Ed Brill

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1. 1  Janez  | 6/15/2010 7:11:48 AM

   On XPages, Eclipse, Composite Apps,...

   You're more than right in noticing that these are seemingly not getting enough attention.

   Personally I find everything new in 8+ half-baked and inconsistent with everything else (existing or new). The deeper you dig the worst the inconsistencies get. The editors are half-way there, the APIs are half-way there, the LotusScript is half-way there, the dev tools are half-way there (NEW LS editor is so 90's)...

   It's really annoying that I can do 20% of stuff done in one language/environment, 20% in other, etc. and to top it off the stuff covered in all environments just won't work the same.

   Basically working with LND feels like driving a "One Piece At A Time" Cadillac ({ Link }

   And I'm not a bittered vet. I'm 27 years old, working on LND for 4 years. And I have to tell you that MS is treating developers much, much, much better.

   I understand that initially Notes was not meant to be a "full blown" application development environment. That it was supposed to enable "users" to hack together their own apps. But nowadays - its waaay too complex for them. And "real developers" just won't bother with it anymore - because there are too many better options out there.

1. 2  chris  | 6/15/2010 7:14:27 AM

   better one good product than 10 noraml Product.

   connection, live, sametime ,quickR usw

1. 3  chris  | 6/15/2010 7:14:27 AM

   better one good product than 10 noraml Product.

   connection, live, sametime ,quickR usw

1. 4  Karl-Henry Martinsson http://www.texasswede.com | 6/15/2010 7:44:27 AM

   The way I see it, there are two ways a software or hardware product gets into an organisation/company.

   1) Directive from the CEO/owner.

   2) "Guerrilla warfare" from the users.

   Let me give some examples of each.

   The former owner of the company where I work loves Notes. He does not know about the technology, he just love having all the info at his fingertips/on his desk. The other system we use (written in Visual FoxPro) only give him printed reports once a month, or in best case once a week. He want constant info, and with Notes he could get that.

   When he left the company last year, he started another company. Most of the employees were used to Outlook/Exchange, and would have preferred that, but he said they were going to use Notes, end of discussion. Imagine if he would have been a Microsoft convert?

   Another example with the same former owner: he went to school to get his MBA. One of his classmates told him about this document imaging system, especially made for the insurance industry, that they used at his company. A couple of days later, with no comparative analysis or anything, the IT department was ordered to buy and implement that system.

   Now to an example for users pushing new technology. I am just saying one word: iPhone.

   Users bring in new technology or a new program, other users see it and want the same shiny cool toy, or the same powerful functionality. See my old blog entry here: { Link }

   But in most cases it is just a matter of something nice and shiny. Users want things that look good. That is why people prefer Gmail before Notes.

   So what can IBM do? Market to developers. Market to consultants. Show the apps. "Yes, Notes can do that." "There is an application for that."

   Ed, you ask how come Ruby on Rails are so popular with no marketing budget. Next time you are at Barnes and Nobles, count the number of books about Ruby on Rails, and then count the number of books on development in Notes 7.0 and higher. Put them in two stacks and ask any passer by which product they thing is the best, or which one is thriving and which one is dying.

   I am not saying that is the case, but it is all about perception. If people THINK a product is not relevant, being developed further or is in use in the market, they will not buy it/use it.

1. 5  Lisa Duke http://www.simplified-tech.com | 6/15/2010 7:46:11 AM

   Ed, I'm not a developer either, and so I couldn't tell you how to motivate them. I'm glad that the question is being asked.

   I can tell you they don't care about money, but do like the electronics that money can buy. They want their skills to stay relevant, but are always looking for the shiny next new thing. I live with one, and I don't get it, but it can be done. I'd definitely look at what the competition is doing and where the "on ramp" is for Lotus in terms of training, boot camps, and university support.

   I can tell you how to motivate the sellers in the community. We need a lot more recognition. Most of the people who are influential in the community have given up on submitting their companies for awards, as the awards consistently go to Portal partners, ISVs, and even IBMers. I'm fine with IBMers getting awards from IBM, but they should be internal, and they should not be in competition with customers and partners. There is no reward for winbacks, for keeping clients happy, for organizing a nationwide Lotus User Group, or for being an evangelist. Maybe there should be.

1. 6  Volker Weber http://vowe.net/about | 6/15/2010 7:49:48 AM

   Does the Domino Server register as a viable application development platform within IBM, outside of Lotus? If it does, can you point out some places on the IBM website that say so?

1. 7  Stuart McIntyre http://blog.collaborationmatters.com | 6/15/2010 7:53:40 AM

   Nice post Ed, thanks for reading and listening to the community. I'd love to see similar posts from others at the higher levels in Lotus and SWG as to how they perceive the issue (and Domino's status as an application development environment) too.

1. 8  Warren Elsmore http://www.elsmore.net | 6/15/2010 7:56:33 AM

   Again, I'm no developer, but putting 'getting into schools' to one side is overlooking a huge area.

   I mentioned this back when Designer went free - { Link } - the reason LAMP and J2EE are so prevalent is that every Computing student can get it for free - AND - is taught how to use it.

   No training = Few developers = High Dev costs = Less competitive platform = No license sales

   As an Admin I care about NSF, Lotuscript, Forumla language, Java, etc etc. *Any* Notes client dev is good. Teach students the power of the integrated platform and the lower cost to market of Notes regardless of language.

   BTW, infrastructure work is still ticking along quite happily!

1. 9  Steven Kennett  | 6/15/2010 8:02:02 AM

   I'm currently on the lookout for a new Domino Administrator position and nearly all the positions that are coming up for Lotus in the UK are 'notes developers', so there are either a shortage of notes developers or more companies are investing in notes applications!

   About a year ago we had a discussion about Oxford University and their choice to go to Exchange. Granted they had all different systems installed but the central administration (1000 users) were on Notes. After a complete evaluation they decided to go with Exchange for the whole University which I believe is tens of thousands of users. My question is was enough done to try and win this, was enough done post loss to ascertain why it was lost and what could be done better next time. With an account like that I would have said to the CEO, tell me what you want in order for you to use Notes and we'll make it happen, because that is the type of account that has to be won !

1. 10  ed brill http://www.edbrill.com | 6/15/2010 8:03:23 AM
   
   

   Warren, those three are to the side because they have been discussed enough and the ball is in IBM's court.

   Stuart, I believe the marketing team is asking some other execs to offer perspectives here.

   Volker, this is a fair challenge. I will work on it when I am with Mr. Mills and Mr. Rhodin tomorrow :-)

1. 11  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 6/15/2010 8:03:50 AM

   "Thing is, other than that brief blip in 1999 around R5, Notes and Domino have never been marketed at the level the community has asked for, yet again, we've sold hundreds of millions of licenses, grown the business, and seen new adoption in tens of thousands of customers in the last three years."

   Ed, there's something disingenuous about this line. First, if memory serves, nobody really talked much about Lotus marketing in the R5 era other than to say 'the Dennis Leary commercials were better than the I Am commercials.' I'm also pretty confident that R5 and R6 was about the time that the license numbers started climbing into global relevancy. (Customers bought R6 on the strength of R5 brand awareness; awareness doesn't just fall off a cliff when you stop buying advertising.)

   Saying you've grown the market and had adoption in new customers is empty without comparing that growth to market averages and comparing that new adoption to losses. If you grew at 10%, and the market grew at 20%, then you lost. If you had 10,000 new customers buy Notes, but had 12,000 customers migrate off, then you lost. Positioning only the upside of the numbers is a politician's trick. And I'm not even close to the first person to point this out.

   You want people to not harp on marketing, but you provide a better reason to do so than I've ever read anywhere in the last ten years: "...an IBM rep who gets to meet with a CIO, CFO, or CEO has a hundred different product lines to cover, including hardware, software, consulting, and services..."

   EXACTLY 100% SPOT ON.

   And therefore, if you want YOUR line of business to succeed, the only way it's going to happen is if the CIO, CFO or CEO is ASKING about the Notes & Domino products. If it's a competition for attention from the sales rep, then the best way you'll get that attention is if the customer is asking, not by convincing the rep to push. Has any IBM rep *ever* heard from a C-level exec "I hear that Domino is doing great new things for developers. How can I leverage that?"

   How do you change the Notes/Domino app dev game? Create a bigger market for it. Ways to do this include substantially growing the visible number of seats on the platform (by triple-digits, not double), making it easier for an ISV who wants to use Domino as a platform to do it with much more flexible ASL pricing, generating demand among top customers for solutions built specifically on the Domino platform, and lowering transaction costs by providing the monetary conduit between developers and customers. That's off the top of my head. And every one of these things is within your reach and has been requested by your audience on multiple occasions.

   The other big problem for developers -- and this is secondary to their perception of the market -- is a credibility gap. The app dev story for Domino is a mess. It's "everything including the kitchen sink" with no clear *strategy* as such. You haven't provided an escape route from Lotusscript; you haven't committed fully to a language or single API; hell, you haven't even officially deprecated Layout Regions! When you expand out to the larger world of the whole Lotus line, the situation isn't much better. Sametime has a fairly mature and coherent development strategy, but Connections is limited and hard to work with (no forward compatibility for customizations, for instance), and LotusLive hasn't even announced a release date for an integration API. You need someone with real power and hands-on experience to hack through the jungle of tools and languages and say "this is how you're going to develop on these platforms in a future-proof way for the next 6 years. These are the techniques that are being sunsetted." Then you need to enforce the use of that technology on the platforms themselves, so that, for instance, the Notes/Domino calendaring and scheduling simply CAN'T be written in a combination of Lotusscript on the client and C++ on the server, but instead has a coherent high-level API in whatever standard you pick, and that's how everyone works with it including the internal developers. Period.

   When you put the needs of your partner, ISV and customer developers on par with the needs of your internal product developers, you'll start to get back some credibility.

   But again, all the technology considerations are secondary to the perception of market opportunity. You already have a passionate, knowledgeable, hard-working development community. It's just that fewer and fewer of us think we can make a living at it. When codeslingers see products for the iPhone or VMforce or GWT selling like wildfire -- and have the perception that they can make millions off a good idea, three weeks of work and a hosted box at Rackspace -- you're not going to keep them on Notes & Domino. Not without an extremely compelling story about easy money. It doesn't matter how good the technology story is.

   (Wondering if I'll still be the first comment when I click 'Post' an hour after I started.)

1. 12  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 6/15/2010 8:06:41 AM

   lol. Guess I was way off from the first. :-)

1. 13  Richard Shergold  | 6/15/2010 8:10:31 AM

   Good response Ed and I hope you get a lot of feedback. As I said in response to John's blog, I think so much of this is branding and perception i.e "Lotus Notes" being perceived as a legacy platform. There's very little you can do to combat that attitude. It really doesn't matter that with Sharepoint you need treble the servers and treble the development effort - if Notes is seen as legacy, that's the way they see it. I think it should probably have been re-named and re-branded a few years ago.

1. 14  Steve  | 6/15/2010 8:17:10 AM

   I think Karl (#4) hits on the good point with his book store example. I think in the same vane is the Domino Power Editorial ({ Link }

   A log of it is perception in the market though the media available and search results. Get your product looking favorable there and the perception changes (even if the product doesn't).

   As a developer in Notes and Domino, it has become a very hard sell to get management to use these tools over others. Even if it could be done faster and better in Notes or in XPages, the work still is being done with the other tools.

1. 15  Sam Bridegroom http://www.bridegroomtech.com | 6/15/2010 8:21:14 AM

   I am a developer, and I can't begin to count the hours spent educating and enlightening my existing customers on what they already own - because frankly they have no idea what the capabilities are of the tools they've already paid for and installed. When I demonstrate some of the possibilities, the answer is almost always "I didn't know we could do that". That answer is coming from the very executives that are hearing the pitches from everyone else. So the statement that the marketing script is a little full certainly holds water, because the attention span for that group is not very long.

   To say that this is a marketing failure by IBM is not entirely accurate, because for as many unaware execs as might exist, there are probably just as many Notes/Domino staff members who are equally unaware of vast possibilities and capabilities of the tools. Unfortunately, they're too swamped to keep up with all of the new stuff - not realizing that the new stuff may help them dig out.

   The fact that there is so much out there (blogs, openNTF, etc.) is great, but the execs don't see that. We, the developers, see that. What the execs see is what's presented to them. I've done one-hour presentations on the theme of "Did you know Notes does this?", and the feedback has consistently been positive.

   This is a true example: My customer asks what things they need to acquire/install to address a business issue involving access to data stored in multiple platforms, yet deliver it to a browser (and Notes client would be a plus). My answer was "nothing, you already own everything you need." Thirty hours later a working prototype. That's what gets their attention.

   I know this sounds fundamental, but that's what seems to be missing - a fundamental understanding that it's so much more than email.

1. 16  Ben Rose http://www.jaffacake.net | 6/15/2010 8:23:41 AM

   @9 Stephen,

   Have you considered learning more dev?

   When the Global recession came and all our (perhaps overpriced) contractors were shown the door, I had nobody to fall back on and so decided to develop my own knowledge and have gone from a very basic, form/view/@function knowledge to being reasonably proficient in Lotusscript.

   End result is that now my time is 90% occupied in dev work and a whole new job market has opened up for me.

   Food for thought?

1. 17  Janez  | 6/15/2010 8:24:36 AM

   Nathan +1

   IBM - Hire Nathan and give him a broad enough mandate to straighten things out :)

1. 18  Ben Poole http://benpoole.com | 6/15/2010 8:34:20 AM

   @16 on the other hand, if ever there was a reason for the Domino app. dev. "credibility gap", it's the amount of bodged code and day-glo user interfaces (Comic Sans and all) which have made it into production environments...

1. 19  Mike McP  | 6/15/2010 8:36:49 AM

   To counter Sharepoint, develop more NOTES apps that you can roll out as 'free' OUT OF THE BOX, and advertise them. The openNTF contributions are much appreciated, but how many people who aren't reading this blog know about them? If I ask a MS salesman what apps I get with Sharepoint and I ask an IBM rep what comes with Notes, who do you think will had a stronger case.

   Customers are probably as confused as me with Foundations, Connections, Quickplace, Quikr, etc. Stop bundling Notes technology into bastard apps and labeling them with new names. Make a decent QuickR based solely on an NSF, and bundle it free as a template, with NO upgrade path to another version of Quickr. Tell the customer, "Here, you get the best, this is our Sharepoint and it comes with Notes", and rely on your Notes sales to bring in your revenue stream. Stop trying to up-sell to other IBM product lines. This will also help you with the Sharepoint Portal v Services battle.

   I think Sharepoint Marketing is probably the largest overall source of pain in Lotus. IBM simply had nothing to really complete against Sharepoint Services in a Notes LS shop, and once a company invests in that, they're naturally going to move to asp.net development in order to tweak that platform.

   The get to the C-level employees and in schools are two other biggies, but you covered them.

1. 20  Djilali  | 6/15/2010 8:39:04 AM

   Don't know where to start: didn't want to add my voice to Jake post and comments but you've asked for it so here it is.

   Started 13 years ago as a Lotus Notes developer, then admin, consultant and architect, all the way from R4.5 to R8.

   Built a business on top of my knowledge of the platform.

   Loved the RAD philosophy behind the product, fought my way between views, agents, html rendering, java and performance issues.

   Used DECS, DIIOP(Corba), Garnet(sniff...) everything the Domino toolbox offered.

   Jumped in the XML bandwagon as I saw it as an opportunity to "standardize" my dev and hide the complexity to manage web projects.

   The biggest issue was too many doors left opened to inexperienced people pissed of long term clients who viewed the platform as a burden: we could fill codinghorror.com with crappy apps and crazy architecture choices.

   The last 5 years (before dropping the platform) were spent fixing the previous developers and consultants mistakes for my clients.

   IBM/Lotus should have simplified the server (services, management), trimmed down the client and sticked to one language

   only: a slick Eclipse client with a revised java API was the only thing we need to keep on delivering value, efficiency and maintainable applications. That's what clients were asking.

   Perpetual backward compatibility comes with a price.

   I'm sad to see people getting excited by NOSQL storage systems when we were doing that 10 years ago...

   There's (IMO) a big demand for Enterprise CMS and collaboration solution that Domino could have fulfilled with the right architecture and strategy choices.

   Do I have some practical advice to deliver: no.

   So here is a not practical one: rewrite the core Domino engine to provide document storage/search/workflow and web services, keep DAOS (best thing since replication), drop the backward compatibility, give hookups for extensibility (web, directory, messaging, ...) and opensource the full stack.

   License the core engine, market it a truly open standard collaboration platform and work on helping valuable clients migrate or rewrite their apps smoothly.

   If you can't keep the developers around, I can't see the product surviving 5 more years. Google and Apple know that.

   Sorry for my bad English.

1. 21  Steven Kennett  | 6/15/2010 8:49:10 AM

   @16 Yes I have, I missed the boat on dev a number of years ago I started to learn dev and got pretty good at the formula side of coding, just as I was going to learn script everything changed. A couple of years later and I am back in the Domino arena in Admin. Whilst I like some of the development side (the little I can remember), I don't see myself as a true developer.

   { Link }

1. 22  Paul Mooney http://www.pmooney.net | 6/15/2010 8:49:17 AM

   Thanks for responding Ed.

   Business for us is still just fine (thankfully) but the yellowverse feels like it is on a loop. So I will try not to use the word "marketing" in my response, even though that is the essence of the problem.

   In my very humble opinion, IBM need to decide what they want to market Lotus Notes as. Not Lotus Connections or anything else in the Lotus range. Notes/Domino.

   What is it? Is it a messaging product, a collaboration product? A rapid application tool? Competition to Websphere? Competition to Sharepoint?

   The reality is that the potential return on investment for Lotus Notes is so immense, maybe IBM (not Lotus staff) don't like it for that very reason. It's fair to say that a couple of Domino servers and a developer can create solutions that will cover every faucet of their business. Maybe IBM see that as a loss of potential revenue.

   Could Lotus run a "product awareness" drive that says "Lotus Notes gives you full messaging, security and the ability to create your own business solutions at 10th the cost of the competitive products"? Would that make it past the gate internally in IBM when some exec from Websphere or DB2 screams "No f&*king way". Because there looks to me to be as much competition inside IBM as there is outside it.

   Lotus Notes is such a versatile product that its a bitch to market. It is not a hammer for a nail. It is not an Apple product. It is a full business solution in one piece of software.

   Walk into a college with some 2 year IT students. Show Lotus notes for messaging and they may giggle as its not facebook/gmail. Show them a workflow application that was designed and delivered in a day. They make take interest. Show them how to do it, they may start to look.

   Then tell them they can have it for free. And so can the college, to develop whatever systems they want. Oh, and here it is on Linux and a Mac.

   Let say 10% of them "get it". It's still a large number.

   Onto the workplace (excuse the pun). The business decides the product. They are sometimes lead by the research firms. For the record I hold none of them in any esteem. But execs do.

   You need to get them to like using Lotus Notes. They will like it if its cool. It's cool if college kids use it and talk about it (Mind you I think the research companies just follow the "cool wall" in their results too).

   It's also cool if it has 50 applications that install out of the box. Not just the basic templates. Another "nifty fifty". Why? Because most of the developers I know have never heard of openntf until I show them. And they then don't want to know. If the template comes out of the install, they may pay attention to it.

   Aside from Apple kit, I have never seen such emotional attachments to a piece of software before. And I know why. It's because the people that get it, love it. They know that it can do more then everything else at 10th the cost. They also feel like it is being strangled by the very company that saved it.

