For those watching at home....

October 10 2006

...Rod Boothby has posted a new blog entry entitled, "Lotus Notes - The Asbestos of Enterprise IT".  I've left some comments there.

Ed Brill Frankfurt International Airport Category: Add/View Comments [21]

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  1. 1  Dennis Ellison  | 10/10/2006 9:51:09 AM

    Sounds like total chaos to me. Most businesses have very real needs for defined process, security and accountability. Web 2.0 seems to offer very little of any of those. Notes/MS bashing is usually all hype and minimal substance.

  1. 2  Graham Chastney http://oak-grove.typepad.com | 10/10/2006 10:23:09 AM

    Why so personal Ed? Remember what you said to me. Isn't there a team in IBM Lotus that is positioning the product set in a Web 2.0 context?

  1. 3  Kai Grote  | 10/10/2006 10:24:13 AM

    I think what most people miss is, that like Intelligence, Information is not about raw Data, but the relation and linking of Data, which is not exportable by screen scraping.

    The way u display the relation is matter of time, money and maybe the love for incredible buzzing new words and and cool technology, which will prove its worth tomorro but that might be bit to risky for most companies.

  1. 4  david racicot  | 10/10/2006 10:37:24 AM

    There is no reason to migrating away from Notes and there is no business case that supports the effort to do so. Smart companies (CEOs/CIOs) realize the value, long term stability, and all those other attributes, of a Lotus Domino infrastructure and use it to out perform their competitors with respect to IT costs. Companies that waste cycles on migrating only help their competition.

  1. 5  Keith Brooks http://www.kbmsg.blogspot.com/ | 10/10/2006 10:52:51 AM

    This has been highly amusing, but can you get Rod to Lotusphere and demo his "miracle of migration"?

    It would be the hit of the show.

    If his company really thought he was on to something, it would be a multimillion dollar business for them and you can bet they would pursue it.

  1. 6  Not a troll  | 10/10/2006 11:30:25 AM

    I'd rather not say who I am but I've done work for E&Y before and it's hillarious that one of the screen shots he posted is a db of Wizard. That's gotta be one of the worst db's I've ever had to work with. I think his problem is how poorly E&Y has implemented Notes. He needs to start placing blame where it's due and it's internal.

  1. 7  Sean  | 10/10/2006 11:34:59 AM

    Nothing worse than when two people who have the same goal of collaboration fight. If anything Rod has valid points about the power of collaboration when let loose to the general public via free software websites. Web 2.0 Enterprise has the goal of becoming embedded in the corporate world. A space as we all know that is currently occupied with mature systems. Calling Notes Asbestos? This is coming from a guy who works on derivative systems for fixed income no less. Rod has little or no experience in the Collaboration Space other than as a user. It is easy to blast mature systems and point out perceived faults. Rod;s mention of Office 2.0 really shows his lack of knowledge of the Notes product and where Notes is today and where it is headed. Ed if anything post a few lines on his blog with links to the Hannover presentations.

    We all know you can't give out blogs on company web sites to everyone. Legal Depts will have a hard time allowing it, do to exposure of trade secrets and lawsuits.

    Seems to me Rod actually wants to join us over here in the collaborative space, hence his foray into bogging about collaboration. His mistake was drinking the Web 2.0 coolaid. Anyone who really understands and have a lengthy background in technology knows that Web 2.0 concepts are simply a repackaging existing decades old ideas.

  1. 8  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 10/10/2006 12:46:05 PM

    Third verse, even worse than the first two. This guy just doesn't know when to shut the hell up.

  1. 9  Axel Janssen  | 10/10/2006 1:41:52 PM

    Pretty funny read.

    Tech market appears to get overheated again.

    If such "unorthodox thinkers" as Rod are entering the scene. A bit like 1999.

    To answer his elaborated thoughts might be a waste of time, because noone is going to take him serious.

  1. 10  ed maloney  | 10/10/2006 1:42:01 PM

    Mr. Boothby's ignorance is only surpassed by his arrogance. I'm sure that he's loving all the additional site traffic his Notes rant is generating. If it weren't for the .nsf in the URL you wouldn't even know that most contemporary Domino pages are Notes based. (Okay, default Notes sites are worthy of criticism). That being the case, why is he singling out Notes? Perhaps he thinks that Microsoft will buy his company?

    I say that his 15 minutes of fame are over and that we should stop feeding the beast.

