our internal processes are such that it's very difficult to keep upgrading all the time to stay current. The incremental improvements with each point release are quite compelling.
- 6
David - The Notes guy in Seattle | 5/3/2010 12:56:41 AM
For anyone that this announcement affects, take heed. While we like to complain about IBM's poor marketing strategies, system administrators who do not keep their company at or near the latest version of software are equally accountable for the product's success or failure. As much as we hear of migrations to other products, I would like to point out that every single case I have seen involved migrating from Notes 6.5 or earlier (5+ year old software). This leads me to two conclusions:
1. The current version of Notes is much better than the competition. (Ever wonder why MS refuses to make their connector software to work with Domino 8? Most likely because they know if you're on Notes 8, you won't be migrating to Exchange and more importantly, it would be quite useful in migrations FROM Exchange.)
2. If you aren't on the current version, you are at the greatest risk of having to find a new job or learn a new technology real soon.
As the experts in our field, it is our obligation to keep our senior management informed of the costs and benefits of periodic upgrades. The cost of NOT upgrading is always much greater. Change is inevitable. But if you try to avoid it by delaying upgrades or skipping versions, the changes for the users are much harder for them to cope with or worse, will result in a costly migration to another product entirely as users get frustrated working with less productive, out-of-date software. Senior management will (often legitimately) blame old software for the loss in productivity and profits, but will incorrectly conclude the solution is to replace the software rather than upgrade it.
In other words, the business world is much like life on the African Savannah. You don't want to be caught at the at the back of the pack for software upgrades. It's not so much end of life for that version of software as it is end of life for those still using it.
- 7
Martijn de Jong http://ww.socialsoftwareblog.nl | 5/4/2010 7:42:45 AM
@6 Couldn't agree more. I so often hear stories about how people dislike Lotus Notes and those stores are always on Lotus Notes 6.5 or earlier. Many customers are still on 6.5 and dicussing on whether to migrate or upgrade. We managed to save some, but a couple went to the "dark side". Regretfully upgrading is a bit against the nature of many system administrators who feel you shouldn't mess with something that just works (and justifiably so btw).
- 8
Michael Kobrowski | 5/4/2010 9:36:44 AM
@7 I don't get those kind of system administrators. Not just with LND 8.5x, which has so many obvious benefits to upgrade with DAOS, etc. but in general.
That just seems lazy to stay behind so long. Of course, often the system administrators don't have a choice....
- 9
Sean | 5/4/2010 10:27:32 AM
@6 seen this happen more than once, with the company concerned doing a costly migration with no real ROI instead of simply doing a Notes upgrade.
In each case the company was using an old release of Notes and the Microsoft-centric sys-admin & service-delivery teams blocked the Notes Admins from rolling out upgrades.
Don't know whether it was deliberate on their part to undermine Notes or not, but the result was the same...
Ed, Is there an EOS for Lotus 7.XX at the moment? That information would help me know what to do with Lotus 8 and might help drive some internal movement....
Thanks,
David