   TV adds and kids Ed. On screen, in colleges.

   Lotus Notes - All your business solutions. Everything you need. Simple, secure, dynamic.

   You could start by inviting colleges in regional areas to User group events. I will happily reserve 60 seats at ILUG for colleges. More if we could get numbers interested.

   Anyway - it's a testament to you that you responded to the posts by bloggers. I couldn't imagine the higher powers in IBM bothering.

1. 23  Charles Robinson http://www.cubert.net | 6/15/2010 8:49:44 AM

   As a developer the issue for me is the nuts and bolts. The raft of things that are "broken as designed", poorly implemented or unfinished. There is also a general level of flakiness with Notes and Domino that most developers take in stride, but it eventually wore me down.

   For years developers have begged you to fix the broken stuff before you add new stuff. It's fallen on deaf ears. With that as a backdrop it is understandable to me that Notes developers are scared witless at what is happening with Domino Designer. To be blunt, a company with a history of butchering little things is doing big things and it's not been pretty so far.

1. 24  Sean Cull http://www.seancull.co.uk | 6/15/2010 8:53:48 AM

   @18 Ben, I know where you are coming from but Amateur Developers generate tremendous business value in the right setting.

   For me the trick is to bundle some really good apps with Lotus that show how high the bar can be - then you can have the best of both worlds.

1. 25  Ben Poole http://benpoole.com | 6/15/2010 8:58:19 AM

   @24 Sean, agreed. As a Domino developer in the old days, I came from the "business" rather than from the IT side myself.

   But rightly or wrongly, i think Domino has moved on from the "power user" development model in most organisations nowadays. And for those still running with hybrid dev / admin people, I've seen some "issues" to put it politely :-)

1. 26  bu11frogg http://twitter.com/bu11frogg | 6/15/2010 8:58:59 AM

   I'm no developer, just an admin who inherited LND and fell in love with it.

   I'm glad to hear the fighting words, Ed! Notes/Domino is a very viable and current platform, what with iPhone support and XPages and all that. The main issue is that it's not made clear to decision-makers at the business level.

   We stopped Domino development a few years ago, and sent the developers off to .NET training camp. I don't see that they're any more productive; in fact, it seems like it takes them longer to write and update those apps. But that's not the point.

   Why did it happen? Why .NET? Did Domino or Notes fail us, and prompt us to make a change?

   Primarily, we did not see or hear from Lotus for nearly 6 years. The Domino platform was managed by a Notes developer, and when I came on board I saw the amazing value of Notes...even though the environment was a few years behind. I pushed to introduce calendaring, upgrade the servers, clients, and turn on new capabilities. If I could figure out the ROI for all the value-added features (and lack of security issues), it would be huge.

   We have Notes apps from the late 1990s that have not been touched since they were written. That's at least four versions of Notes clients, servers and Windows OS'. Talk about ROI!

   I doubt .NET will be able to do the same over the next 14 years.

   But when we were looking at .NET, we didn't have anyone to offer a counterpoint. The only time we heard from Lotus or IBM was for the annual support fee.

   I know Lotus has changed a lot in the last few years. I love following you guys on Twitter; there's a lot of openness that I find helpful. It's like we're on the same team! Our reps have been stellar. We've jumped onto Quickr and soon will be on Sametime. Support has ramped up and is amazing. The new Designer is overlooked, I think...I'm no developer, but I've written a few Notes apps easily enough. People generally love the new GUI for mail/calendar/contacts, and iPhone support came as a shock to the executives who ask me at least a few times every year, "so, when are we getting Outlook?"

   I know it's not perfect (users still whine about performance, the installation packages are pretty massive, and some features do feel like afterthoughts), but Notes/Domino has been highly functional and provided us with a high level of value for many years.

   Keep it up!

1. 27  Peter Presnell http://www.yellowverse.com | 6/15/2010 9:02:30 AM

   Hi Ed,

   First let me thank you and all the other many great people at IBM who obviously bleed yellow as much as the Lotus Notes community. Thanks for reminding us of the many great things you and your team have, and continue to do, for the product.

   I feel IBM has done a pretty good job at communicating what Lotus stands for as a messaging and collaborative product. What I don't understand is what IBM's strategy is for Lotus Notes as an application development platform. And I have been searching high and low to find that answer. I see the technologies being promoted such as XPages etc. But they are tactical responses to a strategy that remains unclear. Is it still about simplicity and Rapid Application Development as I perceive it was when I first got into Notes. If so, I never see numbers that make a clear case for how much faster/cheaper it is to develop (and support) applications developed with Lotus Notes. If it is that, then have we looked closely at all the recent initiatives added since Notes 6 and asked the question -- In what way does adding ABC continue to make Notes development simple and RAD?

   If on the other hand we are attempting to give away a some of the simplicity/RAD to make Notes development a more mature full-blown Web development platform.. Do we have in place the many tools and capabilities that modern Web developers expect? Do I have a class editor for programming languages such as SSJS that support OOP? Do I have a debugger for my software? Do I have a unit test framework? Do I have access to modern Web controls? Can I integrate my development process with analysis and testing tools such as Rational? If I don't, how do I expect to win over new converts?

   I never know how to judge the evolving Notes application development platform because I am forever confused about what IBM is trying to do with it. There was once a time where Lotus Notes stood for Collaboration. But now that is Connections or Quickplace or LotusLive or ....

   I think part of the struggle for Lotus Notes as an AD environment is that most people simply don't know which quadrant to place it in. I have seen the MS FUD first hand and know that they are telling companies to take Notes off their own quadrants because "IBM have no long term strategy for Lotus Notes as AD". I also think that you may be right that IBM has so many messages to sell to CxOs that by the time they work their way down the list to Lotus there is only enough time to mention messaging and collaboration. That little is ever said about lowering cost through RAD. Even at a full week of Lotusphere I rarely heard that message.

   ps: If somebody is making false claims about products they should be called out for it just as loudly. Sometimes when lies are repeated often enough they become "truths" that are then quoted as facts.

1. 28  Mark Hughes http://hughesconnect.com | 6/15/2010 9:04:06 AM

   @22 Paul that was a great comment.

   We should also let people know that Email, Calendar, and Scheduling are just APPS running in Lotus Notes that are included at no additional charge.

   Maybe that would put the product in perspective about what it really is, a platform, not an email client.

1. 29  Richard Shergold  | 6/15/2010 9:06:28 AM

   "Could Lotus run a "product awareness" drive that says "Lotus Notes gives you full messaging, security and the ability to create your own business solutions at 10th the cost of the competitive products"? Would that make it past the gate internally in IBM when some exec from Websphere or DB2 screams "No f&*king way". Because there looks to me to be as much competition inside IBM as there is outside it."

   @22 - Paul I think that's a great point.

1. 30  tom oneil  | 6/15/2010 9:10:59 AM

   I get why companies use Sharepoint as the "straw that breaks the camel's back" to switch to Microsoft tools.

   Microsoft steps in and gives groups a Sharepoint server. It works great for file-sharing and people immediately understand it. The people that used to store their files on shared drives start flocking to Sharepoint. (Interestingly enough, we had maybe 2% of our Teamroom people convert to Sharepoint)

   Those that flocked to Sharepoint start using it for other functionality. It's clunky... but so far they like it.

   IBM comes to our company and tries to push Quickr (nee Quickplace). We get a server installed, we're trying to get people to use it... but they don't understand it. They almost hate it. Understandably, considering it's a ten year old product.

   Oh... by the way... since we're a "IBM shop" (according to a recent news article), Quickr is being dubbed the new standard.

   So... now people internally hate Lotus. I mean "hate." I have to work to convince people that I'm not part of the Quickr team. I create Lotus Notes applications... I have to work extra hard to convince these people that I can provide value.

   It certainly doesn't help that admin/security has implemented a ban against saving Sametime chat history. Lotus had nothing to do with that but it rendered an awesome product almost useless. (Does Notesbuddy still work?)

   So now we have more internal people than ever wishing this Lotus (insert product name here) would just go away.

   In 2008-2009 I was riding high on Domino. Things were going great, my applications won awards, and I was being commended. Now, my first response in a meeting is "No, I don't work with Quickr."

   All of these new products are a stress on me (development) and my admin cohorts. IBM would have been smarter to at least consider better integration with Sharepoint many years ago. But then again... asking IBM to provide import/export to Microsoft Excel in Lotus Notes took FOREVER.

1. 31  Timothy Briley  | 6/15/2010 9:20:38 AM

   Ed,

   It appears to me that quite a bit of the unease in the Notes dev community comes from the Notes job market. Note that I didn't write "the job market", I wrote "the Notes job market".

   In the past year or so, I've seen some rather high profile guys in the Notes dev world, names that most readers of this blog would recognize, either move to other technologies in order to keep their job/customers or keep from having to relocate, or really having to scramble hard to find another Notes job.

   So while there might be more Notes/Domino licenses out there than ever before, it appears that there are fewer Notes/Domino dev jobs out there right now. Fix that (I have no idea how) and a lot of the angst in the community should go away.

1. 32  Bruce Mackenzie  | 6/15/2010 9:20:42 AM

   I'm a developer. I've been working with Notes for about 6 years since I got out of university.

   The biggest problem I have with Notes app dev is that there are virtually no features that "just work" as expected 100% of the time. The result is that to be a successful Notes developer, you need to learn all of the "gotchas" and how to work around them. When I was less experienced, I probably spent about 10% of my time developing and 90% of my time figuring out why my code didn't work and figuring out how I could work around the limitations set by Notes. With experience that has shifted somewhat, but I've seen other developers just give up instead of trying to learn all of the quirks.

   Development into Notes from IBM's side seems almost solely focussed on new features. For R8 it was composite applications, for 8.5 it's XPages. The improvements to legacy stuff have basically just been things IBM needed to fix to get the mail templates to work properly. This is a shame, as there are many areas of "classic" Notes that could really use polishing up.

   I tried developing for composite apps when R8 came out, and quickly found it to be much too limited to do anything useful. It was a never-ending process of "I'd like to do this. Oh, I can't. Maybe I can do it like this. No, I can't do that either." etc. Many of these things were improved for 8.5 but at this point it seems like composite applications have very little traction in the community, and everyone has jumped to XPages instead.

   To top it all off, Designer is not a very good development environment. For classic Notes app dev, I still use the 8.0.2 designer because Designer in Eclipse is slow and buggy. The new LS editor is a bit of a wash for me - it has some nice features but not enough to outweigh the performance drawbacks for me yet, plus it is still buggy in some respects. The form and view editors are just the classic editors packaged in Eclipse anyway, so there are no advantages there.

   So I guess my suggestion is this: invest more time perfecting the features we've got before rushing to new features. If XPages is going to be the preferred framework going forward, make sure everything works as advertised and try to avoid forcing developers to jump through too many hoops to get things to work.

   - Bruce

1. 33  Ben Rose http://www.jaffacake.net | 6/15/2010 9:21:27 AM

   @25 - There are good and bad examples of every model and just because something doesn't work in one firm, it doesn't mean it will necessarily fail in all scenarios.

   We're quite the experts at hybrid here.

1. 34  Paul Mooney http://www.pmooney.net | 6/15/2010 9:22:48 AM

   @28 - thank you but I disagree with your point about mail etc as apps.

   Keep it simple. Its a mail product that is also an application product.

   People understand email - people may not understand "application server that has an email application"

   Just my 2c and sorry about some of the spelling in my earlier post (I have a day job so typing quickly!)

1. 35  Paul Mooney http://www.pmooney.net | 6/15/2010 9:22:49 AM

   @28 - thank you but I disagree with your point about mail etc as apps.

   Keep it simple. Its a mail product that is also an application product.

   People understand email - people may not understand "application server that has an email application"

   Just my 2c and sorry about some of the spelling in my earlier post (I have a day job so typing quickly!)

1. 36  Michael Kobrowski  | 6/15/2010 9:26:22 AM

   +1 @22 - great points Paul

   I am not a developer, I did some here and there, and 1 almost a full year of Notes development (and dev work makes my head hurt ;-)

   I think including app templates in the install is a great idea. At least include links to the openntf and make it more user friendly. And or the Solutions Catalog.

   I also have to agree with VoWe. It is really hard to find any references to Lotus on IBM website by just clicking through it. If you go by solutions, categories, industries it is hard to spot.

   I clicked through this page:

   { Link }

   Products by Category

   Distributed Application & Web Servers

   No Domino.

   I also agree with the comments that maybe upselling technologies like Connections/Quickr/Sametime is a problem. Does Google do that? Or do they give their business customers everything and the kitchen sink?

   Besides college students I think also private home customers and small businesses should be targeted. (Ed didn't say we couldn't talk about the free Notes for Home users plea/suggestion).

   And of course, give it away free or VERY discounted to non-for-profit organizations, colleges and universities (if you don't want to give it away for free/low to for-profit schools and just give it away for free/low to non-profit / state schools that could be a start.).

   Michael

1. 37  John Vaughan  | 6/15/2010 9:34:22 AM

   Great post Ed. Thanks for listening.

   One thing I gladly give IBM Lotus credit for (there are lots of things of course) is the past several years you guys have spent a lot of time listening very carefully to what the community is saying and there have been real changes.

   Not sure what else to say right now, the last 24 hours kind of turned into a whirlwind. Thanks for being there, like you always have been.

1. 38  Christer Eklundh  | 6/15/2010 9:35:22 AM

   @22 +1

1. 39  Marie Scott  | 6/15/2010 9:37:34 AM

   We recently renewed our Lotus contract. Every year we gear up for the emails that are back and forth as we generally have a new rep each year and a new licensing team. Needless to say it is always an overly complicated process to RENEW. Competitive products like those offered by Microsoft are not as difficult to purchase as there are educational price lists/part lists that are basically pick and choose. There are nuances of course, as you do need to know how many CALs, etc., but all and all the purchasing experience with one versus the other doesn't even compare.

   The community has talked about the need for marketing and advertising. I could walk on campus here and ask a student at random if they knew anything about Lotus Notes/Domino and I'm sure I'd get a confused look. They know about Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft. They are a media generation and where is the media about Notes & Domino?

   IBM's Academic Initiative is a big help, but I'm still finding university professionals who know nothing about it. Again where is the marketing and advertising? Where is the connection between the ivory tower that is IBM and the customer?

1. 40  John Detterline  | 6/15/2010 9:43:17 AM

   Ed,

   I agree parts of many of the posts here. I think one thing IBM has failed to grasp in general is that C-Level decisions are seldom rational. I worked for one CIO who was in love with the AS/400 and wasn't interested in anything that didn't run on it. On the other hand I lost a client last year (one of your 10,000 new LND clients) because I wasn't able to protect them from their own stupidity. I took them from individual Outlook clients to a centralized address book, more security (good for accountants), replaced an old ACT db with a new Notes one and gave them an alternative to buying MS Office licenses. All of that went out the window when they brought the new IT firm in - everything went to MS, because that's what the new firm supports. It also didn't help that there was a very vocal minority in the firm who complained about the slowness and crashes (8.0.2) version compared to Outlook. I think everyone here knows they made a huge financial blunder by switching, but those are the kinds of decisions that get made.

   My experience has been that as people climb the ladder they become loath to make "risky" decisions. They will stick to what's deemed safe and popular in order to protect their positions. The last thing any of those kinds of execs wants is to be asked by their boss in a meeting "why are we using a "dead" product?" "Everyone else is using MS we should be using it too" etc. IBM marketing's first goal should be to raise awareness, let companies know that it's still out there and being developed. Notes/Domino was secure enough for the White House - it should be good enough for the average business. Oh yeah and you can always point out that the "lost emails" were a result of the switch to Exchange. You have a great buzz inside the community, but it doesn't exist outside and that's where marketing needs to focus. I'd love to hear Dennis Leary do an anti FUD rant.

   As a developer I love the changes, but the other posters are correct in that this is a lack of consistency in the developers tools. Still no code complete in JAVA? It's great that you can integrate Eclipse to do JAVA, but it's a pain to do. Making Developer free was a smart (and over due) move, but it needs more changes. The API needs to be opened to every popular language and the developer should be able to load up language modules as desired. You also need to be able to develop on any of the supported platforms. Personally I hate having to go back to a Windows VM to develop for Notes.

   Free OS + Free dev tools + multiple languages = easy sell to new developers.

   Someone has posted the idea for a "Notes Lite" client that would just handle email and calendaring. That kind of stand alone client would be able to go head to head with Outlook without affecting the full blown client. It would probably be a great way to test design changes as well.

   Sorry for the length and I hope it didn't come across as a total slam. I'm a Notes fan and I'm still pushing it, but while it's great that "Lotus Knows.." the rest of the world needs to know "Lotus Lives!!!" first.

1. 41  Julian Robichaux http://www.nsftools.com | 6/15/2010 9:44:23 AM

   As a developer, I'd like to chime in to say that (first) I always really really really appreciate any changes to the development environment that actually makes me more productive, so keep beating that developer drum.

   However, (second) there seems to be a bit of a chicken and egg problem here. To say that there is a failure in the sales process because not enough developers are using the product is sort of like a Ford dealer saying that their sales are down because not enough people are driving Fords. You're mixing up your cause and effect.

   The story that John told yesterday was absolutely, positively NOT a result of John and his team failing to provide value using the Domino platform. I worked with them a couple years ago, and those guys are passionate about the product, and they provided very obvious value to the company, and the results of their development efforts looked very modern to the end-user.

   Even still, throughout all of this I feel like there's some implication by various people that the burden of keeping the software alive lies squarely on the shoulders of developers. How the heck did WE end up with this burden? When did the blame get shifted to us? I don't get that. Developers aren't the ones who are buying the product, CIO's are.

   If a CIO no longer thinks a product is relevant, they won't buy it. If they do think it's relevant, they will. Whether or not their development team likes the product or not has nothing to do with it. That never even comes into play. CIOs don't poll their developers before they buy a piece of enterprise software, they talk to salespeople.

   Ed, about halfway through this blog entry, you wrote: "IBM isn't getting the message to senior execs. I grant you this one." Call it sales, call it marketing, call it gypsy magic; whatever it is, let's talk about how to do that.

1. 42  Julian Buss http://www.youatnotes.com | 6/15/2010 9:50:09 AM

   there are many valuable comments here, and I will try to add only what I think is new:

   first, from my point of view, Nathan hit the nail exactly. I can backup that 100%. Here in germany, we see that Microsoft sales men go to companies with only one thing in mind: sell Exchange. Or sell sharepoint. And there are *HUNDREDS* of them, calling CEOs over and over and over again. They are very active, and they are simply good sales persons.

   And there is no one of IBM. No one who calls CEOs, CTOs, CIOs etc., pp. trying to sell Notes. And if some C*O talks to some IBM sales rep, they are talking about many, many, many things. And among them Lotus Notes, if we're lucky.

   Furthermore, there is still the incredible bad image of Lotus Notes in "the public opinion", at least here in germany. "Everyone" (that means, from my guess, at least over 80% of IT people in germany) is still convinced that Lotus Notes simply sucks. It's old school, it's ugly, it's painfully slow, it has the worst user experience ever found in any software on this planet etc. etc.

   *We* know that this is wrong. That this is the past. But the world outside the Yellow Bubble does not know. And how should they? From the few printed ads?

   Ask yourself: how should one who lives outside the Yellow Bubble should get the message that Notes is cool again?

   I'm sorry to stress it, but that only leads to one conclusion: if you really want to leave the image of the bad and ugly behind, you need massive marketing in many channels. Printed ads showing how great the product is today. Viral marketing videos. Presence on every IT event, not only Cebit (the ars:publica in Berlin was a good start for that). Presence in collegues. Presence in the printed press. Everything, for at least one year without interruption.

   Problem of that: it costs tons of money. And it needs marketing optimized for all the local markets in the world, and not one global campaign.

   So I guess my bottom line is:

   - Notes still has a very bad image outside the Yellow Bubble

   - Nearly no one outside the Yellow Bubble gets the word that Notes is cool again

   - IBM sales rep do not sell Notes. They sell everything IBM has, and *perhaps* Notes, too.

   Oh, I forgot one BIG BIG BIG issue: IBM sales reps are ONLY interested in selling NEW licences, because they are quoted only on new licenses.

   They simply DO NOT CARE if a customer stays with Notes or not. That's one more reason why more and more companies change to Microsoft without any fight from IBM.

1. 43  bu11frogg http://twitter.com/bu11frogg | 6/15/2010 9:51:40 AM

   One thing that might help is to make the training video library freely available. Our company is too small to afford IBM's training, so we bought Camtasia and made our own.

   I notice when Google, Apple or Adobe launch a new product, they include some videos right on the site. The videos are partially about marketing, but they also teach people how to immediately get value from the product.

1. 44  Andrew Pollack http://www.thenorth.com/apblog | 6/15/2010 9:54:00 AM

   What IBM Software Group has failed to understand - year after year - is that if you have a solution you like but your customer base rejects it, you cannot be successful but simply re-wrapping it over and over and over in more different layers and insisting that your customers move in that direction.

   I understand that big complex hyper flexible architectures built on Websphere + DB2 + LDAP are great for the bottom line and can meet every conceivable configuration option known to man kind. That doesn't mean that the customer base aligned with your Domino software wants it.

   The Domino server team continues to be on the right track.

   The Notes client team is trying to get there, but is constrained by the massive complexity that's been chosen.

   The Designer team is, sadly, lost in the woods with XPages.

   I'm planning a post on fixing Designer, but I don't expect it to be well received.

1. 45  Bud Bundy  | 6/15/2010 9:54:32 AM

   I agree with most posts here, but my top priority would be to add to the stock templates. Some very pretty apps that work out of the box, but simple and easy to modify and extend. Give some contracts to your favourite Notes partners to do them.

   My second priority would be to focus on XPages like a laser. Put everything else on hold, work on adding features, functionality, and ease of development. Create a bunch of beautiful prebuilt components that come stock with the designer, such as a full featured view component that can be created as easily as a Notes view. Add scrolling, action bars, themes, kitchen sink.

   My third priority would be to beautify everything. Create a tight css integration in the designer so that nobody ever uses the default theme.

   Finally, something that has been lacking in Notes for ever, reporting. I am consulting for a large bank at the moment, and they are forced to use LEI to export all Notes data to SQL so that they can run Crystal Reports. This is clunky and unreliable, to say the least. It also makes RAD a thing of the past as any design changes must go through several completely separate groups (Notes dev, Crystal dev, Notes admin, SQL admin, server admin) who must do a simultaneous release. How about some basic integration, maybe buy one of the companies who d Notes reporting, or do a really good Crystal integration, or something, anything?

   Oh, and just one more thing, please don't confuse lying to your customers with doing a good sales job. There are many features of Notes and Domino that have never been advertised. Microsoft always talks about their next release because its easy to be beyond the cutting edge with vapourware. You don't need to go there, but how about talking up some of the cool things you are working on for the next release? These seem to be top secret at Lotus for some reason. Hey, you asked....

1. 46  John Detterline  | 6/15/2010 9:56:24 AM

   I agree with #32 A LOT! It would be great if you took the time to go back and make things work as advertised. Give us the same kind of dev environment that other products have (i.e drag and drop for form development) and make sure they work. The backward compatibility for apps is great, but it's also a boat anchor when it comes to adding new features. I hate the idea of having two code streams, but I think the time has come when you have to consider it. A Notes Classic for everything existing and Notes Extreme for all the new stuff. It would be a great direction for Release 9 imho, maybe even do a Domino Compatibility server for running old apps with fixes and performance updates and a new app server that focuses on the new technologies.

1. 47  Erik Brooks  | 6/15/2010 9:56:31 AM

   Nathan's comment here is spot-on:

   "Has any IBM rep *ever* heard from a C-level exec "I hear that Domino is doing great new things for developers. How can I leverage that?"

   I'll take it one step further: If the IBM rep was asked that, how would the rep respond? What if it's an already-existing email/cal-only Notes customer asking about app dev and they're considering the MS stack? What's the response? Is it Notes/Domino? Is there at least an *internal* IBM Marketing "Nifty Fifty" that shows off some things the platform can do? What does the sales rep *show* in response to that inquiry?

   This somewhat ties into the marketing angle again: You guys are marketing the brand (Lotus) now, but are you showing the product? More specifically, are you showing the apps? Build some sweet little mobile XPages app that solves a simple problem a CxO has. Market a small, SHORT video showing him/her using it. How many downloads has Apple's "where'd I park?" iPhone app had? Imagine if even 1% of those downloads were CxO's asking about that app in discussions.

   Next up: A college student is the smallest of SMBs. A 1-man, zero-budget shop. How do you get him/her? Others have responded to this point though, I've got nothing to add here.

   Nathan's also spot-on regarding the app dev strategy being a general mess. This extends from the APIs to Lotus Support, some recent perfect examples being:

   - my namesake bug (the Get*ByKey fiasco - a major Charlie Foxtrot)

   - still no full migration from LS to XPages (a little better in 8.5.2, but the fact that this is still dragging on shows a lack of *executive* - and therefore strategic - focus)

   - DDE complaints (crashing, corruption, etc.)

   We're a Design Partner now though so things are about to get better. ;-)

   Kidding aside, is there somebody inside of IBM/Lotus who is strictly *in charge* of app dev and gets to *tell* the server, client, backend, and Designer teams "WE ARE DOING XXXXX"? Or do they only get to *ask*?

   You guys have the best general-purpose non-relational database in the world. Why in the world are CouchDb and NoSQL on the rise when NSF trumps them in so many ways *and* is proven, with a monstrous support division?

   We're a Domino ASP. We've hired Domino developers recently, and we're considering a full-time XPages position as well. One of our developers is an ex-ASP.Net developer, and their jaw has dropped on what XPages/NSF can do. Hell, OneUI's built-in-bi-directional capabilities alone are AWESOME. Who's talking about *that*? Fortunately I'm both a developer AND decision-maker, so I can actually make the calls on our technology.

1. 48  Erik Brooks  | 6/15/2010 10:08:26 AM

   More comments after reading/digestion:

   I totally echo everything Andrew says @44.

   No doubt one of the reasons our company has grown is we've been web-only delivery to our customers since day one. They get the server's benefits in the client *we* design. As far as I'm concerned the client is just a way to browse the backend NSF and another XPage renderer.

   We've even got customers using DOLS for local offline work. Though we're still waiting for XPages support in that area. Will it happen? Who knows? Again, strategy...

1. 49  Michael Kobrowski  | 6/15/2010 10:18:25 AM

   @45 didn't IBM buy Cognos? Why isn't there an affordable easy integration product/system, something?

1. 50  Stuart McIntyre http://blog.collaborationmatters.com | 6/15/2010 10:21:35 AM

   Great points all.

   My number one issue. As far as I have seen in 15 years of working with IBM, no IBMer is targeted with either keeping existing customers, or with encouraging them to gain more value from the investments they've made.

   As Julian Buss (@42) mentions, it's still (after 10 years of discussion) all about net new licence sales. I'd throw in the Q4 skew ('a customer's not for life, it's just for Christmas') and focus on Special Bid ELA style renewal bundles. Not one IBM rep, salesman or SSR is driven by making a customer more content with the product, use it more within their environment, or to put more strategic development into the platform. Even (especially?) ISSL are not in the game in this regard, they are driven to sell more IBM services not assist the customer to do more with less.

   BPs play a massive role here of course, and for the good ones, this is the bread and butter of our businesses. But without IBM encouraging the CxO level execs to see the value of what they have in Notes and Domino (and the rest of the Lotus portfolio), more often than not our words will either fall on deaf ears or else just result in limited tactical projects rather than the strategic commitment to the Lotus platform that Jon, Jake and others have seen disappearing.

1. 51  Erik Brooks  | 6/15/2010 10:23:50 AM

   @49 - Open the Cognos Administrator and click "add data source."

   You've got a myriad of SQL dbs, Terastore, etc. but no Notes/Domino option. You can expose your own stuff via XML, but it's not very integrated. It could be much, much better.

   Though if you ask me it's one of the lower things on the app dev totem pole to worry about.

1. 52  Darren Duke http://blog.darrenduke.net | 6/15/2010 10:24:18 AM

   As Paul pointed out, IBM's biggest competitor is probably not MS nor Google. IBM's biggest competitor is IBM. They make everything difficult, including understanding their marketing, their sales, their process, buying from them, which product best fits a need.....yet they still make money. Lots of money. Hard to change that, right?

   If you want to see the issue at a macro level go to Dell. Price a server and add it to a cart. Now do the same with IBM. See how your head exploded? That is IBM. (after reading this before hitting post, I'm echoing so of what Marie Scott commented on)

   Now for Notes...IBM needs to make it the BEST messaging platform on the planet AND the best rapid application platform on the planet. No simple task, but doable and XPages is the right direction here. However IBM's OpenNTF application approach is flawed.....yes the nifty 50 is REQUIRED. You have tried not to do a nifty 50 and it has been a significant disadvantage to all. Mail evolved in R8 and continues to improve but is it the BEST?

   I run a business on Notes and Domino, from CRM to time entry, and everything in between. Build that and sell that! Simply put, make Domino and Notes a "business in a box".

   Vive la renaissance. But it has to be lead by IBM.

1. 53  Richard Shergold  | 6/15/2010 10:37:32 AM

   I think all the comments so far are valid and good and I am sure Ed and his team will take note. But I still think THE SINGLE biggest issue they face is changing the perception of Notes that the average business decision maker seems to have i.e that Notes/Domino is just an old antiquated mail system. It is SO much more than that and yet the message does not appear to have got through. It amazes me sometimes that it hasn't, but it hasn't.

1. 54  Peter Presnell http://www.yellowverse.com | 6/15/2010 10:44:06 AM

   Ed, I think Rob Novak may have answered (indirectly) some of my questions over on John's post. If what IBM has done is to try and take its investment in Workplace and shoehorn that into Domino Designer where exactly does that leave the product? Its a little bit "Lotus Notes" and a little bit "Lotus Workplace". It's not a product designed from the ground up to be something very specific but rather a product thrown together to recoup some of the investment in developing Workplace. As Nathan has pointed out, the strategy is all over the place and full of many great ideas that were never finished off.

   Perhaps with Project Vulcan we have a chance to communicate a new (less confusing) message to CxOs. Sell the message about the total vision for the Lotus Brand (as per Vulcan) and then be very clear and precise about the role Lotus Notes (AD) has to play in driving down development costs. But I believe quite strongly that before we refine the marketing pitch we need to clearly define the product. CxOs typically don't get into the positions they have without having a capacity to cut through the hype and get to the core of what a vendor is trying to sell them.

   I would also support a number of comments about the appeal of Notes as a general purpose Swiss army application development platform that really is ideal to so many SMBs. The only thing really missing is the 50+ high quality out of the box solutions to get such companies started.

1. 55  David Bockes  | 6/15/2010 11:02:06 AM

   I'm in full agreement with Julian (#41). This isn't a problem solved solely through bottom up solutions. It's apparent that there is exhaustion at hearing the community gripe about lack of marketing, etc, but just because that drum has been beaten to death doesn't mean it's not the right drum to beat. Product awareness by the decision makers is the key - that's where our competitors live. Also, marketing is not simply advertising, it is every form of exposure your customer has with you. Staying involved with existing customers not just at renewal time is marketing. Knowing when your customer is being courted by another vendor and competing with them is marketing. It doesn't have to all be about print and television, etc, but it does have to be visible at all executive levels (not just c-level).

1. 56  Andrew Pollack http://www.thenorth.com/ablog. | 6/15/2010 11:03:56 AM

   @54 - Peter, I don't think it's quite fair to call XPages nothing more than Workplace revisited. I look at it as a very small subset of a huge investment in Workplace that encapsulates some real potential value. From there, a lot of time and money has been spent to apply that value to the Domino data set. The biggest mistake has been insisting on squeezing it into the old Domino Designer when it is for all real purposes a standalone development tool. The result has been detrimental to both DDE and to XPages.

1. 57  Wayne Sobers  | 6/15/2010 11:14:05 AM

   Completeness and polish.

   Xpages and Composite Apps are great additions, but they have a way to go to mature. Of the other tools, they are mature but incomplete. LS needs a better debugger and @formula (which are really undervalued) has no debugger at all.

   It appears that all work has ceased on templates except for the mail template and even there features seem to be incomplete.

   Part of the issue for me is that with each new release and bundle of features, the existing issues seem to be ignored.

   Some people at IBM think that Notes can only be used for particular software solutions. This is just plain wrong. You need to make the features available and customers will find ways of using the tools that you never imagined.

1. 58  Frank Paolino http://www.notesappstore.com/ | 6/15/2010 11:16:56 AM

   One of the things that annoys me is that Google apps are getting so much attention. The other thing is Lotus Notes vendors whining that "IBM is not helping them enough". My answer to the whining is "you are in charge of your own marketing, not IBM". IBM has to worry about thousands of products. Selling ISV products is not on their performance checklist.

   As for Google apps, the people (vendors) that I meet at Lotusphere have GREAT Lotus Notes Apps that really take strong advantage of the platform. These Apps are mature and customer tested. Although many are targeted at SMBs, some of them are deployed at 100,000+ users sites.

   I got so tired of people predicting the demise of Lotus Notes that I started NotesAppStore to have a dedicated place for Lotus Notes products and so show that Lotus Notes is indeed alive and well. I have been working on this for about three months, including nights and weekends (just ask my wife, who is not thrilled with my new love affair with the NotesAppStore).

   Lotus Greenhouse catalog is a good place to find all manner of IBM and related products. The NotesAppStore is specific to Lotus Notes and Domino.

   When a competitive situation arises, I hope that a company looks at the depth of proven Notes Apps applications before jumping to Google apps.

   If you want to see the NotesAppStore, here it is:

   { Link }

   Finally, the vendors of proven, high-quality Lotus Notes Apps are still doing well from my conversations with them.

1. 59  Henning Heinz  | 6/15/2010 11:25:52 AM

   Well if there is constant growth for IBM Lotus Notes and Domino since 2004 then maybe there is no need to change anything.

1. 60  Ben Langhinrichs http://www.geniisoft.com/showcase.nsf/GeniiBlog | 6/15/2010 11:34:21 AM

   I can't really say I am a Notes developer either, as what I do is build products that make Notes work better. I don't build large complex applications. My only real credibility is that I have sold upwards of a million "seats" of my software while IBM was selling 100 million seats (maybe more), and I had considerably less than 100th of the marketing money.

   When Midas was first out, I spent a lot of time telling people all you could do with it. It sold pretty well, but never really went viral until I figured out that people didn't want to know what they could do with it, they wanted to know what it could do. So I started building sample apps to add instant value. ROI is great, but instant value was more important. People who bought Midas with one of the samples could get value out of it the same day with no developers.

   I learned my lesson, sort of. With CoexLinks, I made sure you could see the value in 10 minutes. It has sold like hotcakes. With CoexEdit, I told people what they could do with it. It has slowly built a following, but never taken off like CoexLinks. So, I am learning my lesson again and making sure CoexEdit will provide value in 10 minutes.

   People want to install a product and see the value immediately. Then, they want to see incremental additions they can get with a bit more effort. Finally, they want to know that the product is capable of much more.

   IBM has somehow slipped away from the instant value and the incremental additions and focused on the capability to do more. XPages may be great, but do they offer me value out of the box? Give the executive something to fall in love with day one.

   To be fair, IBM has gotten some of this right. They are adding a lot to OpenNTF from what I hear. That is good. They are adding some templates that are fairly robust and still look good, such as the Blog template and the enhanced discussion template. (Although I have to say, I built an IBM blog, and I cannot find the easy documentation or wizards or hints or whatever to make it look good. It appears there is great potential, but my blog looks icky and I feel like a chump, which are not great things for a developer who has worked with Notes for 15 years, much less a new customer.)

   Make the customer feel smart for buying the product. Give him/her a way to show how smart he/she was at the very first board meeting after the installation. Don't leave them feeling "Oh, this could be great if only I were smarter, more experienced, etc." People on this thread and others love to say that the CEO drives the software, but what drives the CEO? It isn't advertising. It is sometimes marketing. It is mostly a perception of instant gratification, whether by cool factor (e.g., iPhone/iPad) or by immediate business value (e.g., I can get the reports I want the way I want with no help from that stupid IT department) or by solving a problem (e.g., wow, my email look better).

   Make the executive look smart on day one. It's that simple, and that difficult.

1. 61  Declan Lynch http://www.qtzar.com | 6/15/2010 11:38:53 AM

   @58 that is not an app store, it is a catalog. End users cannot purchase items there nor can they download them and install them on their system. It is NOT an app store.

   OpenNTF is also NOT the answer here. People shouting about nifty-fifty cannot be pointed to OpenNTF. They want templates that are built into the installer that are easy to setup and configure for their business. Sharepoint has them and this is one of the selling points for sharepoint. Also, if IBM really cared about OpenNTF then they would give it the cash injection that it apparently needs rather then have OpenNTF consider selling #30 memberships ( but you get a free tshirt ).

   IBM is a big company with lots of products and this is also hurting their own sales, when an IBM rep goes into a company and has the option of trying to sell an extremely expensive product that only does one thing Vs a much cheaper product that can do lots of things they are going to go for the option of the expensive product because it will look better in their end of year review.

   As for marketing and 'Lotus Knows'. I have seen ONE Lotus Knows advert and that was in Orlando airport last January. I have not seen anything else in any other media.

1. 62  Andy Stewart  | 6/15/2010 11:49:50 AM

   Ed,

   You mentioned in your posting that 'The fact that an IBM rep who gets to meet with a CIO, CFO, or CEO has a hundred different product lines to cover, including hardware, software, consulting and services is an attention issue'.

   Is this really the way that IBM Lotus developent offerings are presented to customer execs - they are busy people and will be looking for solutions to their isuses, not a product catalog? Why can't the sales team find out what development issues the execs are interested in (either tactically or strategically) and focus the sales effort on that? If I am looking for a custom developed solution (of whatever sort), I wouldn't be that interested in (e.g.) mainframes unless that is what the solution would be hosted on and then probably my main interest would be how much the box cost to run. I would however be fully interested in the business benefits from the solution.

   The RAD aspects of Notes & or Domino development don't seem to ever be something that is focussed on, whereas your competitors do appear to focus on the ease of development when using their products. On the LotusKnows web site I can't find any direct reference to the feature rich environment that is Domino development.

   As was commented earlier - thanks for responding. We hope to see some developments (lol) in this area.

   If I can give just one personal example - one of my first paid jobs in IT was developing relatively complex company wide financial solutions based on Lotus 123. Now was there anything wrong with 123 - not that I'm aware of but .......

   Nowadays perception may not be everything but it counts for a lot. A company doesn't neccessarily have to be the best, they just need to be perceived as such.

1. 63  Dennis Ellison  | 6/15/2010 11:54:35 AM

   The strength of Notes/Domino is also its greatest weakness. As a “business” product It is very versatile but not well understood. It is not just about “email.” We moved to Exchange/Outlook two years ago for mail and contact management (for third party product). It has been an expensive disappointment. Overall comments about what ND should offer:

   Performance: Notes 5 until Notes 7...it just got better and better. ND 8 was a major disappointment. Out of the box Notes 8 should have “kicked butt.” Startup was painful and performance simply “OK” once the client was up and running. Having to turn off my virus checker, set permissions, fiddle around with prerequisites to make it work, and the experience of some really ugly crashes made for a really tough sell to management. I wiped 8 off my test machines and reinstalled 7 (not my job to fix). Later versions have been better. We still have several web applications that will continue to use for awhile.

   Simple to use: Appearance is one aspect. How do real life, in the trenches users feel about it? Users do not want to take the time to understand. Unfortunately, with the current “click and point mentality,” a lot gets lost. That said, most of our users got along just fine with the old 5/6/7 interface. The new interface looks great. But at what cost – see #1.

   Feature set: Developers will use if it offers a true advantage. Having the market share obviously sells product. However, If a product is truly well thought out, performs and has all the right “stuff.” The product will go viral. The “selling” is no longer an obstacle. If one has to string together a bunch of servers and software to accomplish a “solution...” it’s not. Workarounds – forget it. MS is wide open for challenge in the SMB.

   Support: We had great support with IBM (going back to the AS/400). The last couple of support issues with MS have been extremely frustrating. They don’t sell direct per se and could care less about support. We buy via local VARs with the express reason of making the VAR handle any issues.

   @45 I’ve used Crystal 8 & 11 with Notes SQL. Works great.

1. 64  Frank Paolino http://www.notesappstore.com/ | 6/15/2010 11:54:59 AM

   Declan,

   Is is not a full Apps store YET. As this is a labor of love, I can't get all the features in. The site was outed by GTD before ready. We are working now on the "ordering" part and improving the download links.

   It does fill a need to vendors, and most end users who use it are posting a lot of reviews to help future customers:

   { Link }

   BTW, nice blog template, thanks!

1. 65  Nathan T Freeman  | 6/15/2010 12:03:06 PM

   "if IBM really cared about OpenNTF then they would give it the cash injection that it apparently needs"

   actually that would disqualify us from nfp status, which is far more important than any specific dollar amount. So no thanks.

1. 66  Ben Rose http://www.jaffacake.net | 6/15/2010 12:06:15 PM

   @61 Declan - That's one more than me, I guess I wasn't in Orlando. Not seen anything in the UK since I.am.Superman

1. 67  Jeff Twardowski http://www.ardentraining.com | 6/15/2010 12:12:17 PM

   I like seeing this discussion and think there may be a point missing. Someone stated that MS people just keep filing into the c-suite to promote their product and that IBM should follow their example. I think what you see are MS people and MS business partners filing into the c-suite. So how is IBM Business Partners helping the situation? I know several business partners that go to meetings and are competing against IBM in the meeting. I have never hear anyone on the MS side they are competing against the main company, just possibly other business partners. I heard that back in the late 90's there server serveral hundred training centers, today it is more like 2 hand fulls. Can IBM really hit everyone in the market without business partners? But who want to compete against IBM? It seems to be an easy jump for former Domino partners to become MS partners with minimal competition from the Company. How can IBM be an asset to the business partners and not a competitor? Just a thought.

1. 68  Heiko Voigt http://www.sit.de/heikos-blog | 6/15/2010 12:18:01 PM

   Good discussion here and also over on John's blog. But, what's the essence of all that talk ? There needs to be change within IBM I hear. Tons of suggestions, most of them stated already years ago. Ed, maybe you need to state it chrystal clear again and again and again for all to see: No, we don't stop selling Notes and Domino (not Lotus Notes Live, Connections, etc.) to our customers. Make it a routine for as long as it's true. Make it your closing in your emails. And get your design partners to start a rant like this to kick out dwindeling sharepoint installations at their customers. John hit the emotional sensors of this comunity pretty well, maybe it's time for IBM to get emotinal, too !

1. 69  John Head http://www.johndavidhead.com | 6/15/2010 12:23:52 PM

   @61 Declan - neither the Nifty 50 nor the SharePoint Fab 40 were ever part of the installer. So that point is moot.

   As for OpenNTF.org, that criticism should be posted on the site (blog, discussions). IBM is just one of numerous voices and Ed can't answer that question.

1. 70  Karl-Henry Martinsson http://www.texasswede.com | 6/15/2010 12:23:55 PM

   @39 says:

   "I could walk on campus here and ask a student at random if they knew anything about Lotus Notes/Domino and I'm sure I'd get a confused look. They know about Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft. They are a media generation and where is the media about Notes & Domino?"

   Bingo! And in 4-5 years, where will those students be? On the job market. What product(s) will they recommend/use? The ones they are familiar with. Not Lotus Notes/Domino.

   CIO: "hey, Bill, you just graduated from XYZ University, what is the hot technology these days?"

   Bill: "Oh, everyone is going for Google Apps/Gmail, it is cheap and I love it, been using it for years."

1. 71  Richard Hogan  | 6/15/2010 12:28:32 PM

   I agree with many/most of the comments. Things (most covered already) I think would help are:

   - IBM needs to tells the world (ie. more than just CxO's) that:

   "Lotus Notes gives you full messaging, security and the ability to create your own business solutions at 10th the cost of the competitive products etc., etc."

   if "IBM" is seen to make this claim this should cause at least some decision makers to stop and examine it, and it might suddenly not be a given in business conversations that Notes is dead/sucks/is legacy/etc.

   - Incentivise the IBM sales force to retain Notes seats. It's no surprise that IBM reps won't waste time on trying to maintain Notes client licenses, for which they get no recognition, when they could be using the time to try to sell new licenses for something else!

   - As people have said, Nifty fifty Notes templates that look good and a) do something useful right out of the box (see sharepoint), b) are examples of Notes development best practices so new developers can learn such good practices, and c) are structured so that the customer or BP can easily customise / expand on them

   - Complete and release the "Domino Directory Independence" capability so that customers who move to Exchange for email can very easily retain Notes application servers without an admin headache (and ISV's can sell solutions based on Domino server that require little or no administration as all user admin can be done in the organisations existing Active Directory or other LDAP directory).

   - Keep improving Domino Designer, and also improve Notes Standard client performance

1. 72  Lisa Duke http://www.simplified-tech.com | 6/15/2010 12:43:22 PM

   @26 said "But when we were looking at .NET, we didn't have anyone to offer a counterpoint. The only time we heard from Lotus or IBM was for the annual support fee."

   This is a big part of it - the IBM direct sellers are not paid to keep in touch with current clients and to keep them happy. We've been doing a lot of calls as part of version to version, and most of those folks haven't heard from IBM in years (except for the annual bill).

   We directly compete with the renewals teams. Often clients pay the bill from IBM without understanding that when they do that, they are no longer our customer in IBM terms. It's a shame, because I'd rather spend my time competing with Microsoft and Google than IBM Canada.

1. 73  Daniele Grillo http://www.matrixcomputers.it | 6/15/2010 12:47:58 PM

   I agree with many/most of the comments....( I write from Italy)

   a) Xpages are the future ..but the customers don't know what's Lotus ( I still hear people confuse it with Lotus 123 ) in a business environment.

   b) IBM have difficulty problem to sell because isn't flexible..

   c) Real marketing strategy is needed

   d) IBM must be smarted with the BP ( this is very important)

   e) Domino Dictory Indedendece (Many losses are related to this)

   f) And while, you ask advice... the world is changing fast ... maybe re IBM realize and begin to change in 10 years , when all migrate to Microsoft

   g) Microsoft attacks the market giving licenses and in times of crisis it is important

   P.S. Sorry for the outburst but I am really sad about what is happening

1. 74  Bill Buchan http://www.billbuchan.com | 6/15/2010 12:51:33 PM

   I came here expecting to find out how IBM is going to communicate the clear value of Lotus Notes and Domino as an Application infrastructure to the world at large - the main point of JonVon's post (IMHO).

   I still cant find it.

   ---* Bill

1. 75  Andrew Pollack http://www.thenorth.com/ablog. | 6/15/2010 12:58:01 PM

   Following up to @26 -- ""But when we were looking at .NET, we didn't have anyone to offer a counterpoint."

   This is COMPLETELY accurate and disgusts me. I know several cases where IBM Sales is fully entrenched. One example is a site that runs DB2 and WEBSPHERE, zSeries, AIX, Mainframe stuff (not my area), MQSeries, etc etc etc.. When they got rid of Groupwise, they could not get a serious discussion from their IBM team about Notes. They're an exchange shop now.

1. 76  Mike Robinson http://www.invcs.com | 6/15/2010 1:19:28 PM

   So I'll try to offer up a suggestion based on Ed's last paragraph. The biggest out of the box "app" for Notes/Domino is *mail*. I've encountered lots of disgruntled Outlook users who feel forced to use Notes. Is there a cheat sheet on what value-added things I can do with Notes over Outlook relative to mail. Honestly I don't hear anyone in the corp space talking about what a great blog there is in the product. A Strong team mailbox which addresses several of the short comings of just using the mail template as a shared mailbox (shared read marks, eliminating the "Sent By"), my goodness, an easy to setup auto-responder, etc.). This is a strong demonstration of an out of the box *collobrative* tool.

   Secondly there are MS developers who have to integrate with Notes mail. How have we made it easy for them? A few how to use Notes for VB/.Net programmers would be helpful.

   Please improve the help for the average user of a Notes client (not for a dev, admin, but the day to day user). They would like to use the product but the help is so lacking they give up on using all but the basic features. Telling them to google it is not an answer either.

   Of the top of my head those are few things that would go a long way.

1. 77  Wayne Sobers  | 6/15/2010 1:25:24 PM

   Re Sharepoint issue. There is nothing in Sharepoint that can't be done with a well developed template. Take the Teamroom template to the next level and run that against Sharepoint. And I don't want to be pointed at Quickr. It's a good product but the use cases are different. If scalability is needed then go to connections.

   On a positive note, the Domino server is one of the best investments a SMB can make and at very least the development community voice should be heard loud and clear.

1. 78  Bill Greenberg - Good Computer Guy http://www.goodcomputerguy.com | 6/15/2010 1:26:54 PM

   I have been a Notes developer... since 1994. I've loved Notes, I've run my entire business in Notes apps. I have just 2 or 3 customers using Notes now and I don't think there's any way I could sell it to anyone else. I've been distraught since 8.x and XPages came out. I used to love doing Notes development, now I hate it. I feel bullied by fellow developers who deride my "classic Notes" work as old and outdated. But I've tried looking into XPages without a whole lot of success yet. Really, if I have to learn all new technologies, why wouldn't I just go with something more mainstream? I'm sad to see Notes go, but I feel backed into a corner. The current design environment is an inconsistent, buggy mess from my perspective, and no amount of bullying is going to get me to change my mind on that - all it will do is drive me away faster.

1. 79  Peter Presnell http://www.yellowverse.com | 6/15/2010 2:07:05 PM

   One more thought. IBM should consider letting Lotus Notes fully compete as an application development environment including against other Lotus products. e.g. one of the best application templates ever developed was TeamRoom but I suspect further development was halted because it had the potential to canabalise sales of Quickr. Templates could be built to add functionality for some of the things in Connections such as File Sharing and Activities. Not every customer is going to buy the entire IBM catalog, especially SMBs. I would think that a little internal competition might actually spur a greater level of innovation and all the Lotus products would be the better for it.

1. 80  notes-user  | 6/15/2010 2:20:48 PM

   a groupware-product without a good Groupcalendar.

   an appointment-entry over 24 hours.

   better and easier webdevelopment.

   notes ist notes and not websphere.

   .....

1. 81  Christian Tillmanns http://www.informica.ch | 6/15/2010 2:28:34 PM

   Ed, can you believe this?

   Amazing, what is happening here. The passion that speaks from these posts, but at the same time a huge frustration.

   I am sure Ed, you know what this passion is worth. Do your bosses know it? Do they know, what danger lies in this frustration?

   What makes me thinking is, that IBM claims many new Notes customers, but everbody here (and in the other blogs) sees just a declining business. The picture is somehow not right. May I ask you, if you see that, too? Do you have an explanation for it? Or do we outside IBM have the wrong picture? Are there some BP's that get it and we, the old f...s don't?

   I think we don't need another idea jam. Everything has been said. You just have to read the blogs.

   I have bashed IBM for it's marketing in the past, but I will not do this again. This is not the problem. Right now, I see more and more frustraited yellow bleeders outside AND inside IBM. The passion is going away. THAT is one big problem if... May I ask you, do you really believe in Notes? Do your bosses really believe in Notes? If it is just a cash cow, that is ok with me. There is a time to say goodbye to a product and milk the rest out of it. I would hate to see Microsoft succeed, but hey, such is life. We probably will see the fall of Microsoft, too in a few years. Others will come and still run on IBM hardware.

   After all those posts I have a wishlist, but I don't think it does make a big difference to tell it. Better posts came before me, but anyway.

   If IBM believes in Notes then...

   Fight Microsoft head on. You don't have to be unfair like they are to win, but you have to fight to win. And that on every level. Bang CxO heads on Lotus logos until they believe what you said, and not what Microsoft said about Notes ... you get the picture.

   You can wash off the mud after the fight.

   I agree with Ben, it is all about apps. I totaly agree that the customer does not want to know, what the darn thing could do, but what it does. Give us the app store.

   Cheers

   Christian

1. 82  Ed Brill http://Www.edbrill.com | 6/15/2010 2:51:29 PM
   
   

   "May I ask you, do you really believe in Notes? Do your bosses really believe in Notes?"

   Yes and yes, but I have often thought that the guy above my boss's boss should be more public about this.

   I understand, and the reason I wrote this blog, is that there is a fracture in the community fabric, and that if it grows, the business will suffer. We do need to solve the disconnect between those who are doing well with Notes today and those who are not. I have thought about this a lot over the last two years, and there are no easy answers for how to portray successes without stirring some jealousy or resentment, or even temptation.

   There's a lot in this thread to digest.

1. 83  Ravikiran Kodali  | 6/15/2010 2:51:35 PM

   I have been working on Notes for 14 years now and I would say it is one of the best RAD environments. It has many great features no other product has been able to emulate. From Security to Replication to DAOS to Traveler, Lotus has done a great job.

   But I would say the pace has been lacking on providing enhanced features to the end users.

   End users are your best marketing people and make them talk positively about the product by providing them enhanced features out-of-box.

   Make the views in Lotus notes work in 21st century. They have been the same since R4 days except for coloring. Provide the ability for the end user to Filter, Advance sort, Group.Ability to generate some basic charting from a view. Embedded views cannot be sorted even today. I used a product in 90's call LoyalView+ which could do it and more.

   Lotus Application Search is the least user friendly tool available and the advanced search makes users go nuts.

   Half-Baked Products: These leave users disgruntled. Sametime has a screen-capture feature, which doesn't allow text annotation. What is the capture worth without the ability to write comments?

   Compete feature to feature with outlook and other best messaging clients.

   Provide the ability to export notes views to spreadsheet, xml. How difficult would this be?

   Developers:

   Free designer license is a good thing that has happened too late. Encourage developers to get free certification(for university students) or at reduced price.

   Provide Full DOM Support. The DOM support extends back to R5 Days.

   Make the new technologies like Xpages, more "Developer Friendly" so that Lotus application development can still be labelled as RAD. I have used EXT.nd implementation of extJS framework and they have done a marvelous job. Why cant IBM do the similar job with dojo?

   Regards,

   Ravi

1. 84  Lance Spellman http://workflowstudios.com | 6/15/2010 3:07:49 PM

   My Top 5 items:

   1. Give IBM direct sales reps quota credit for renewals on Lotus Notes, and take it away from the renewal team. Yes, that would be different from the rest of the brands. The rest of the brands don't need that support. Notes does.

   IBM field reps pay attention to Notes in an account only in the following circumstances, and these are all negative situations:

   a. Is there a compliance issue where I can force the client into more new licenses with their renewal. I get paid for that.

   b. Is there anyway I can get the client to get rid of Notes in favor of Lotus Live? I get paid for that.

   c. Is there any kind of program change I can force the client into, like a CEO bundle migration that may or may not make sense for the customer? I get paid for that.

   d. Can I get the customer to let IBM outsource the whole thing to SO? I get paid for that.

   e. Is there anything at all in the IBM portfolio that replaces some function of Notes? I get paid for that.

   It is not just that Lotus has to compete with other things within IBM, it's worse as it usually has NO advocate from IBM. The IBM rep himself is incented to find something else in the IBM portfolio that would help him get rid of Notes.

   2. Prohibit IBM direct sales from ANY conversation of Lotus Live in an account that has on-premise Lotus Notes. IBM is cannibalizing your product Ed, and often not winning ANY business, just losing it to Google and MS by opening the cloud conversation.

   3. Enforce the IBM Rules of Engagement. IBM is killing its Business Partners on arbitrary, made-up-on-the-spur-of-the-moment rules to get around the Rules of Engagement. Look at LL for example. "You can sell it Business Partner, but the customer gets no SLA if you do." WTF? My VAD is collecting stories from all its BPs of how this issue is killing us and taking it back to IBM mgt.

   4. Develop an exceptionally lite-weight Notes client for mail only in Adobe Air or something like it that can tell an "update" is needed and it's done in 2 minutes, not 1 network killing hour.

   5. Distribute XPages Wiki and a solid Web Content Management template with Notes. Tell me that the WCM inclusion in Portal wasn't a major reason why THAT product had a 2 year spike in sales.

   It is not the product or the developers that are killing Notes.

1. 85  notes-user  | 6/15/2010 3:11:50 PM

   @ "May I ask you, do you really believe in Notes? Do your bosses really believe in Notes?"

   yes, but we dont belive in IBM!

   old, slow, inflexible and ...

1. 86  Keith Taylor  | 6/15/2010 3:13:53 PM

   Ed, take a look at American politics right now. Incumbency is no longer an asset. The competition has dissatisfied customers out there. Keeping existing customer's like me is important but so is making Notes a legitimate part of the conversation at competitive sites. Offense.

   PS: Issue Mr. Vaughn an invoice for all of us for our time this week!

1. 87  Andrew Pollack http://www.thenorth.com/ablog. | 6/15/2010 3:14:55 PM

   @Lance re: #4 -- Traveler for Adobe Air? (windows/mac/linux)

1. 88  Andreas Imnitzer  | 6/15/2010 3:34:22 PM

   When I was younger, and a business partner, I went to Lotusphere Berlin. Because we were successfull, Microsoft was very interested in making business with us, so I had an assigned MS Evangelist(His name is Dirk). Sure I met him at Lotusphere Berlin, and asked, what he thougt about the conference. He was (and I consider him to still be) a wise, humble, intelligent and honorful man and said: "Well, hm. Microsoft is more a technology company. "

   Long I was thinking about that, did not know how to interpret. In these days I was invited to Microsoft to attend sessions in Seattle about new upcoming technology. Often I thought: wow, the young people talking here are excellent engineers, but how should I sell this stuff and Information to customers. They can't tell me a business case.

   Lotus was not sold to IBM yet. Lotus might have been a financial problem for shareholders. But Lotus presented hot, RAD software for business on any occasion, thus built up some buzz and the now not so enthusiastic business partner community. Because it was easy to hook up, do some more and show to your customer, even on C-Level, who saw a solution for some need in your very first presentation.

   I do understand Dirk now. IBM too is a technology company. Like Microsoft in these days, they give you tools to write code. Lotus gave us an idea what to achieve with this code. And that is the difference for me nowadays.

   The new templates on 8.5.1 are not even up to the level of the DE. Nothing to show to customers but an enhanced Mail UI.

   I was in Seattle with Microsoft in 2000, Microsoft trying to show Exchange Platinum. Unfortunately, that day Sock Exchange crashed, Microsoft fell 40%. They did not have a marketing guy on stage. But, as we were driving with the bus to the night event, in front of me, there were some Microsofties talkin about their marketing presentation tomorrow. Nice people, too, btw. One said, she had a problem with the "next mail server in a row. When people got ccmail the first time, it was a completely new thing, they could see in their face. But, with a new server -as good as it might get-, they don't see much more then 'ye olde mail thing". Witty.

   So, as long as one competes in 25year-old Mail client features, there are many other competitors, even Apple Mail.

   I mean, showing people, what they can do with all that stuff, how to map it on their business cases, that's the deal.

   SNAPPS (thanks Victor, thanks Rob) and others do good work on conferences.

   I switched sides now, away from a BP. I have not seen an IBM rep for the last year, as so many of us did not.

   As for winning students: A young developer would need a complete environment to test with, so give them a bundle with a ready set up Domino Server (or something to install simply), including http and a developer AND a client, so they can test their stuff locally. FREE. With 5 pre-configured Personas to test rules and access levels. Make it a VMware image. They will have fun, not having to administer a server. Anything like this.

   My 2 cents (EuroCents, of course)

   Andreas

1. 89  Werner Motzet  | 6/15/2010 3:38:34 PM

   Hello

   @85 - I think you are talking only about one half (50%) of IBM

   maybe there are some Guys at IBM "old, slow and inflexible".

   But the last two years I met much more IBMers that listen to the customer, that answers fast and practice-oriented, that gives helpful feedback.

   Very competent SoftwareEngineers with very good support and good contacts to understand and do our problems.

   And last but not least IBM makes a very good job with its Software-support (ESR or PMR) especially the second- and third-level.

   Please controll your view - did you look around enough? You need not to look to the "old" IBMer, please look for the new IBMer, they realy exist I found them too.

   And my hope is when the "old" see the feedback the new/modern IBMer get by us customers they will "alter".

   I think it is not necessary to belive in IBM but I believe the new IBMer are able to activite "the big blue" to change for the future and LN/Domino 8.5.1/2 is a very good exampel.

   Kind Regards

   Werner - Nuernberg Germany

1. 90  tony ollivier  | 6/15/2010 3:49:48 PM

   The lady doth protest too much, methinks. ( please excuse the gender reference :))

1. 91  Graham Dodge  | 6/15/2010 4:03:27 PM

   IBM reps ignore more than customers. Earlier this year I complained to IBM management that the Lotus Business Partner Rep had never taken time to meet me so he was instructed to do so. His basic attitude was that since I never bought in big whitespace leads then I wasn't worth his time. If I could do that then he'd talk to me.

   * What about getting his guidance to build my (Lotus only) business - not his problem.

   * What about supporting the Lotus Domino R8.5 seminars I'd been running at IBM - can't do that or the other Business Partners might get jealous.

   * what about introducing me to a new client to assist my cash flow - Absolutely not!!! Partners give leads to IBM, not the other way around.

   That person has been moved out of the role now and the current incumbent is more responsive but the memory lingers. I know that there are some great people at IBM moving heaven and earth to rebuild the Lotus market but there are still some IBMers who see their relationship with the Business Partners as a one-way street.

1. 92  David Bailey  | 6/15/2010 4:05:35 PM

   Years ago, when my principal client's CIO had decided to leave Notes/Domino and go to MS, I managed to get them to do an evaluation. At the time, I told the IBM representatives that MS representatives was schmoozing with the CIO; e.g. trips to the Super Bowl. The IBMer's said, "IBM doesn't do that." I understood what that meant. The evaluation team recommended Lotus/Domino. The CIO said, "You don't understand the holistic view."

   If IBM won't do schmooze with the CIO, they won't make the sale.

1. 93  Andrew Pollack http://www.thenorth.com/apblog | 6/15/2010 4:12:13 PM

   @David, I think you mean the "bowlistic" view.

1. 94  Tripp Black http://www.mindwatering.com | 6/15/2010 4:17:01 PM

   I've already participated in this kind of thread in the past. They are always great reads and this time, As it's irresistible to not to do so, I'm just going to hit a some main points...

   The BIG List:

   1. Keep it cheaper that MS by a long shot.

   2. Keep it EXTREMELY easy to admin. As a consultant this sucks, as a customer this is awesome. My students don't come back each upgrade, they don't need to - there's ROI. They don't need me to upgrade them. In 5 minutes I can tell them about anything important (e.g. view index on names.nsf from 7 to 8 or R&R from 6 to 7); they don't need me - that's ROI. I still have a few MS clients I serve. I earn $1000 or more in each "upgrade" for them, especially with the 32bit to 64bit 2003 to 2008 upgrade. With Lotus, I'm lucky to make $100 per upgrade. That's real ROI.

   3. Keep it open source friendly, and get the bugs worked out in the Designer.

   4. Keep the old. There's nothing wrong with the uiWorkspace. Those non sexy old apps still work just fine, and it' cheaper to update them than rewrite them in XPages or Composite Apps.

   5. Where's an App Store for Lotus. AND it has to be one click buy to get Lotus licensing/downloads and apps from anybody who wants to put an app out there.

   Okay, here's the "atta-boy" and "beef" list.

   1. Keep up and increase the roadmap. Get it out their more. I think they memory lane Lotus video was better in someways than the the C*O targeted commercials because it shows where Lotus was and is. Make a "public" polished version of that they takes the roadmap and shows what coming 2-5 years out. Show how the Lotus roadmap is constant broken promises of vaporware but a product that's heading to version 9.

   2. It's too complicated to buy. Ed, keep up the work, now that you simplified the download names, you simplified the CALs, fix it so it is basically can be purchased on demand from any of us without quarterly reports and buying through equally frustrating middle vendors. Allow us to bundle with other services without having to go through the hassle of passport for 1-3 users. Basically, I want to just buy, install, and have register the software online in a SIMPLE registration form to get the customer their Passport account. If you really want the SMB market, please fix this.

   3. Except for weird bugs, I actually like the Eclipse move on the Designer. Fix it's myriad of little issues, make it faster and complete existing core functionality - like typeahead and refactoring. The free client is a great step forward, it's a return to R4 basically - it should have never left. Once again, great work, give it every school for free along with a free Express server or foundations software appliance.

   4. Get the server supported/certified on Ubuntu which is the last hurdle. It runs just fine anyway (I run it for my Lotus training lab/practice server).

   5. I like the boxing gloves to combat the FUD ads a while back. However, follow it up, show the data and prove the lies in public. Their lies are in public.

   6. Lift the no DA ban with Express with or w/o authentication. SMBs need integration just like the big dogs.

   7. Get Notes back as a file server. This was briefly there in R5. We used it even though its performance writing speed slowed as the database grew large. As someone posted earlier, this is must have UI improvement to basically be able to create a folder, and drag in a file. We can even version it, using the existing the form property already in Notes. Old versions can be hidden files so that people can even go back in time. People only use SharePoint cause they have to do something to organize that network or Outlook Public share - they got SharePoint for free and it's painless to get started with really simple stuff. With Outlook's public share's going away, this is a great point to offer out of the box functionality not requiring Quickr just for something that is really so core of a thing, often even more than e-mail.

   8. Fix Standard client and SSO and roaming, roaming needs to be supported again. Switching IDs is common even for "regular" users who switch to be their boss or that generic department id.

   9. We are part of the ShoreTel and Foundations beta. It has caused me to revisit Foundations. Three things for this really good platform.

   a. Make it cheaper. It's more expensive than Express.

   b. Make it free for the core product (before you install Domino/Start). Get that in the schools and free on Notes.net. Put it as a free download in a VM.

   c. Make Reach chat free like the other platforms so they get the same features.

   d. Sorry to the other IBM partner, but build into the product a toggle for web ports 80 and 443 to be Domino instead of Apache.

   e. Get the lawyers to condense the license clicks down to just one.

   f. Give the package builder better examples so I know how to fill out the "wizard" the first time right.

   There are a few other minor annoyances, but that would "finish" the big things in that one. It's ease of use is killer, it's backup and restore is great. It's ease of package install and upgrade is awesome (until Reach).

   10. Sorry to offend others, but the old can still be "sexy". The new iTunes chicklets are our Workspace icons. You don't have to throw away anything "old" Notes. Xpages requires you to be a developer. That's not true with Forms, Views, Actions, and @Formula language. I've seen a ton of UGLY Notes apps created in-house, they may cause us developers headaches, but they built value early on. Their problem is not that "anybody can or should cook", but that when the app grows to big, that we market ourselves there to redo those apps far better and cooler than some other more expensive product out there.

   11. I haven't found any MSes and IBMers who open themselves up for feedback (aka abuse) like you do. It's admirable. I hope your blog is required reading for the sales people and the design teams.

   12. For any developers and admins out their The Notes Design Blog group have been putting out things in development for feedback in their blog. Jump on it. It's this kind of openness that really has made Lotus shine. There's also the IdeaJam, too. Participate and improve the product. Several things the IBM has changed were done because we told them in the Idea Jam.

   We don't just need to vent here, we can do it through multiple channels constructively.

1. 95  Peter Presnell http://www.yellowverse.com | 6/15/2010 4:27:37 PM

   OK, One more....

   Don't force my organization into a new product purchase decision every time I might try to expand my Lotus product footprint. Have a single Lotus Server contract based upon size of server (or whatever the relevant metric is). e.g. If I have 8 Domino Servers and I suddenly decide I might like to try Quickr or Connections -- if I now have 7 Domino servers plus one Connection server it should not require my organization to make a decision to purchase a new product. I should be viewed as a reconfiguration of what I have.

   Why... because redeploying that old development/test server or whatever to deploy "NEW" software often becomes a huge decision (drama) over which I have little control. I just want to solve the needs of my customers the best way I can. As a developer I may have some influence over my application servers (or development servers). People often start using Sharepoint because it is "already there" for "free". If Quickr/Connections etc takes off my company will probably be back buying more servers and hence more license. They have to when I fill the servers up with more and more working solutions. Getting the momentum started is half the battle.

1. 96  Paul Mooney http://www.pmooney.net | 6/15/2010 4:31:26 PM

   From post 84

   "3. Enforce the IBM Rules of Engagement. IBM is killing its Business Partners on arbitrary, made-up-on-the-spur-of-the-moment rules to get around the Rules of Engagement. Look at LL for example. "You can sell it Business Partner, but the customer gets no SLA if you do." WTF? My VAD is collecting stories from all its BPs of how this issue is killing us and taking it back to IBM mgt. "

   Wow. Just wow.

1. 97  Andrew Pollack http://www.thenorth.com/apblog | 6/15/2010 4:34:19 PM

   @84 & @96 -- and IBM has the unmitigated gall to send me letters about how business partners must agree to ethics defined by IBM. As if I'd stoop that low.

1. 98  Mike Brown http://www.browniesblog.com | 6/15/2010 5:26:47 PM

   I wouldn't say that the passion has gone, but some of the belief has. I mean the belief that anything that we do is going to make difference to stop the perceived drift away from Domino.

   As the film { Link } says "when the legend becomes the fact then print the legend". The legend for a number of years now is that Notes is dying and companies are moving away from it. Is it actually true? I don't know. But if enough people repeat it then it becomes true by default.

   Here in Australia, there's enough people that *are* repeating it, unfortunately. It seems to taken on a momentum of its own. Companies are moving away from Notes, not because of any technological reasons, but because they hear that other companies are doing the same and/or they're fed up with IBM milking them. I've heard the phrase "we don't want to be the last company on Notes" more than once. In the end, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Print the legend.

   A year ago, I met a friend of a friend who's LAMP developer. He knew that I was doing Domino work before we met in person. When we got down to talking shop, the first thing he said to me was "I understand that you’re doing legacy stuff". Indignant at this, I was about to give him the full spiel: Domino's not dying; double-digit growth, 8.5's a great new version and so on. But I didn't. Because you know what? If he, and enough people like him, think that Notes is legacy, then Notes *is* legacy. Print the legend.

   Most Notes people that I know are planning their own exit strategies, me included. I wish it were otherwise, but if the market's shrinking then it's only a matter of time before I'm out of work unless I can move on.

   The irony here is that we're largely losing out to company that's almost on its knees, but surprisingly few people can see it yet. Microsoft may be doing well in the tactical battles -such as the one that's closest to our hearts - but strategically it is in deep, deep trouble across a number of fronts. Sharepoint, Exchange and .Net maybe the flavours of the month, but they're expensive, buggy crap. They're also horrendously interdependent upon each other. What Sharepoint? Well, you also need Windows clients, Windows server, Active Directory, SQL server and various sorts of CALs coming out of your ears. Shitloads of cash for no real gain. Companies will wake to this eventually. It's only a matter of time. You tie yourselves to their products at your own peril.

   If I do leave Domino, and I still hope that I don't have to, then open source, Ubuntu, CouchDB, LAMP are what I will go for. I'd rather fail with those than succeed with Microsoft and have my name attached to rubbish.

1. 99  Mike Robinson http://www.invcs.com | 6/15/2010 5:36:10 PM

   Here's the thing that gets me about the switch to .NET/Sharepoint (and sparked after following this blog and Jake H's blog). If this is the time to look for other areas of growth, then why Sharepoint specifically? Wouldn't it be prudent to look at the average consulting rate for MOSS devs compared to say other technologies that are more lucrative? I guess there's a belief that there are more sharepoint jobs than developers right (correct me if I am wrong), however the pay rate for a consultant/contract ain't "all that". Yeah you'll do okay, but if I am taking this time to start fresh, I want to know what's the biggest bang for the buck. If I am looking at something to emerse myself in for the for foresable future, wouldn't you look at Oracle dev and admins? I don't know very many Oracle folks complaining they can't find work. Heck if I wanted "job" security I'd go out and get my Cisco cert as they command a very good rate and salary.

   My point is that the last 10+ years of the tech job market isn't about the one thing you can do, but the several things you can do.

   I know Domino people who are pure devs (script only) or pure admins (no dev experience) struggle. I know many that are all the above, plus they know AD/Exchange, DB2/SQLServer, etc.( You get my point) do really well.

   But I would love to know if this community really feels there are way more sharepoint jobs than sharepoint devs

1. 100  Fredrik Stöckel http://www.twitter.com/fstockel | 6/15/2010 6:05:50 PM

   Here’s some thoughts about appdev in the Lotus/Domino world.

   I've been a Lotus/Domino developer for a long time now, but I actually see myself more as a "Web developer with Lotus/Domino as my tool of choice”. I have a deep interest in everything that has do with a browser and associated languages, and I spend a lot of time diving into new web-related technologies.

   Lotus/Domino (classic) is still a very powerful platform (as we all know) for developing web-applications that scales well if designed well. And I’m able to (most of the time) produce valid, effective and beautiful output { Link }

   (Things that I as a web-developer care deeply about, and that I want my weapon of choice to be able to deliver with ease)

   I’ve also invested time in learning XPages (did it at an early stage), and I now understand the concept (I hope) and feel that I can deliver XPages basted applications at an acceptable pace.

   I also cheat as a “part-time” instructor teaching XPages- and web-development. The reactions (in general) from the people that attend, are that XPages is a very nice technology and they want to start using it directly when they understand the power that has been given them.

   (I have seen people smile in an enthusiastic way when they realize how to do something that was a rather tedious task before. One guy even started to implement a “concept” of an application that’s been on his mind for a while right away)

   A huge problem though with XPages at the moment is the (lack of) documentation, especially the API documentation, and the content-assist that only works if certain criteria are meet - and only in certain contexts (which gives you the (false) impression that it’s broken). It leaves you with the feeling that it’s a bit “unfinished”. It’s very important to provide good documentation if you want people to adopt XPages.

   I sometimes get the feeling that I’m rather alone in my country preaching XPages.

   In all, XPages is a nice concept, and is the way forward if IBM/Lotus pays attention to details, details that are important for developers. We like to be able to utilize new technology, and we really like when we see that our platform of choice plays in the same league as the tools that follow the latest and greatest in technology and trends (HTML5, CSS3, SSJS et al).

   We want to be modern (and in fashion) and use tools that works and allows us to rapidly deliver applications that follows and behaves the way (web-) applications are built today (dazzling, clean, effective and optimized output).

   This will make us interested, use it, and start talking about it.

   Fredrik

1. 101  David (The Notes Guy in Seattle)  | 6/15/2010 6:09:36 PM

   Wow, Living on the west coast certainly sets me behind the times. There are already 99 posts in one day. What value could I possibly add to this discussion that hasn't been said here already or that I have posted previously?

   Consider this: Can you make a better hamburger than McDonalds? Of course! you might say. Who couldn't?! Then I ask you: So why is McDonalds so much richer than you?

   The answer is that it isn't about who makes the best hamburger. It's about the system of their business that makes them so successful. This same principle applies to everything including software.

   A great explanation of why one product or idea or position wins out over another can be found in the book "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" by Robert Cialdini. I mentioned this before, but expect no one reading here took the time to check it out.

1. 102  David (The Notes Guy in Seattle)  | 6/15/2010 6:13:44 PM

1. 103  John Turnbow http://www.recondite2.com | 6/15/2010 6:35:29 PM

   Ed, I think you are getting it: " The fact that an IBM rep who gets to meet with a CIO, CFO, or CEO has a hundred different product lines to cover". Maybe the salesreps need to have more focus like only representing Lotus Notes/Domino, Sametime & SUT, Quicker and Symphony. Keep it there and they'll be more effective.

   Lotus Knows campain.. I know, you know, the people on this blog know, but does anyone else know? I feel like I'm on the old radio show "The Shadow knows".

   The last good campain that was seen and felt wide and far was R5 - SuperHuman Software!

   Also, while we are on this. Microsoft has done a good job in wearing down the IBM brand. Really need to work on this guys.

1. 104  Doug Finner  | 6/15/2010 7:13:38 PM

   Sharepoint out of the box provides a company with a sexy looking framework that lets people collaborate on MS Office files. Since the entire universe pretty much uses Office and since most docs need collaboration, this is a HUGE selling point. Add that it's integrated immediately with AD so the user logs onto their PC and pretty much their entire authorization rights are set is pretty sweet too.

   I'm at 6.5 so this may be different in later revs, but the basic gui for SP is just nicer looking; clean icons, smooth lines, yada yada yada. Doing the same out of the box with a Notes app is possible but not easy (please, dear <deity of choice> let me use pngs....paaaleeeeaasss).

   And it is about marketing. The MS guys own the OS stack, the authentication layer, the Office apps, so why not he rest of the apps/web layer too? They're damn good at selling integration even if the truth ain't quite that lovely.

   FWIW, this is a great discussion about the difference between typical and exceptional:

   { Link }

   Great post, Ed and thanks so very much for listening.

1. 105  ed brill http://www.edbrill.com | 6/15/2010 7:18:48 PM
   
   

   @103 absolutely not true. The IBM brand is recognized by almost every measure as one of the top brands in the world. What MS and others, perhaps self-inflicted, have done, is keep "Lotus" somehow separate from that IBM brand. That any CIO in the world would question IBM's commitment to a product the way Notes has been constantly questioned for the last 12 years is so disconnected from the brand promise of IBM that I really wonder how we got here.

1. 106  John Turnbow http://www.recondite2.com | 6/15/2010 7:43:38 PM

   Somehow that message of commitment needs to get there.

1. 107  Doug Finner  | 6/15/2010 7:50:34 PM

   So I guess I should be willing define my 'why'.

   A bit of background.

   I'm not a classically trained dev; I backed in via Symphony (the original Symphony) and found myself doing Lotus 123 development and then Notes. It's weirder than that, but you get the idea.

   I work for a smallish medical device design/build house a bit north of Boston. Our totally home-grown (*) app set runs a large part of our assembly and quality systems; graphic assembly process system, training record management, failure tracking, non-conformance management, vendor approval, CAPA, esigs, all of it Part 11 compliant.

   So my value position to the business? One production server. One guy doing dev and admin work. I don't work nights. I don't work weekends. I come to work on time, go home on time, and take vacations where I'm not on-line all the time fixing problems. Do that with anything in the MS stack - go on, do it! I can't sell this concept to IT; they can't even what I'm saying. I do Notes, one thing, how hard can that be?

   Why do I do the work I do? I have a mission; I provide people the stuff they need to do their work. I get it for them fast and cheap. If it doesn't work, I'll make it work. If it breaks I'll fix it. I understand that building medical devices is different from building just any widget and it's my passion to help people do the right thing the right way.

   Notes provides me the platform to accomplish this mission in a way that I couldn't possibly do with anything else.

   Do my users care about the platform? No. They care about getting work done NOW. Do I let them know it's done using Notes? You betcha; every time I get a chance. I peg IT every time I can with how easy it is to do what I do (to no effect).

   I love Notes; it's paid my bills for quite a while and provided me with an outlet for creativity that I've not had before.

   Bedtime approacheth. Time to stop rambling.

   Doug

   (*) Give credit where due:

   TeamStudio Configurator and the filter set - saves my rear any time I use it. Awesome app, awesome company.

   Integra4Notes - why oh why isn't this baked into Notes? Everybody need Excel sheets and reports. Integra rocks.

   OpenNTF.org - Specifically TriggerHappy and AuditManager - THE ONLY way to generate audit trails (big deal for a medical device company). This one is a game changer for the way I do regulatory compliance.

   OpenNTF and Nathan T. Freeman - thanks for all you do.

   LDD - without LDD (actually going all the way back to the CompuServe forums), I'd never get anything complex done; as a solo dev (since forever) the on-line community is my go to resource.

   Chris Blatnick and InterfaceMatters (before he was turned to the dark side). This guy opened up my eyes to the whole 'Notes isn't necessarily ugly' way of looking at design. We need more of these folks

   CoexLinks - when we migrated from Notes mail to Exchange, CoexLinks saved my rear; what was going to be a major rewrite of all my apps turned into 10 minutes work. Ben, thank you!

   Apologies to any person or company I've forgotten. It's a great community with great tools.

1. 108  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 6/15/2010 8:00:55 PM

   "I really wonder how we got here."

   Really? 'cause there's about 10 blog posts and over 100 comments on this very thread that provide intricate detail on how we got here. We got here because IBM put forth a strong message labeling Notes & Domino as legacy, then claimed they were building a replacement, then cancelled the replacement, then focused 100% of the market positioning on messaging instead of applications. Coupled with sales strategies that actively disincented account renewals, made it hard to actually buy, and a competitive arena that figured out how to capitalize on IBM's blunders -- and you have the perfect recipe to end up where you are today.

   Does that about sum it up?

1. 109  Richard Schwartz http://www.poweroftheschwartz.com | 6/15/2010 8:30:12 PM

   Wow. I've made it through both this thread and Jonvon's. So many things I agree with. A few I disagree with. Great discussion, but still not all the bases are covered. There is one area that I think has not been covered well, and I think it is the key.

   Jonvon brought up Gartner, and I think that situation is a symptom of the key issue: thought leadership. Ed, you asked "But how do you get developers to get on board with it?" Others have pointed out that this misses the point in some important ways, and I agree with that. It's not developers you need to get on board. It's also not the C-level decision makers that you need to get on board. It is the people who influence the C-levels that you need to get on board! That's going to be a hard task, but that's what you need to do.

   It's not _all_ you need to do, but without a big gain in the share of thought leadership accepting and promoting Domino as an application platform, you're going to have an uphill climb. IBM could embrace dozens of the good suggestions made in these threads and execute flawlessly, but still you will probably fall short if you don't have the thought leadership on board.

   Analysts like Gartner are not the only thought leaders I'm thinking about. And the blogger/pundit thought leaders? We in the yellowverse don't count, and the ones out there who do count are mostly a lost cause, so I'm not really thinking about them either. But what about the enterprise architects? There's been no mention of enterprise architects in either of these threads. Developers in the enterprise don't determine what tools and technologies will be used, and CIOs don't make these decisions based solely on analyst recommendations either. Why aren't the architects who do the research for their CIOs, and who draft the long-term application strategies for their enterprises flocking to Domino as an application platform? Answer that question and you will go a long way toward understanding what you need to do.

   Here's a suggestion: bring in the enterprise architects who work for IBM internally and in your services business and engage them in discussions with your team, with the engineering team, and maybe even with some of your partners or customers who have been doing real cutting-edge work with Domino as an app dev platform. Bring in the enterprise architects from your premiere customers, too, especially the ones from the messaging customers whom you know under-utilize Notes and Domino capabilities. Make it a diverse group that includes some architects who are deeply into mobile and cloud, some who have cut their teeth in SQL but are now looking at NoSQL, some who are true blue, and some who are anything but. Bring them in and find out what they know about Domino as an application development platform. Find out what they don't know, too. And find out what you need to do in order to get them on board, even partially on board. I suspect I know a few areas that they will hammer you on (e.g., not fitting in well with the tools, methodologies and governance processes that they use with their other technologies will be a biggie!), but I'll bet there would be some eye-opening surprises, too.

1. 110  carlos  | 6/15/2010 9:08:38 PM

   Ed, Thanks for the post...I think you can feel the frustration we in the Notes community live every day. "You still use Notes", "Notes s*>*>*" Sharepoint, outlook is better" and the best one , he is the Notes admin, I used to be proud to be called a Notes admin, but lately it is getting harder to feel proud about a product that most users hate, we get not support from exec, and when it come to renew we need to justify that moving to something else is too expensive. I blame IBM for this and their lack attention to the Dev community, admin, students and CIO, CEO and the people that make decisions. Anyway, Thanks Ed and I hope you can make same changes.....CJH

1. 111  Graham Dodge  | 6/15/2010 10:17:35 PM

   Why the heck is (almost) everyone so defeatist here??? We all know that Lotus has taken some hits over the last few years - some self-inflicted and some because of Microsoft's lack of ethics. So now that we've got the whinge off our collective chests then lets get back into the market and kick some butt.

1. 112  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 6/15/2010 10:38:18 PM
   
   

   @108 I meant specifically that someone is asserting that MS is beating up the IBM brand.

   re "then focused 100% of the market positioning on messaging instead of applications" I don't agree with this at all. XPages, Composite Apps, OpenNTF, all of that has been focused on apps. { Link } anyone? XPages roadshows and workshops? It's not enough, and I'm admitting it's not enough. But it's not just a messaging message, either.

1. 113  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 6/15/2010 10:47:16 PM
   
   

   @All - thank you for the comments and emails. I haven't digested them all yet. There are some extremely prescient posts and comments here. I appreciate that this has been a very open and honest conversation, with little of the snarkiness that could have come out (though you're always welcome here, Bill).

   As someone privately wrote me today, the day that a discussion like this DOESN'T prompt 100 comments, that's when Notes would truly be dead. That there continues to be a passionate and energized community, all over the world, is what got us here over the last six years, and I'm not about to let go of that.

   I've taken a few of these comments and shared them with my fellow Lotus brand execs. We have an operations review this week where I will share them with more. I haven't read every comment yet and I won't be able to acknowledge all of them directly. But thanks, and keep 'em coming.

1. 114  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 6/15/2010 10:58:49 PM

   @112 - You don't agree? Okay, then answer the questions about how IBM positions Domino as an application platform. Xpages, which has been available for 0.2 releases now, doesn't qualify. We're talking about a story for the last ten years, so the last ten months isn't a response. As much as I sincerely adore and appreciate IBM's commitment to OpenNTF, we're still talking about an institution who's very purpose was to combat IBM's lackadaisical attitude about Notes as a dev platform. And Composite Apps, while a pretty cool concept, can hardly be said to have taken off. There's a handful of 1.0 releases of plugins from ISVs -- that's about it.

   You don't have to accept my argument. I'll concede that I might be missing the Lotus Knows boat. But if I'm missing it, then so is Gartner, where you don't even appear on the chart. So does your sales force, who wouldn't propose Domino as a custom platform if you shot them in the crotch with a laser. And so does your customer base, who abandons Notes/Domino as an app platform because they want to pick from "Java or .NET," never understanding that picking Notes/Domino means picking Java, or that picking Java means Notes & Domino are the delivery mechanisms.

   Ed, just look at your licensing strategy: you have a messaging CAL and an enterprise CAL. Has IBM ever actually told a customer why an enterprise CAL is better? Let's imagine the conversation:

   "With the enterprise CAL you can run custom applications."

   "Applications? Like what?"

   "Well, like the Teamroom, except we don't support that anymore. Or the Doc Library. That was cool in 1995. Or the Discussion template. Or Blogs. You can have any number of blogs for users if they have the enterprise CALs. Plus you can build your own solutions."

   "Cool! How do I build my own?"

   "Well, you can do it for the rich client or you can do it for browsers. Or you can do it for both with Xpages.

   "Xwhat?"

   "Maybe you should find a business partner to help you."

   "So get some other company to tell me how I should spend more money on the software I already paid you for? Maybe you're also the brother of the former deputy minister of oil for Nigeria and I should fax over my banking details. :-/

1. 115  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 6/15/2010 11:19:36 PM
   
   

   90% of all CAL purchases are the Enterprise CAL.

1. 116  dp  | 6/15/2010 11:21:48 PM

   Wow, I did not look at this blog for a few hours and to see this post and so many comments to read. Having read just the post and a few random comments, I remembered a quote I read a week or so ago that really resounded with me:

   - Steve Jobs on why he likes the consumer market and not so much the enterprise market: "In the enterprise,..., The people that use the products aren't the ones that choose which products are used, and the people that make those decisions, are sometimes confused".

   I do believe he is right in what I have seen happen at many of former Lotus Notes deployments that have made the switch to a competing platform.

   IMHO IBM needs to do two things:

   1) Make the needed investments in the development of an already "superior" product with the goal of making it more stable, faster while adding the right set of "new" features (I did not say feature rich, nor do I mean that) and not missing on key features the community and customers have been asking for years. There are two many excuses that can be made by these confused people by pointing out some obscure features that are missing or "work" differently compared to two or three competing products. I believe IBM compromises too much while trying to manage the costs around releasing a product and misses on resolving a lot what they consider to be minor, but customers consider to be deal breakers. If one customer complains about something, don't wait to hear from 10 other customers to justify making the investment to fix or add to the product. The "confused people" will simply point out to an Internet post of someone complaining of the issue they are having without reporting it themselves to IBM. It takes too long for maintenance releases to catch up with the what many customers expect/need at each new major release. Although the same can said of competitors, but IBM needs to do it ...

   2) I think it is time for IBM to re-invent Lotus and start working on solutions that reach beyond collaboration within just one enterprise and start addressing the needs of large and small companies, governments, individuals to merge and collaborate with rapidity and low cost. I don't care what people say, nobody out there offers this today...

   Now on to reading the other comments...

1. 117  Graham Dodge  | 6/15/2010 11:32:24 PM

   @114 Not really a fair comment Nathan or are you suggesting that Sharepoint apps write themselves? There is always an element of customization required in application development.

1. 118  Tripp Black http://www.mindwatering.com | 6/15/2010 11:42:25 PM

   @114

   Nathan you had me until Xwhat and find a business partner, which is ironic since we are both customer and a BP.

   1. Branding is key. I started out with with a graphics background. This is something I understand well.

   2. Enterprise is both the good and the bad.

   These two thoughts also added clarity for me on a bigger paradigm issue.

   First, branding is great when you stick with the names (Think iNotes--> DWA --> iNotes). Let's take Apple, they've got: AirPort, iChat, iCal, iMail, Automator, Postcast Capture. You have no idea what some of them are until you click the icon and open them up. This vendor has a smaller market share but hasn't been accused dead in a while (they have different issues). Their apps are pathetically simple but are easy to access and use. Even with these cool crude little apps, everyone calls them trendsetters. We are a happy Mac shop and Notes shop.

   As we've already discussed apps is where IBM, BPs, and Lotus admins have all failed us as a community. (I'm a BP, a customer, and an admin.)

   How long has it been, since an admin allowed all users to create new applications (aka security field blank) on the server? Where's the start my blog or podcast on the Notes Welcome page that auto kicks off the New App command, brings up a personalization wizard screen and allows me as the user to see "it just works"? That afterwards auto updates to let me add to my new blog or podcast?

   It's that shift from groupware to enterprise software. Lotus is so far down the enterprise path that we dole out breadcrumbs to the users who are just barely able to do their jobs (maybe not even). Great, I can scale to 10,000 concurrent users on a 4 procesor box with 8GB of RAM - but they're misserable. We've lost that "SuperHuman" concept which is where Apple markets well, but they still don't even have way of doing a meeting with invitees. iMail and iCal are even separate apps! As for the other goliath in Redmond, you get past a form, a view/table, and a document repository and it's done, you need a real app anyway. Who cares if it had great "themes" to pick from. Let's learn and acquire those attributes back that are lacking now.

   Again, a lot of our pain is self inflicted - it's a side effect of our growth and success as "enterprise software". As an admin, I don't want my users messing up the place because they are inherently messy. SharePoint and Quickr are great for admins because they limit the sandbox mess to nice little controlled containers. How many of us really want to get dirty? As an admin, I know I don't want or have time to fix my environment messed up by users. Users hate Notes because we admins make Notes suck - most admins don't even turn on a full-text index in mail files so users can find documents. IBM is partly to blame as they've happily given us what we asked for, but some of the blame is ours. The pendulum has swung too far.

   We need to keep what we've gained in scaleability, performance, and Notes/Domino's great "guts". What we need to get back to is empowering the user to get work done and get out of their way. That is what we believe we need to demand, and what will get the users on "our side". Because what users want is anyone on their side.

   Another 2 cents...

   Thanks,

   Tripp

1. 119  Christian Tillmanns http://www.informica.ch | 6/16/2010 1:07:35 AM

   I like Grahams post. Kick ass... That sums it up.

   Ed, as you have seen, your followers still care, yes. But they will stop caring, if IBM continues like that. People tend to stick with what they know until the last moment. The End Could Be Near! ;-)

   We have heard probably about most of the problems. We have heard everything about the past and the present, but nothing about the future. Ed, share with us, where do you want to go from here? Share with us your strategy! What are you going to fix now (PA! PLEASE!!) and what later? That would be much more interesting. Do you know it? Or are you - like many of us - sitting in front of a clean sheet and you don't know where you want to go? Do you want to relaunch Notes? (Lotus Knows isn't the relaunch of Notes? No, it can't be ... impossible...silly me).

   We as BPs need to know, where IBM is heading with Notes. As you see in the posts, there isn't a clear picture at all about your strategy! I don't mean Vulcan, I mean market share, market segments and the marketing mix. Don't worry, we will bash IBM for those silly ideas, that's a tradition and must be done, but in the end, those who believe it works, will follow.

   Can we talk about the future from now on? Can we get a statement from your bosses bosses bosses (that wouldn't be god allready) that they want to fight and win back the lost market share? I give you an example, in terms of number of companies, Notes doesn't even have 1% of market share in Switzerland and it continues to decline. Notes is almost dead here. Would be nice, if the few remaining BPs and IBM stick together and change that, instead of whining (inside IBM, too) how bad the strategy works. I am really sick of complaining. I don't know how many times I offered help to change it and I won't do it again. I am sick of running into walls with ideas of how we could penetrate the market and it never works due to IBMs processes and the lack of will to take a risk. Your employees react like CxO's. They don't get fired, if they don't sell Notes, but they can get fired for doing something different do sell Notes. Strange world, isn't it?

   I am sick having to comfort IBM employees because they lost another account to MS and I am angry because I can not change it.

   Now can we please get a guidance, where to go? You are the face of Lotus Notes. We want to hear it from you where Notes is heading.

1. 120  John Smart http://www.greyduck.com | 6/16/2010 1:08:35 AM

   First: Ed, this post is one of the reasons I'm in your corner. This is an open, passionate post where you are seeking to learn. It's not out of the ordinary to see that from you, and I hope you are continually reminded of how special that is. Thanks.

   Now that that's out of the way...

   Many of the great points here can be categorized into:

   1) It _IS_ about the marketing.

   2) Wow users within the first x minutes. (Nifty 50, templates, @60)

   3) Polish the product.

   The first category is about generating buzz. When you dismiss "Lotus Marketing Sucks doomsayers", I fear you are defining marketing as advertising, but many of us define marketing as what trends people perceive and the education & demand generation of an audience. It's what killed much of the remaining of Notes buzz in the first place (@79 & @108). Articulate clearly to c-level people and the system architects they rely on (@109), for starters. When the ratio of executives who ask "But what about Notes for this?" rises to 1 in 2,000, then I'll accept that the marketing machine is going great.

   I think the last two should be combined into a coherent strategy to _keep_ buzz. Ben's comment (@60) is spot on but not deep enough because not only should LND provide a quick payback initially, but quick payback should be a goal every time a user or developer is looking to try something new. Anything they set out to do should be quickly rewarded with a "I can kick ass with this" feeling that 'pulls' them up the learning curve into deeper waters where they start discovering for themselves out how impressive Notes really is. (side note: check out Kathy Sierra's presentation here: { Link } ) This is incredibly difficult because there is no quick fix; it should inform everything you do.

   - the designer documentation's examples should be replaced with good examples with compelling user cases explaining WHY it's important. (Anti-example: { Link } )

   - a good debugger for XPages is necessary (said in previous comments, but in this context isn't not part of a laundry list, it's part of a brand strategy)

   - Tip of the day wizards that invite users to check out more about their Notes client or designer. Tips should include things that differentiate Notes from Outlook. For example: How views show all documents regardless of if/how they've been foldered, how Out Of Office can be scheduled ahead of time, how to set up rules to filter your inbox, how to automatically recognize addresses, build quick widgets, etc, etc, etc.

   - When designing, XPage controls have a UI for editing properties and then a table of 'All Properties' for the advanced developers; this is _exactly_ what I'm talking about. Making it graspable for beginners without neutering it for the experts is high art, IMO.

   This is not the IBM way to focus on things, I realize. The proof of this is how few people are complaining that Notes is behind or outdated; we're all talking about perceptions. IBM's Lotus has always been strong on the technology and what it can do, weaker on the packaging and communicating what it can do, and weaker still on communicating what it allows the user to do.

   And so we sit here, holding the technical high ground while we wonder if/how we're getting betamaxed. Ed, I'm a lot closer to a fanboy than a doomsayer, and I still say it's about pre-sales and post-sales marketing.

1. 121  Jerry Glover http://www.jerryglover.com | 6/16/2010 1:18:23 AM

   Ed @105, unfortunately the issue is not brand recognition so much as relevance. While just about everyone will say they recognize the name "IBM", how many will say IBM has products or services that are relevant to their business needs? As Rich touches on, this is mindshare more than just simple recognition. High-concept brand advertising on television doesn't necessarily translate to practical, accessible, real-world solutions for many organizations. I blogged briefly about the subject a few weeks ago (a post pretty much lost to the yellowverse ether as soon after posting I discovered I had fallen off PlanetLotus due to a long period of blog inactivity). Check out my blog post to for a link to an independent survey which points to IBM's brand problem in the U.S. SMB market. { Link }

1. 122  Tomas Ekström http://www.rndnotes.com | 6/16/2010 2:00:23 AM

   @32 I agree 100%.

   I've learned that the best way to market you're self is to emphasize your strengths. Lotus has clearly forgotten that!

   As I see it, even though the point made in @32 is reducing the development speed, it is still a very rapid development environment! Please bring it out to all the C-O's. Don't let them forget that.

   A couple of weeks back we made an offer for an workflow app with a per document security. Compared with a M(O)SS 2010 based solution LND offered 50% less development time.

   This is one of the messages you must get out! Day in and day out!

   And make the workspace more shiny! iPhone has copied it very successfully and now when you finally bring in the possibility to leave the 16 windows colors behind.

   Use the opportunity to make the whole workspace more shiny! Redesign all of the Lotus icons and design a new flashy background!

   Do not underestimate the value of repainting the house!

1. 123  Lars Berntrop-Bos http://www.bleedyellow.com/blogs/scriptlars/ | 6/16/2010 3:49:12 AM

   Thank you for your open invitation, I value your open mindset. And yes, I do see lots of improvements.

   My comments in no particular order:

   In my perception, one of Jonvons lines of argument was that the positioning of Domino as an appdev envronment seems to be missing. I would suggest that you try to change that.

   Another angle I pick up here and on jonvons thread is the need to just make users more aware of the incredible abilities of Notes/Domino. IBM moved in the right direction with the creation of the Multimedia Library. But: pricing is vague (i.e. not published) and I think it should be offered more agressively. Cannot comment on pricing because i cannot find it, majar part of the problem.

   #42 has valid points, in a summary: the ROI message, together with the updated UI is a very powerful combination that should be screamed from the rooftops.

   Also, #50 is worrying. A bonus on licenses renewed would change this.

   An anecdote from R5 days: At NL R5 launch party the SuperHuman video was shown in sepia instead of full color due to a glitch in the projector. (I had seen it in full color before and after) I felt it had much more impact. Tried to communicate this to the Lotus peeps present. Blank reaction.

   #108: harsh, but feels true.

   Domino forever!

1. 124  Catalin A.  | 6/16/2010 4:04:30 AM

   Hi,

   Some areas of improvement (in my opinion):

   1. new releases (well, Lotus 8x); was a chance to make it really great, instead you have to fall back to Basic mode to make it usable. Can't disappoint users like this, I'm sorry. And how about versions for OS X and Linux -- when will they become functional 100%? No fixup for OS X? C'mon... Was expecting an IBM 100% supported Linux thin client running Lotus Notes/Symphony with the speed of light... Instead you rely on forums to get 'handled' libraries to make it work.

   2. where are the cool, enterprise grade 'socially' aware apps for Lotus? Things that will make you say wow? Widgets & stuff, they are ok from a geeky point of view, but for the regular users they come on top of the new interface which is already cluttered and cumbersome. Plus that instead of adding value to the core product, it actually fragments it!

   3. improve .nsf! One of the major Lotus benefits, the ability of working offline does not work anymore with the size of today's databases (oops, Applications). So .nsf became from a major selling point to a major pain in the... DAOS is great, but with limited results. And again, how come the competition is actually finding solutions?! (see Google Offline); this is what IBM should do, not try to reinvent itself in a circular type of motion. Sorry, but I can't buy SSD drives for all my users yet to counteract the bad design!

   4. Advertise the flexibility and the ROI of solutions developed on Lotus. Advertise how things made in Lotus 6 still work flawlessly in Lotus 8... Show new developers cools apps and open source them for everyone to learn and take things to the next level!

   5. clustering; why not take it to the next level? This is a great way to have sustainable development aligned with the business needs, and from a ROI perspective MS Exchange doesn't even come close!

   6. Lotus Domino: Put it on OS X Server; no OS CALs required will make many companies go for it! (I can see small companies running clusters of 5xMacMini ;-]) Ride the 'cool' wave IBM! It may rub on you!

   7. 'Lotus Knows' type of marketing campaigns. Hate to break it to whoever made the campaign, but they're pitching Lotus against a different type of beast here; whatever Lotus knows, Google knows better. So why not stick to what you do best?

   I've just finished certifying myself for Lotus 8 Admin, and I am not a developer though I can find my way around Designer occasionally.

   So I do have the greatest interest in its success, however, in the same time there are some things that make me wonder if I chose the right path...

   Thx,

   Catalin

1. 125  Henning Heinz  | 6/16/2010 4:33:38 AM

   I am still puzzled how most comments fit IBM's theory of growth and confidence? Now this thread is full of problem descriptions, suggestions and ideas how IBM could do better although IBM never said they have a problem.

   So isn't the real question how the people writing this comments can do better? How can IBM have growth since 2004 and developers and admins say it gets harder to find Domino opportunities?

   IBM does not need Notes and Domino to survive. I can only recommend to think about this. IBM does not need to do anything and if they do something it will only cost them money in the short term.

1. 126  Mike Brown http://www.browniesblog.com | 6/16/2010 5:17:10 AM

   @114. Agreed, Graham.

   The trouble is that management see how it easy it is to set up simple shared places and document repositories, and then let themselves get carried away. "Let's do *all* our app development with this!" they cry.

   I know of one company trying to do its first *major* app in Sharepoint. You know, one with workflow and business intelligence: one that actually *does* something. The project's been going the best part of a year, and I don't anybody's seen even seen a prototype yet.

   Do you think those managers are going to recant their newfound devotion though? More likely that they'll just keep throwing money at the problem rather than admit that they made the wrong choice.

   @124. Some arguments here, Catalin. Using your numbering:

   3. Didn't Google recently turn off their offline facility with hardly any warning to customers? And whatever happened to Google Gears?

   6. "Lotus Domino: Put it on OS X Server; no OS CALs required" Domino's been on Linux for what, ten years? Not only no OS CALs required but no OS purchase costs either.

1. 127  Ferdy http://www.ferdychristant.com | 6/16/2010 5:32:37 AM

   A lot of useful comments here, but Ed, I think your post and most of the comments drift away too much from the original problem identified by Jake and Jonvon: Jobs!

   Regardless of seat KPIs, IPO growth, marketing budget or IDE features, if developers have the feeling (rational or not) that they cannot make a long term living with Domino, they may leave, voluntary or forced by the market.

   You can make Domino more attractive in every way imaginable, but if it does not lead to more dev/admin jobs, people will continue leaving and no new blood will be added.

   I do not have integral job market numbers, but I know for my local market that .NET/SP opportunities are abundant, and Domino positions are a niche/rarity. With that perception in mind, and a family to maintain in a tough market, it makes sense what is happening now.

1. 128  Axel  | 6/16/2010 5:35:47 AM

   You are having this discussion for years and years.

   I read some of the answers and say to myself: Well that's the lack-of-sales-rep argument or here we are having a new instance of the "friendly"-fire-from-WAS-Portal and oh yet another of those "notes-to-schools" to create some Notes devs for the future, when they have to pay bills and stuff.

   Why not try to built a "Notes 2.0" based on couch, apache++, groovie and some ui-framework? Focussing on the strong business points of the product in 1992, long before the period I was a Notes developer.

1. 129  Catalin A.  | 6/16/2010 6:25:28 AM

   @Mike Brown

   3. Didn't Google recently turn off their offline facility with hardly any warning to customers? And whatever happened to Google Gears?

   Yes, and by no means understand that I am fan of them ;-) On the contrary! My point is that there are nowadays new technologies and .nsf is way behind on that.

   6. "Lotus Domino: Put it on OS X Server; no OS CALs required" Domino's been on Linux for what, ten years? Not only no OS CALs required but no OS purchase costs either.

   True, but have you seen Apple's numbers lately? They're on the roll!

   Now imagine this: hip entrepreneur A has a cool idea, gets 5 people involved, but instead of buying M$ licenses wants to have an OS X shop. Looks cool, people love the gear, and they are able to develop on Lotus platform using a cluster of cheap servers... Which doesn't happen now as there is no Administrator/Developer for OS X, nor a Domino for OS X server. I remember seeing a statistic about how many startups actually start on Macs (partly because the founders are fresh out of college and they come with them already...).

   Not counting as sells now, but as being able to develop your great new idea on something stable and well established as Lotus. I think this is among the elusive things missing. Now everyone develops for Google Aps and .net, but this will be the kind of thinking that might change that; there is (still) a huge and fairly stable market for Lotus apps, and I for once would love to be able to see more startups tap into it.

1. 130  Nick Hortovanyi http://blogs.toasttechnology.com.au/roller/hortovanyi/ | 6/16/2010 6:26:56 AM

   I wrote a rather long blog post in response to this discussion here { Link }

1. 131  Paul Withers http://hermes.intec.co.uk/intec/blog.nsf | 6/16/2010 6:48:06 AM

   One of the recurring themes is the absence of marketing of Domino as an application development platform. Like Nathan @114 I don't see sales reps doing that. But I'm not sure they are best-placed to do so. I think we need collaboration between IBM, business partners and customers to be able to show examples of the power of the platform. For that I'm not talking about standalone applications, I mean integration throughout the platform - from email, to live-text integration for functionality, to sidebar widgets for new requests or reporting, to what we have always envisaged as a database. It's something I was consdering doing before this week, and now I'm determined to achieve for an upcoming customer presentation.

   Discussions over recent months and comments on here also point that some developers are still viewing XPages as something they must use to redevelop their applications or build new apps. I can understand that, I was there myself. But as I say above, the power of Notes & Domino as an application development platform in 8.5.x is integration, but that takes re-education. That is an area I think IBM, as well as speakers at LUGs, can have an impact. My thoughts on this are too expansive to put in a comment, so I've written in more detail on my blog: { Link }

1. 132  Peter Wilson  | 6/16/2010 7:16:38 AM

   @108 well said. It's all about the mail.. email. All IBM needed to do was have a rock solid, super easy email and the groupware stuff was value add. Yes value add...

   Sure an amazing value add, but it's all about the email. If the iPhone couldn't function as a phone, all the rest is nice but it's missing the point.

   When people say Notes sucks, I don't think they say it just to be trendy... they are saying it because they've used Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook and things in Notes well and truly pi**ed them off. Sure, you've made great strides with the NotesDesign Blog, R8 etc, but that should have been done versions ago. Not your fault Ed, previous management decisions.

   In hindsight, IBM/Lotus would have allowed a groupware and/or an email client to the Notes (Domino) backend. cc:Mail clients who just wanted email could have used their email client which was super fast, easy to use, and writen specifically for email. It wouldn't have been bound to Notes design/feature updates.

   Fast forward to 2010, it's all about the web. So I'd focus all my resources on making an amazing email client via the web with a slick offline mode. You'll have to walk and chew gum with the fat Notes 8.x client too. Maybe sell the email client/Domino system for virtually nothing/free to gain marketshare again and possibly bring back some Exchange clients or halt who might consider leaving. Then have a flexibly pricing model for app/development licenses.

   Last resort, open source it all :-0

   Pete

1. 133  Michael Falstrup http://www.intelliglobe.dk | 6/16/2010 7:18:41 AM

   Edd, first i would start to say that you are one of the shining lights, when it comes to Lotus Awareness and what you do on this Blog and elsewhere is highly appreciated.

   In fear on repeating something that has already been said (agree on Ferdy comment 127), i would like to offer some points from a partners perspective.

   We are an IBM partner situated in Denmark and for the last year we have lost several Notes Customer to MS, even though the reasons are not logical and the MS technology can't give them the same solutions as Notes/Domino can.

   Why does this happen then!? Well i have my ideas on why and some of those things i can't change. For example, people are being told that Notes is dead or that some vendors have a close to monopoly in some areas on the market, giving them a clear advantage. Guess who ;-D.

   What i CAN do is to promote my solutions to the market and tell everybody about the nice things in Notes/Domino 8.5+, but then again this will not help anything if the awareness and promotion of the platform in general is low or 0.

   For example I have seen no LotusKnows marketing/events in Denmark AT ALL as i have NOT seen ANY marketing on the Lotus platform in general AT ALL. Why??

   We have 2 major it-media sites in Denmark:

   www.computerworld.dk

   www.version2.dk

   and every time I browse these sites all banners advertising are primarily from Microsoft. I never see anything from IBM Lotus and if i see anything from IBM at all, well it's all about servers.

   In my book you need to do several things, but most importantly:

   1. Move your focus from a license point of view to a solution point of view. Why!? Because mail and calendar is out of the box and mainstream and Lotus should differ in the market through the platform for partner/customer solutions, with great integration and social awareness.

   2. Make people aware of Lotus, this was actually pointed out strongly at the LotusKnows IdeaJam, in public and LOUDLY and not just for the Lotus community (partner and customers).

   3. Make the cloud open for partner solutions NOW, both Notes Native and XSP solutions. Step ahead of Microsoft. And by all means, make it known to the world, shout it out and use the tools for it, like { Link } ( wonder why IBM isn't on the Client list, Microsoft and HP are ;-D ).

   My points are made from a Danish point of view, but i'm sure that it could be equally true to others.

1. 134  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 6/16/2010 7:19:28 AM

   @117 - "are you suggesting that Sharepoint apps write themselves?"

   From the customer's perspective, this might well be true. I've seen MSFT partners build application solutions as a loss-leader to get Sharepoint installed.

   @115 - Well, then clearly 90% of your customers get it, and are leveraging Notes as an app platform. They must be if they bothered to purchase the Enterprise CAL. So why are we even having this conversation? We can all go back to our regular jobs secure in the knowledge that the Notes app dev market is in tip top shape. Jonvon and Jake just happened to be in that 10% that doesn't leverage the product the right way.

   Cool, glad we straightened that out.

   If an IBM executive is going to ask how Notes got into this position, and then disregard the answers from customers and partners, I really don't get the point of this post. Is it distraction from conversations happening elsewhere? Just a forum for shouting into the wind? An attempt to play commenters off each other so nobody knows exactly what's going on?

   I also have a lot of trouble understanding how when someone talks about the sales & marketing position for the product, you reply with comments about engineering. Building something is not the same as selling it. (I'm the poster child for that distinction!) Just because IBM added a JSF application server to Domino doesn't mean that customers are being introduced to it and leveraging it. Just because IBM is making tremendous contributions to OpenNTF doesn't mean that the resulting software is ending up on the desktops of millions of users. Simply making available is not enough.

   If it were enough, you'd be on the Gartner magic quadrant for business application development. If it were enough, there would be 1000 job listings looking for Xpages experts on monster.com. If it were enough, you'd have admins for 100 million seats clamoring to get clients updated to 8.5.1 so they could rollout new clients that are pre-installed with implementations of all the great templates they can find on OpenNTF.

   Since none of these are happening, there must be a gap. The gap clearly isn't that Xpages, Composite Apps and OpenNTF are missing from the product. So it must be that they are missing from the customers.

   There simply is no other explanation.

1. 135  Philip Storry http://www.not-so-rapid.com | 6/16/2010 7:45:28 AM

   I have tried to write a reply several times, and each time I find myself bogged down in my own little pet peeves.

   (Not an uncommon problem in this thread, to be fair.)

   But the following two points have to be said, so what the heck...

   1. Where is our Community Edition?

   DB2 has one, and has had it for ages. It may not be used much, or it might be wildly popular. I don't know. But you have to remember that geeks learn in sandpits - manuals and training courses are tools of the last resort.

   And geeks are your core champions.

   In the R5 days, I could download any version and just get on with it. No credentials required.

   IBM have steadily hidden downloads away, making it more and more onerous to get a download.

   For me personally, a software licensing team handles these things at another site, I can't get anything but the production version my employer uses. Which is fine whilst it's reasonably current but I know that in a year's time when RNext comes alone I'll be behind the curve for a couple of years, until the global architecture team decides to upgrade and I see newer code.

   I can't easily - and legally - get hold of newer code to run at home in the meantime, to keep myself skilled.

   The free Designer client and the Amazon image aren't complete solutions. The Designer client is no good to me as an Admin who'd like to try out new features. The Amazon image costs me money to use.

   How do you expect to get new people into the product when you're hiding it and putting costs on it?

   LAMP is free. Microsoft gives Visual Studio to students alongside free bowls of breakfast cereal. But Notes is not only nowhere to be seen, but not even legally & freely accessible in a usable form.

   No wonder there's no new blood coming up...

   2. I'd agree that the predominant perception of Notes is for mail. Not just in user's eyes, but in the way IBM sells it.

   When Notes first came on the scene, it was unique. It created its own space - Groupware.

   Whatever happened to that? Why is IBM less effective at getting across the message that Notes is Groupware than it is at getting across the message that Notes does email?

   At the very least, it should be sold as "email and more". Very prominently.

   And I don't mean "enterprise collaboration". Enterprise collaboration is a snooze-fest term which isn't going to set the world on fire even if you give it a can of petrol and the world is already on fire. When you say enterprise collaboration, people turn off.

   Yet on this page, Notes is being sold as a "business email solution":

   { Link }

   And every other mention is enterpri...yawns*... Sorry, where were we?

   Oh yes. For Release 9, why not announce that Groupware is back?

1. 136  Charles Robinson http://www.cubert.net | 6/16/2010 8:30:45 AM

   I shared this with Ed last week, but I think it's applicable to the direction this discussion has gone. { Link }

1. 137  Maina  | 6/16/2010 8:35:57 AM

   @135 - yes, I too miss the days where you could download Notes\Domino freely. Since loosing my job as a Notes Admin to Microsoft Online - and having been a power house for 6.5x, I recently saw 8.5.1 and have spent quality time looking at all the wikis - but not actually being able to download Domino 8x - I am finding myself being forced to learn Sharepoint and Exchange since they are freely available. Heck even RIM - (the crackberry guys) are giving away FREE Blackberry Enterprise Server licences for Exchange...

1. 138  ed  | 6/16/2010 8:41:04 AM

   There are so many worthwhile comments (130!) here that I'm not sure there is anything new I can offer but I will try to keep it brief and not repeat others' worthy comments.

   1. advertising. Easy. Lotus Knows = who (non-yellow) cares? Don't patronize or be corporate because imho you need to change the mindset, i.e. be Leery or be Apple, call out the liars and misinformation, take them to court (IBM has the world record for patents I heard).

   2. integrate and standardize. Hard. There was value in the old monolithic Domino server that did everything, but now you need multiple servers and each looks and administers separately and differently i.e. just like microsoft. I want the kitchen sink to be part of Domino, and I want the address book to store all licenses (e.g. even 60 day unlimited user trial licenses for sub-component X) for whatever I'm entitled to so I can allocate and manage it and turn features on and off.

   3. ActiveDirectory native support. Medium. My web clients can use AD credentials but not my Notes clients i.e. another thing for users to complain about.

   4. branding. Very Hard. Maybe instead of fighting "when will IBM kill Lotus", maybe v9 is the time to re-name and re-launch the brand i.e. a name change won't lose you existing customers but it will bring extra attention (at a large price).

   5. indexing. I can't quickly in Notes open my 65gb db with 2.25million records that is constantly replicating with 40 servers because the views are always refreshing i.e. nsf has its benefits but indexing is not one of them. I like that there are solutions like using a db2 server to address this but that goes counter to point 2.

   6. I.D.E. hard. I've been developing since 4.6 and still use the old developer interface when I can as I prefer it to the slower buggier Eclipse client. But I prefer VisualStudio with TeamStudio a lot (lot!) more than either i.e. why can't I get extensions to VS2008 to be able to develop for Notes?

   (Whew - that took over an hour.)

1. 139  Bud Bundy  | 6/16/2010 8:45:43 AM

   It just occurred to me that there have been several ideas I have had over the years for great web apps that used Domino, but I always came crashing down when I realized that in order to do the things I wanted I needed secure logins, and those would each have to be paid for. Like most new ventures I had planned ad-supported revenue, so I could not possibly have 100,000 non-paying users on my Domino server as that would cost many more thousands of dollars than I had available.

   My solution - make the Utility Server Express much more affordable, say $100 or less per PVU, forget the limits on PVUs. No mail users, just web apps, but with all the great Domino features such as clustering, DECS, etc. Why can't I have ten Utility Express servers? Then I could build a Facebook-type website, and have it relatively cost-competitive to LAMP.

   Wouldn't it look great for IBM if a site like Facebook was running Lotus Domino? I can feel all of the blog readers shock and awe at the mere thought!

   My last item is to work harder on mobility. The designer has nothing to make it easier to develop for iPhone, Android, or anything else. Imagine what a bunch of nice apps for either would do for server sales? What a demo that would make. "You mean to run all these great apps I need a Lotus Notes server? Get me IBM on the phone!"

   Have a prebuilt Notes template (say for basic CRM), and an app that users can download free from Android Market that syncs data with the Notes server, and you will have mobile Sales departments all over you in no time...

1. 140  Djilali  | 6/16/2010 8:52:01 AM

   @128 Axel Thanks, that was exactly my point in comment #20.

   Web and Enterprise worlds are colliding. Google Apps is on the rise and MS is trying hard prevent people from moving mail and apps to the (Google) cloud.

   IBM has to acknowledge that the new generation of developers want efficient and light tools.

   CTO and managers want solutions easy to integrate and manage in their infrastructure.

   Users want services and features and that's the developer job.

   But how to build on a platform nobody that wants to deploy anymore with tools so lagging behind the competition?

1. 141  Patrick Picard  | 6/16/2010 9:12:20 AM

   I'll try to give a fresh perspective from a "youngin" in the domino world. I can be considered of the demographics some are alluding to...the

   university/college student. I'm in the midst of completing my degree while working full-time. I started working at my organization in the call-center

   while going to college. We were on Notes 6.5/7 at that time. As a user, I HATED it. It's butt ugly. Notes 7 was quite stable though. A year later, I

   was working on the helpdesk....and Notes support tickets...well were plenty and people on the desk.....hated notes. A year later, I took on the notes

   admin role and pushed the org toward the new versions (although i skipped 8 and 8.0.2 altogether, too slow).

   After spending 4 years as domino admin and got bored of it (no challenges anymore, env. stable and clean)....and the opportunity to switch to domino

   dev. knocked on the door. I had the choice of picking a DBA/Oracle job vs. Notes Dev. I picked Notes dev simply because of the challenge to fix the

   environment (i like making an impact). I also wanted to get my feet wet in development (expanding horizons). Whether this decision will pay off in the

   long term for my career.....not sure. I have made many odd decision in my young life.....but none have been catastrophic...and made it out better

   ahead (so far, knock on wood).

   I've been a notes dev. for 7-8months. Would I have become a notes dev in the Notes 7 world? NEVER! Why? DDE was just plain horrible and useless. This

   brings me to the first issue i have w/ Notes Development: Tools, Tools, tools

   IBM Needs to make further MASSIVE investments in app. dev tooling.

   I should not have to buy Ytria tools to modify view properties en masse.

   I should not have to buy Ytria tools to standardize action bars en masse.

   I should not have to buy Teamstudio tools to get a code repository

   I should not have to restart DDE 5-10 times a day because my toolbars become unresponsive (nothing happens when clicking the buttons)

   I should not have to restart DDE after running the debugger 5 times (crashes too often)

   I should be able to use DDE more like eclipse. Examples:

   -use of ${TODO} like in Java IDE to list todo's in a pane

   -javadoc style comments by default

   -javadoc facility for LS. LS_Doc is nice, but shouldn't be separate

   -Stable lotuscript editor. As soon a script library goes over 1000 lines of code, typing goes messing, color coding broken, CTRL-SPACE not working for

   code completion,proper indentation

   -code folding in LS editor

   -Full LS editor in form events and any areas with LS code. (becoming less of an issue as I'm moving to OO and making all the code in a library). Still

   there is no code completion for custom classes

   -Drag and drop of classic dev elements

   -No error flagging when accessing fields that don't exist ie. doc.firstname(0). I have to code classes atop documents to give myself a sense of

   flagging as Notes will recognize incorrect members

   -XPages debugger

   -SSJS editor can be much better. See Aptana tools for JS.

   -As said by Peter Presnell, unit testing, MVC

   -Look at other tools and compare to DDE. Visual Studio and Regular Eclipse blow DDE out of the water. I can't recall the last time regular eclipse

   crashed on me. VS....not used it, but seen videos/screenshot.....looks like a wicked IDE.

   My second major issue with Notes dev: API API API. This has been mentioned by others. Here are my main gripes:

   -LS library is horrible. No good array structures, iterators. I have to either build them myself or use frameworks like DominoFramework (which ROCKS)

   -XPages documentation is nil

   -Domino dev. does not promote good development practices. Now I am stuck with 150 poorly developed applications that I need to decipher/fix/improve everytime I have a change request.

   -CSS support in classic dev. is quite bad

   -LS documentation has little to nothing on OO practices for LS. (i might not have searched enough)

   My third major issue with notes dev: Apps Apps Apps. Again mentioned by others. I can't recall the last time i've used a built-in template from the

   product as they are rather horrible. To make matters worse, trying out the XPages discussion template crashed my domino server on AIX due to some bug

   in XPages...not good.

   The nifty 50 is a must.

   My fourth issue is with Lotus in general. Too many products when they should be one...

   Quickr should not be a separate product. QuickR seems a pain to enhance/develop. Few people out there can do it (SNAPPS!). I have not seen much about

   QuickR 8.5, but again....it should be part of the product. Lotus Connections....while it is a nice product...the price is quite high. Buying a full

   lotus stack for a user: $140 for Notes Client, $110 for connections, $70-110 for Sametime (std vs adv.), $70 for QuickR = ~$400/user. That's pretty

   high if you ask me.

   My last issue is the big Gorilla in the room: M$/Exchange/Sharepoint.

   Our head office moved to M$'s stack a few years back and are now looking to push us down that route. Even though the price to migrate all our apps is

   more than twice the price of migrating them back to domino....they are still pushing us towards exchange/Sharepoint.

   The decision has not made yet. Will it pain me to move away from domino? definitely, especially as I'm making great progress moving our applications

   to DominoFramework and using MVC/OO techniques (Thank you Peter Presnell!). And I'd really like to get a chance to play with Xpages.

   Will I embrace the new environment? Yes. I am a programmer. C#/ASP/Vb.net are just other languages. It might take longer to develop, but that is not

   my issue, it's my organization's. In the end, I am hired to provide solutions meeting my customer's needs. As long I keep learning, I will be

   motivated to come to work and do my time. For my career, trying new technologies is definitely a plus.

   One big plus that Sharepoint/ASP has over Notes is that they only have to deal with 1 client, the web. For notes, we have classic and web dev. So 2

   streams are needed. They get it in 1 shot. Now if you add the time spent in both classic and web.....or close is it to develop an app?

   I have no comments on Marketing/BP/VARs and stuff. Only thing I can say is make the end user's HAPPY by giving them a good looking client, good looking apps, a stable environment.

1. 142  John Detterline  | 6/16/2010 9:20:20 AM

   Ed,

   My suggestion is that you turn this thread into a "trackable" blog on the Lotus.com site. Highlight the concerns/feedback posted here and then show how IBM is going to address them. I think that kind of transparency will go a long way. You've done a great job of starting to integrate user feedback into your processes and this seems like a logical progression.

   People like open source projects because they can contribute and get feedback. I think if you can collate the issues listed here and elsewhere (i.e. the Lotus Notes Sucks Facebook page etc) and then categorize them you'll have a great picture of where end users/customers stand. From there you can prioritize areas for sales and developer focus.

   One thing I've noticed in many of these posts is that IBM sales appears to be focused on getting new clients, not on client retention. IBM as a whole would be better served by trying to balance incentives.

1. 143  Bill Dorge  | 6/16/2010 9:20:23 AM

   Can't add much to what already has been said, but maybe it's as simple as stepping back and forgetting where and who you are in the market, and sell it like you wrote it yesterday.

   Good post and thanks for allowing all of us this venue to give our input!!

1. 144  Bud Bundy  | 6/16/2010 9:28:04 AM

   Oh, and if you need confirmation of my comments about Domino Utility and Express licensing, please have a look at you own blog: { Link }

1. 145  Lance Spellman http://workflowstudios.com | 6/16/2010 9:42:47 AM

   @139 Good point, I'd completely forgotten that every time I think about developing something that would touch consumers rather than building something for a corporate entity to use internally, I immediately dismiss it because of the licensing roadblock.

   There are way too many free alternatives out there where I can "identify" a user and not have to pay a license for that user. That truly does eliminate Domino from my development choices for a lot of solutions. Bridging that gap in some cost-effective way could lead to a lot of exposure for Domino-based applications.

1. 146  Russell Maher  | 6/16/2010 9:54:38 AM

   Ed,

   It appears there is a big reality check going on and I am appreciative that you have taken the time and spent the energy to participate in it. This can only be 100% good for the community so "thank you."

   On a daily basis I have reason to read so many things written by so many of the people who have responded here that I know just how capable, dedicated, productive and resourceful the Domino community is. It is truly pretty amazing. I want to offer an opinion from an entirely different perspective though. Perhaps this will resonate with some and, thus, could be an idea for IBM to consider as Domino market position is reconsidered.

   I have never considered myself an "IT guy". Ever. I have always considered myself to be a business person who has a combination of personality (LOL I am shuddering to think what some here might say about that one!), communication skills and technical acumen that allows me to use Domino to solve business problems. Suffice it to say, the IT people where I work would need no prodding to agree with you if you said "Russ is really the 'anti-IT' guy." I am not about IT any more than I am about sticking my head in an oven.

   What I AM about is providing solutions. When all is said and done, my ability to use Domino to solve business problems in a very cost-effective way is what has allowed my managers to stop IT from booting me and Domino out the door every single year at budget time (oh, and my sparkling personality, of course).

   Over the last few years, the law department where I work has developed a strong preference for solutions where IT is either totally uninvolved or where IT's involvement can be minimized. That preference has dramatically increased over the last twelve months. As one would rightly expect, IT does not like what this means for their future any more than they like having the 'anti-IT Domino guy' around providing solutions that IT can't or won't provide, faster than IT possibly could, friendlier than IT could and cheaper than IT could even if IT wanted to provide a solution.

   I offered to propose an opinion and here it is: Business people do not want development tools and platforms and, honestly, they do not even want "IT" people. They want solutions, they want them now and they want them to be cost-effective. THAT is what the marketing message should focus on for marketing Domino. Domino can solve your problems now. Domino can solve your problems quickly. Domino can solve your problems cost effectively.

   Now a question: Fellow developers and admins and other "IT" folk, in a world where specific business solutions are increasingly available relatively on-demand at reasonable cost levels, isn't there going to be a lot less demand over the next five years for all "tech" people and NOT just the Domino people?

   I think so and no matter what IBM does with Domino now (I have been told it is cloud, cloud and more cloud), we all have to consider that the world we have known and truly loved for over a decade may be gone sooner than we think. Just something to ponder.

1. 147  Ferdy http://www.ferdychristant.com | 6/16/2010 10:04:14 AM

   @146. Excellent response, the opportunities are there for the taking. Many subsequent Domino releases have been about doing more with less. This kind of cost-saving, sustainable message should sell well in a world that is an economic crisis and that is looking for sustainable solutions.

1. 148  Randall Shimizu  | 6/16/2010 10:10:56 AM

   @11

   I agree, the big problem is that IBM/Lotus has not focused enough on new customers. The other problem is that product development has been to slow in the past. Lotus Sametime already had a lot of VOIP capabilities built in when MS was just beginning to talk about MS RTC server. That was a key opportunity to push the product to new customers.

1. 149  Sagar Sen  | 6/16/2010 10:14:31 AM

   So then where exactly is the trip wire for Domino development today? How do we get developers on board?

   Is XPages right tool? I don't think so.To survive and grow in today's comepatative market, developers need to have multiple skills under their belt. Most commonly used languages/tools are java/.net,c#/perl,php. What is the motivation for a developer to learn XPages? Many enetrprise including large, medium and small use multiple technologoes for thier IT systems. Many companies using Domino also uses other technologies/products such as Java, php,.net, websphere, websphere portal server, filenet, documentum, omnifind, oracle, db2 etc etc. Developers need to make some investment of time and money in learning XPages. Can Xpages skill be used in Websphere portal server or FileNet or Cognos or Omnifind? Can it be used in .net or sharepoint application development?

1. 150  Daniele Grillo http://www.matrixcomputers.it | 6/16/2010 10:37:16 AM

   I approve 100% all the comments of Nathan T. Freeman!

   It's all reality and true!

1. 151  Axel  | 6/16/2010 10:55:23 AM

   @Dijali: Haven't read your #20. We do agree a lot, but we are fools on our hills in this debate.

   IBM wouldn't be the right environment to create such a system. But it might be the right organization to buy a small startup that creates such a system. Currently it simply does not exist.

1. 152  Mike Robinson http://www.invcs.com | 6/16/2010 11:12:51 AM

   Hmm, I actually do believe in the push to emphasize Domino as a RAD environment using web 2.0, notes, java, etc. I get that, and became really really excited. I've said before, it feels like when Notes 4.0 came out and everything changed (lotuscript, agents, etc.). My 8.x excitement was muted because I can't get any of the new stuff to work. I admit that I *tried* following the composite app intro guide which I think integrated some social media stuff. It sorta worked, but it took months of getting the right version of Notes (had 8.5.1, then found it was based on 8.0.2 and things changed). It's frustrating. I *want* to use it, I *want* to show our clients all the new things we can do with it, but can't. I'm glad Ben had the courage to say it, after 14 years of working with Notes dev and I am a hard core dev. it feels like you need an inside hookup into the people writing the composite/xpages code to know how to use it. You feel somewhat stupid. I feel like I'm on the outside looking in wishing I could join the party. I've heard of a really good 1-2-3 tutorial developed by someone in the yellow-verse but couldn't find it, and being busy I don't have days to dedicate to getting something simple working. So I stick with tried and true stuff and all the stuff pre 8.0 that integrates Web 2.0 stuff.

   A little help there would be much appreciated.

1. 153  Mark Lepisto  | 6/16/2010 12:59:06 PM

   I'm going to agree with @109. It isn't just the Cx level executive, it's those people and services that influence them. I think that IBM lost focus over the last 10 years and now you are trying to stop an avalanche with a plastic snow shovel. Our Enterprise Architect attended a Lotusphere back in 2002 or so and walked away with the message "Notes is dead, long live *other IBM products that no longer exist*". Nothing from IBM or Gartner or Burton Group since then has changed his opinion and why would he bother to attend Lotusphere 2010? That message needs to get to him via an alternative avenue. I think you need to create a wave of positive opinion from analysts, bloggers, marketing etc so large that it couldn't possibly be ignored.

   Today your message is stronger, but you need to attack this with something larger than a plastic snow shovel if you really plan to change the market trends and get the word out.

   On another front, your product is still very buggy and immature as well as being expensive. The entire Eclipse environment has potential, but we're dealing with strange bugs, and non-responsive icons, and odd focus-changes every single day. The new client more than doubled the memory and processor capability required to run it well - right at the time when people are trying out virtual desktops and such to save money on clients. Upgrading a user to 8.5.1, then having to go back a few weeks later and back down to Notes basic is a slap in the face for the product.

   I thought that not mentioning Notes 9.0 or whatever at this years Lotusphere was brilliant - you should stick with 8.5.X until you have a rock solid product. I'd like to see fix lists of 30 bugs per dot release, not 800+. We don't need more new features, we need all the ones we have working right.

   The Domino server and Rapid App Development environment is your strength, the client is still a big weakness. Sure, when everything works well it's nice, but things so rarely work well that it's still a bit of a black eye for the product.

   We sold the upgrade to 8.5.x to our CIO because of the massive savings DAOS was going to bring us. So we're there, but unless the client improves drastically I think this may be the last release we see. Our developers have already left for free open-source Java solutions and without utilizing that value-added there isn't a lot of motivation to keep a mail system with a buggy and resource-intensive client.

   It's only a matter of time now and only IBM can change that before it's too late.

1. 154  Wayne Sobers  | 6/16/2010 1:21:27 PM

   An example popped up this morning. I get email bulletins from TechRepublic on various matters. Each time I see Notes or Domino it's in relation to some group/person explaining how to migrate/coexist with some other cloud software or competitor.

   There are several IBM announcements a month regarding Cognos or Websphere, but none regarding Domino as a development platform.

1. 155  Sean Smith  | 6/16/2010 1:23:28 PM

   1. $1,000,000 programming competition for Lotus Notes/Domino - Get the programming world involved and caring.

   2. An App Store that IBM fully supports inside and out. "IBM technical support representative says: We can't support mail files running OpenNTF Mail Experience"

1. 156  Martijn de Jong http://www.socialsoftwareblog.nl | 6/16/2010 2:30:32 PM

   I would like to second Julian Buss' last comments:

   "Oh, I forgot one BIG BIG BIG issue: IBM sales reps are ONLY interested in selling NEW licences, because they are quoted only on new licenses.

   They simply DO NOT CARE if a customer stays with Notes or not. That's one more reason why more and more companies change to Microsoft without any fight from IBM. "

   This is very true for the Netherlands too. The only time that a Domino using company sees an IBM person is when they come to claim the money for renewing the license. I think this is actually an area in which you can have direct influence. A Bonus only on new licenses is simply the wrong incentive. Making part of the bonus dependent on license renewal would be a good start. Maybe even a lower bonus for any client that doesn't renew their license. That might trigger a different way of thinking among the IBM sales here.

1. 157  Brian M O’Curran http://www.doingmorewithless.biz | 6/16/2010 3:17:25 PM

   @156

   I 100% disagree that Lotus reps don't care about the Lotus install base. