Ed Brill

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1. 1  Stuart McIntyre http://macsfacts.vox.com | 10/6/2006 11:44:17 PM

   Woah, get the man some more medication...

   I agree with you Ed, I read and re-read this a few times too just to make sure I wasn't missing his point, but no, he really is serious.

1. 2  Bruce Elgort http://www.TakingNotesPodcast.com | 10/7/2006 12:05:20 AM

   His recipe stinks. Obviously he doesn't know what he is talking about and his been grossly mis-informed by others.

   Show us some solid results from your recipe Mr. Boothby.

1. 3  Richard Schwartz http://www.rhs.com/poweroftheschwartz | 10/7/2006 12:17:19 AM

   Extensive response posted on his blog.

1. 4  Adeleida http://www.adeleida.co.za | 10/7/2006 1:21:30 AM

   "All you do is write a web crawler to screen scrape all the Domino web page versions of the databases, dump the results into an XML file in an RSS or ATOM format, and then point your fancy new Read/Write Intranet tool at that RSS/ATOM file."

   Buwahahahahahahaha!!! That is a new one, and actually really funny... Wait, wait, I have a better one: How about using screen captures for all the input screens in Lotus Notes and then putting them as backgrounds in a word processor and then letting users capture the information by typing over the places where the fields use to be? Then your end users can migrate the applications! Much cheaper.

1. 5  Stuart McIntyre http://macsfacts.vox.com | 10/7/2006 1:27:50 AM

   @3 - Clearly another blogger who insists on moderating comments to their blog... Wonder how long it will take for your repost to be shown.

1. 6  Tjakko http://pa2ta.shacknet.nu | 10/7/2006 2:45:55 AM

   The graphs made it all very clear; this guy is from another planet

1. 7  Mike Brown  | 10/7/2006 4:20:47 AM

   My response hasn't shown up there yet, either. I post it here, just in case it never does.

   Cheers,

   - Mike

   -----------------------------------------------------------

   Even assuming you could get all the data out in "an afternoon" ("complete bollocks" as we say in the UK) you fail to address the question, what was that data doing in those databases in the first place? You think that Notes is just a data dumping ground, perhaps? Sorry, but it's not. There's some little extras in it, such as workflow, approval and security.

   Your "experience" that "99% of users" don't know how to use workflow features is precisely that: your experience. Yes, there are some companies that install Notes and use it purely as (very expensive) email system. And those appear to be the kind of companies that employ people like your good self. (A conspiracy theorist might draw some kind of conclusion there).

1. 8  Chris Whisonant http://cwhisonant.blogspot.com | 10/7/2006 7:04:44 AM

   @3 - Richard, it looks like his commenting system cuts off more than mine! ;)

   The bulk of our applications ARE workflow applications of some sort. I'm not sure if his "experience" is too far reaching. This was hilarious! I wonder if he has any satisfied customers that he's migrated that would like to testify?

1. 9  Ben Langhinrichs http://www.GeniiSoft.com/showcase.nsf/GeniiBlog | 10/7/2006 7:52:24 AM

   Wow, I am really amazed that someone seeking to become known as an analyst, which seems to be his goal, would post such a breathtakingly stupid post. He can't possibly be that dense, can he.

   I too posted a comment, but I suspect we won't see it.

1. 10  Tony Lee  | 10/7/2006 7:53:23 AM

   Ed you shouldn't have linked to it .... that's got to be the STUPIDEST "technical" article I've ever wasted my time reading. And I read alot.

1. 11  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 10/7/2006 8:44:46 AM

   I have to agree with everyone else, this is one of the most ill-informed and poorly thought out articles I've read in a very long time. So you can get the data and basic layout of a Notes application from an HTML representation.... what about the *structure* of that application? Many of mine span numerous databases, with agents and hidden views providing the bulk of the heavy lifting. What about security? And what about connections to backend systems? None of that is exposed to a UI-only webpage.

   I read through some of his other posts and this guy is a Microsoft zealot. I'll file him with Radicati under "crackpot".