  1. 11  Mike Robinson http://www.invcs.com | 10/10/2006 3:17:25 PM

    It's so far off it's comical. To use a phrase I heard elsewhere- it's "Drive By Media", overplayed sound bites, nothing original (i.e., users hate Notes, it's ugly, etc.). At least during the Browser War era a long time ago (mid 90s), one could say the browser was a legitimate threat. Nothing new has been invented in the attack folks. It's to the point that IBM could send out autopiloted drones to shoot down these stories :)

    Do let it get your ruffle your feathers to much...

  1. 12  Nathan T. Freeman http://www.openntf.org/nathan/escape.nsf | 10/10/2006 3:30:29 PM

    @11 "Nothing new has been invented in the attack"

    Hrmm... I'd say the proliferation of client-side XML processing, improvements in consistency of DHTML handling, the growth of pervasive bandwidth and the rise of hand-held technology all post-date the Browser Wars and all affect the comparison of Notes vs. Web 2.0 development models.

    I think Boothby is a quack, too, but those open web tools haven't been static for the last 10 years by a long shot.

  1. 13  Brad Stammers  | 10/10/2006 6:16:24 PM

    Wow.

    Talk about a poster child for slow learners.

    If Boothby approached his day-to-day business with this degree of inability to absorb information he should be very afraid.

  1. 14  Ports http://www.mrports.com/ | 10/10/2006 6:20:28 PM

    Rod gives us a ludicrous and impractical way to migrate data from "Notes" to Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 but doesn't present any business case as to why this is will help Enterprises other than some vague notion that it is "open". I'm sure that I'm not the only one who has understood that the point of Web 2.0 is not the technology - it is the application of those technologies. That is, using technologies to promote social networking and collaboration. Technologically there is nothing new in Blogs, Wikis, Flickr, Basecamp, Youtube, RSS, mySpace etc. None of this is new - just existing technologies resurfaced for a new audience. Notes, Windows, Macs, Mainframes, Linux, Office, Firefox - whatever. The Enterprise does not care how new and cool the technology is - but how does it help them do their job. Lotus Notes does that - proven over tens of millions of users across tens of thousands of customers. Web/Enterprise 2.0 is an idea not yet a business tool.

    And if every answer you give is Web 2.0 - beware of Web 3.0. What is it? Well by your criteria, does it matter?

  1. 15  Ian Randall http://www.emsoft.com.au | 10/10/2006 8:30:03 PM

    Rods post sounds like one of those old Monty Python sketches...

    "Now children we are going to discuss how to cure the world of all know diseases:

    1. First we study and become a brilliant Doctor

    2. Then we work very hard and research for many many years

    3. Then we make a brilliant breakthrough & win the Nobel Prize"

    Lets move on and dump Rod and his Blog into the Technology trash can. What a moron!

  1. 16  Andrew Price http://www.healthspace.ca | 10/10/2006 9:54:28 PM

    I recommend NOT linking to him Ed. His blog is not a useful place to start a worthwhile discussion (and there is a useful discussion to be had) of how Notes & Web 2.0 tech will progress.

  1. 17  Mike McGarel  | 10/10/2006 11:47:25 PM

    First Red Bull, now Rod bull . . .

  1. 18  Arne Sigurd Rognan Nielsen  | 10/11/2006 2:40:48 AM

    Ed, I see that someone name you as arrogant on Rod's blog. Well, in my opinion it's better to be arrogant than ignorant.. So if you are the arrogant one (buildt on knowledge), then Rod seem to be the ignorant one...

  1. 19  Villi Helguson  | 10/11/2006 2:12:43 PM

    In the days of Notes 2.0, Ozzy convinced Mich Kapor to run with Notes, by citing uni. research in Computer Supported Cooperative Work (first coined by Irene Greif and Paul M. Cashman in 1984). Today we are still trying to figure out a better way for groups to work together. Social networks (using web2) is the biggest advance to this idea, since Notes 2.0.

    It is normal to denounce Notes (and Ozzy) and push collaboration and cooperation in a massively multiplayer world. Technology changes, but the goal is the same.

    Notes is like Mozart in the Jazz area.

  1. 20  Jeff Cassens  | 10/11/2006 2:55:57 PM

    If I recall correctly, John Manzi made a better Notes analogy - 'Notes is like electronic kudzu'.

    Those of you who have spent any time in the South know exactly what that means.

    After perusing the comments on Rod's page, I think he may have an idea of the hornet's nest he poked a stick into.

  1. 21  x  | 10/11/2006 4:11:14 PM

    @20 For those of us who have not spent time there:

    { Link }