1. 12  ed maloney  | 10/7/2006 8:54:10 AM

   And to think of all the resources Microsoft wasted on RedBull... all they had to do was hire any competent programmer and the job would have been done in half a day! Get ready for RedBull2!

1. 13  LongLiveLotus  | 10/7/2006 10:05:18 AM

   A log time since I have read such ill-informed STUPIDITY.

   Regardless of the rights/wrongs of various software products to perpetrate such mis-information should be a CRIME. This guy is a danger to himself...

1. 14  Kurt B http://www.onthehoist.com | 10/7/2006 10:05:49 AM

   Oh man! I honestly laughed out loud reading that.

   If he'd like to do a proof of concept I'd gladly allow them to come and try to migrate our 30 largest apps in 30 days.

1. 15  Rod Boothby http://www.innovationcreators.com | 10/7/2006 10:56:54 AM

   The comments are up there now. For some reason, Akismet threw all you comments in Junk. I am working to fix that.

   There are two issues when leaving Lotus Notes. First are the mainly text content databases. The second are the Lotus Notes based applications.

   My recipe refers to the text content in Lotus Notes. At most large firms that I have seen, the firm values the text content, not the clunky applications.

   To that end, there is no reason why you should not be able to screen scape that information quickly.

   And, further, if Lotus Notes was standards compliant, and exporting all content in an RSS/ATOM feed, then it should be automatic.

   What offends me about the Lotus Notes / Domino walled garden is the fear and doubt used to defend market share.

   If Lotus Notes / Domino was as open and truly standards compliant as the rest of IBM, applications should be portable.

   For example, you can pick up a decent .Net application and run it on Windows or on a Mono based platform on Linux.

   The same goes for EJB based applications moving from WebSphere to JBOSS.

   Sure, if the application is written poorly, it doesn't port easily.

   None of which hits the point of my article, which is that in the Enterprise 2.0 world order, Lotus Notes can not and should not defend itself using Microsoft style incompatibility tricks.

   Lotus Notes seems to have the motto of "You have to stay with us, because we have made it too expensive to move off".

   In the end, that is not a defensible market strategy.

   Someone will work out a cheap and easy way to prove you wrong,and then, you are screwed.

   The better market strategy is to play nice (ie truly conform to standards) and instead, on a level playing field, provide true value, rather than just cynical lock-in.

1. 16  Mike Brown  | 10/7/2006 11:04:14 AM

   @15 I was wondering, Rod. In the (Brave New) "Enterprise 2.0 world order", does every sentence have to have its own paragraph?

   Cheers,

   - Mmike

1. 17  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 10/7/2006 11:07:04 AM

   Rod, I don't think you understand the architecture of Notes.

   Honestly, if you wanted to just export the data, there are plenty of ways to do that. Heck, even COM/OLE methods are still among the most common -- any Notes view can cut and paste in to Excel! There are also a number of XML-based ways, including Domino DXL. { Link }

   In Domino 7, shipping for over a year, Domino introduced web services on the back-end. See { Link } So the whole notion of portability and interoperability exists.

   In Notes "Hannover" (2007 release), the Notes client will be a composite applications client, consuming and integrating web services at the desktop. On an <b>open platform</b>, namely Eclipse.

   Perhaps the reason your post received such a strong response in less than 12 hours is that just a little education on the platform's capabilities will go a long way.

1. 18  Rod Boothby http://www.innovationcreators.com | 10/7/2006 11:53:28 AM

   Ed,

   Thanks for getting back so quickly. And thank you for the links. The web services link is particularly interesting.

   One reason behind my post comes from reports I have heard about the IBM sales teams telling end users that they should avoid Non-Lotus Notes enterprise blogging tools, such as iUpload, Blogtronix, and enterprise class wiki tools such as SocialText and Traction. Instead, these IBM's sales people are suggesting clumsy, ugly, difficult to use tools based hacked versions of the Lotus Notes client. Things might look better in 7, but the hacks on 6.5 are not pretty.

   These IBM sales teams then use the Microsoft tactic of spreading fear and doubt, by suggesting that if a company uses the new tools it would require multi-million dollar extractions of text based content.

   If I understand you correctly, and the new Notes Client is truly open, then the IBM sales team is full of it, and companies now have the all-clear to start using Web 2.0 / Enterprise 2.0 tools.

   BTW, to the folks who are upset with my post, I am not defending MSFT. Instead, I am interested in getting new web based applications into the enterprise. I do not believe in tightly coupling everything, and only going with one monolithic solution. Instead, systems should be standards compliant, and should play nicely with each other.

   When IBM's own sales people tell large clients that they MUST only use Lotus Notes for blog and wiki functionality, there is a real problem.

1. 19  Rod Boothby http://www.innovationcreators.com | 10/7/2006 12:12:48 PM

   Ed,

   BTW, I am not going to stop reading your site because I disagree with something that you wrote.

   Telling your readers to stop reading my site because you don't like what I wrote is a great way to halt the conversation, stick your head in the sand and ignore what your end users are saying.

   It is you blog. You are welcome to leave up anything you like. But, if you leave it up there, folks might believe that the Lotus Notes crew does not welcome any discussion and is not interested in what end users say.

   Personally, I would prefer to continue the dialog.

   - Rod

1. 20  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 10/7/2006 12:20:14 PM

   @15 - You're really showing how weak your grasp is of how .Net works: "For example, you can pick up a decent .Net application and run it on Windows or on a Mono based platform on Linux."

   You have to architect a .Net application with Mono and Linux in mind if you want it to be cross-platform. You cannot run or compile the average .Net app on Mono. For example, System.Windows.Forms doesn't exist on Mono, you have to use Gtk# or another UI library. System.Windows.Forms is distributed with the Microsoft .Net CLR, anything else is a separate install on Windows platforms and will not be widely used.

   Furthermore, Notes isn't at all incompatible. As Ed states, it has numerous hooks to expose its data. I've used C#, VB, and Ruby as front ends to Domino applications. The internal structure is necessarily proprietary, but even if it were possible to port the entire application, which it isn't, there really isn't any need to. There isn't any better construct for delivering the functionality Domino provides.

   Domino and Notes have their share of problems, and I'm extremely vocal about them. But it cannot be argued that there is any better solution for delivering collaborative workflow applications. Trying to do so is forcing a square peg into a round hole. I tried very very hard to do it and have resigned myself to this being the best there is and working within its confines.

1. 21  Mike Brown  | 10/7/2006 12:29:17 PM

   @19 Where did Ed tell people to stop reading your site? He does say it might be the last time that he reads it himself, but that's not the same thing as telling others not to.

   Good to see that you're now getting the paragraphs/sentences thing, by the way.

   Cheers,

   - Mike

1. 22  Rakesh Ranjan  | 10/7/2006 12:41:29 PM

   The Rod Boothby solution seems to workable if you ignore the fundamentals, I think what he missed that the business solution is different from each other and targets a different set of business requirements. The data can be migrated to but without building a new applications cost would be in addition to the data migration cost.

   I have better solution to migrate data create a view in database and export the data into excel file or something else using an agent. Even simpler read the view data with xml and pass it to some third party solution. But what about the business logic can we that be migrated with ease. I think the building the application on Lotus Notes/Domino is cheapest than any other comparable platform.

   Hahhhh, 99% of uses does not know that applications can be developed on Lotus Notes/Domino platform. A simple search on Google would reveal the truth. On second thought I must blame IBM for their ineffective promotion of LN platform. They should present it as serious application development platform not as legacy application carrier. I feel there is big ignorance about LN in world and a project should be taken to promote it effectively in non Lotus Users. LN lovers please excuse me as you always stood with LN in worst of time.

1. 23  Richard Schwartz http://www.rhs.com/poweroftheschwartz | 10/7/2006 12:50:26 PM

   @15: I think its a bit ironic that the software behind your blog, which I presume is a pure web 2.0 thing, just dropped a bunch of our comments into junk. The blog tools I use in Notes don't seem to have that problem ;-)

1. 24  Brett  | 10/7/2006 1:00:23 PM

   @18 - Rod, I think you will find that at many large organisations that use Notes/Domino the issue is not the IBM sales folks pushing an inappropriate technology but a tactical decision to focus early blogging efforts on an existing platform rather than bring in a new technology. If you already have plenty of Domino servers, with an approved and agreed security model, support model, support and operate processes this makes complete sense. Particularly where lines of business have little concrete idea how they would use blogging. If the lines of business were to find functionality that they absolutely require that does not exist in a Domino blogging solution then that should be addressed. And the requirement should then be weighed appropriately against the cost of brining in the new technology.

   Please don't tell us these other solutions are cheap either... the software license might be but cost to operate, cost to integrate etc. is not. And IT organisations operate under cost constraints imposed by the lines of business.

1. 25  Richard Schwartz http://www.rhs.com/poweroftheschwartz | 10/7/2006 1:12:12 PM

   @18: Rod -- If you're interested in getting new web-based applications into the enterprise, and you believe that everybody should "play nice", then have you considered that perhaps it should be the other way around, shouldn't it? I.e., that the onus is on those new web-based tools to play nice with Notes, which is already there in the enterprise? Instead of coming in and trying to replace Notes, how about complementing it and integrating with it? Surely that would provide tremendous value to the customer -- and you know what? IBM would be all in favor of it! They have a partner program and they'd welcome in anyone who wanted to do that.

   And if IBM sales teams point out to their customers that they already have bought and paid for Notes and Domino, and it can do everything that these new web-based tools can do (though not as elegantly), then perhaps you should consider that there's a legitimate question there: which solution does the job better, and in a more cost-effective way for the customer? I don't doubt that IBMers might cross over into FUDish territory, at least from your perspective, but as a response to that your post fails miserably because it fails to address the actual value of Notes and Domino, which goes far beyond its ability to serve as a repository for static text.

1. 26  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 10/7/2006 1:48:58 PM

   One reason behind my post comes from reports I have heard about the IBM sales teams telling end users that they should avoid Non-Lotus Notes enterprise blogging tools, such as iUpload, Blogtronix, and enterprise class wiki tools such as SocialText and Traction. Instead, these IBM's sales people are suggesting clumsy, ugly, difficult to use tools based hacked versions of the Lotus Notes client

   Whoo-hoo! My sales teams are doing their jobs! If you take out the judgement words like "hack" and "ugly" from Rod's comments, then it sounds like Lotus salespeople are doing exactly what @24 / @25 suggest -- helping customers leverage their existing investment in Notes/Domino and extending it to Web 2.0 concepts like blogs, wikis, RSS feeds. Why exactly should a company spend thousands of dollars on new infrastructure components when they already have a tool deployed throughout the enterprise that can do exactly the same job -- in some cases better than the point solutions? That was the whole idea behind "contextual collaboration" after all -- bring the tools to the user.

1. 27  Ben Poole http://benpoole.com | 10/7/2006 1:55:07 PM

   Just one (albeit tangential) question:

   Why is it Notes' fault that in 20-odd years no-one has come up with a platform that has it beat on all fronts? Why is it an issue with *Notes* that no-one can effectively migrate from it?

1. 28  Rod Boothby http://www.innovationcreators.com | 10/7/2006 2:29:33 PM

   Richard,

   I think Brett has just demonstrated how and why Lotus Notes teams are trying to prevent the adoption of new Enterprise 2.0 technology.

   It is amazing how, when business end users clearly say they want something, Lotus Notes advocates turn around and say things like "lines of business have little concrete idea how they would use blogging" and then refuse to give them new tools.

   Richard, you say that Notes and Domino can do everything that these new web-based tools can do (though not as elegantly).

   That usability issue is critical to end user participation in web based communication tools like blogs and wikis. The success of blogs and wikis, just like the success of the iPod, has a great deal to do with usability and simple end user appeal.

   Maybe I can ask this another way. If Lotus Notes is so powerful, why isn't it being used to run Blogger, Wikipedia, MySpace, TypePad, or Technorati? If Lotus Notes is so easy to work with, why has LinkedIn only made a plug-in for Outlook? The same goes for Attensa. I am not aware of a single Web 2.0 / Enterprise 2.0 application that has been built on top of Lotus Notes.

   However, it would be reasonable to say that Lotus Notes was not designed to power Wikipedia and the like. My questions do not prove that companies should dump Lotus Notes. Instead, it just shows that Lotus Notes is not the be all and end, and does not have to be the only tool that companies use.

   There is no question that Lotus Notes was comparatively very powerful in 1993, but does not prove that it should be the only platform that the enterprise should consider today.

   It is my belief that enterprise IT departments today should never adopt only one platform. Instead, they should adopt simple open standards, such as ATOM, HTML, encrypted LDAP, and SOAP. At that point, any new system should be welcome, as long as it conforms with those standards.

   IBM sales teams that keep saying Notes is all things to all people are inevitably going to get to a point where they are proven wrong.

1. 29  Villi Helgason  | 10/7/2006 2:32:40 PM

   There are easier ways to export data from Notes:

   1. Copy/Paste

   2. File export

   3. Lotus Script

   4. COM/OLE

   5. ODBC/JDBC

   6. Notes.jar

   "Exporting to Domino powered web pages", and then "scrape the screen", is probably the worst method humanly possible (well, apart from re-typing by hand).

   I also do not understand what exporting data has to do with migrating applications.

1. 30  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 10/7/2006 2:52:47 PM

   If Lotus Notes is so powerful, why isn't it being used to run Blogger, Wikipedia, MySpace, TypePad, or Technorati? If Lotus Notes is so easy to work with, why has LinkedIn only made a plug-in for Outlook? The same goes for Attensa. I am not aware of a single Web 2.0 / Enterprise 2.0 application that has been built on top of Lotus Notes.

   However, it would be reasonable to say that Lotus Notes was not designed to power Wikipedia and the like.

   ;Last I checked, the absence of something doesn't prove anything. Perhaps those firms started with technologies they knew about. Microsoft's Hotmail started out as a Unix system -- but MS was able to move it to Windows. The fact that Hotmail was on Unix didn't prove that it couldn't be done on Windows (though at the time, NT4 might not have cut the mustard. Doesn't matter now)

   Perhaps you should check out the thousands of companies running millions of enterprise-level applications on Notes. Some have tens of thousands of users. I bet even the "big four audit/consulting firm" that you work for has a few of these. You can visit { Link } for some good stories.

   I recently helped my girlfriend start a blog on Blogger.com. Compared to the tools available here on this Lotus Notes-based weblog, Blogger.com is crap! I can't even figure out how to put a static picture on the blog -- I had to modify the style sheet with an <img src> linked back to a different site's photo album capability. That doesn't sound very "web 2.0" to me.

   As I said in comments on your site, Rod, I'd like to see informed discussion of what Notes can or cannot do, not broad assertions (which, so far, haven't stood up in this discussion). I can almost guarantee that Notes can do what you need, integrate with what you want (all those acronyms are supported in Notes/Domino), and even show a little innovation in the process. If it couldn't, I doubt it would still be here.

1. 31  Richard Schwartz http://www.rhs.com/poweroftheschwartz | 10/7/2006 3:02:38 PM

   @28: Why has LinkedIn not produced a Notes plugin? Because they're ignorant, I guess, of the fact that there are 120+ million Notes users out there, and ignorant of the opportunity that that represents. That's the only reason I can figure, becuase, Rod, it would be no more difficult for an expert Notes API programmer to build that interface than it would be for an expert Windows programmer to buld the Outlook plugin. Integrating web applications -- or any other applications -- with Notes is not rocket science. Technical complexity is absolutely no excuse for LinkedIn or anyone else who ignores the Notes environment and fails to integrate with it. Any web 2.0 operation with designs on the enterprise that doesn't look at the Lotus portion of the market and figure out that it would be a good thing to integrate with it is shooting themselves in the foot.

   As a matter of fact, I've worked on a plugin for another web-based application myself. The company that hired me to work on it might not be considered web 2.0 but, they offer a very successful web-based service in their particular niche, and their plugin synchronizes calendar and contact data from their sites to any end user's Notes client. That sounds pretty much right along the lines of what I'd expect a LinkedIn plugin to do. It's just C++ code that uses the Notes API, and it shares gobs of code with their plugin for Outlook. To an end user, there is no difference in experience, either. Outlook users and Notes users interact with the site in exactly the same way, and they get exactly the same data and capabilities.

1. 32  Brett  | 10/7/2006 4:42:07 PM

   @28

   I think Brett has just demonstrated how and why Lotus Notes teams are trying to prevent the adoption of new Enterprise 2.0 technology.

   There is difference between trying to prevent the adoption of new Enterprise 2.0 technologies and being an irresponsible custodian of enterprise IT. Bringinng in new technologies (Web 2.0 or other) without sufficient justification is irresponsible particularly where an overlap would be created. The owners of the organisation (shareholders, partners etc) would not look kindly on such an approach. Nor would the average end-user who has never heard of Web 2.0 or Enterprise 2.0 much less tried to create a mashup. As I said... if the business case can be made then the technology should be implemented. Making the business case means taking time to understand what the real choices are.

1. 33  David Bell  | 10/7/2006 9:35:45 PM

1. 34  David Bell  | 10/7/2006 9:58:39 PM

   @18

   "One reason behind my post comes from reports I have heard about the IBM sales teams telling end users that they should avoid Non-Lotus Notes enterprise blogging tools, such as iUpload, Blogtronix, and enterprise class wiki tools such as SocialText and Traction."

   Reports from who ?

   IBM sales people do not sell to end users. They specifically have relationships at senior management levels of an organization where the decision making process needs to consider "enterprise" requirements and implications. Any user can say "hey, let's start using application X" without any regard for where it comes from, how it is supported, or how much it will cost to implement. The types of discussions between IBM sales and their customers are just a little more serious. IBM does not cater to a consumer market and likewise, will advise customers on technologies that are and are not appropriate for their requirements.

   "Instead, these IBM's sales people are suggesting clumsy, ugly, difficult to use tools based hacked versions of the Lotus Notes client. Things might look better in 7, but the hacks on 6.5 are not pretty."

   Notes / Domino has a history of embracing standards. Did you stop to consider that IBM may well be educating customers about how their investment can be leveraged because of the embracing of new standards? To improve the understanding of the product by the user / customer since so many of them don't understand it (your words not mine).

   Any Domino application could produce RSS feeds long before now, since it's only the construction of XML content over HTML and Domino apps have been accessible over http since about 1995-6. ND 7.0.2 makes that a whole lot easier by adding in an RSS generator tool to make life easier for the developer.

   "These IBM sales teams then use the Microsoft tactic of spreading fear and doubt, by suggesting that if a company uses the new tools it would require multi-million dollar extractions of text based content."

   When a customer partners with IBM they expect to be guided in making good choices about their IT investments. Even the most basic of Notes application have some business logic associated with them.

   The reason it is hard to migrate from Notes is not data extraction, like others have said, but providing all of the services and capabilities it brings as an application platform in anything that is close to comparable for anything like a reasonable cost.

   "When IBM's own sales people tell large clients that they MUST only use Lotus Notes for blog and wiki functionality, there is a real problem."

   That is a bold statement. Do you honestly think customers would just blindly accept this ? Who is feeding you this ?

1. 35  David Bell  | 10/8/2006 1:52:25 PM

   @34 - correction - that should be "XML content over http"

1. 36  Keith Brooks http://kbmsg.blogspot.com | 10/8/2006 9:39:37 PM

   Rod,

   The bottom line is sales people sell. IBM's sales reps don't just sell Lotus, they also sell Microsoft(a point which most of us abhor, but understand at a business level), SAP..

   But more importantly they offer solutions which are supposed to be or should be matched up against the current IT infrastrcuture of the client so as not to create more disparity from within but more homogeny for future solutions.

   In a perfect world you might be right but oh is this one far from perfect.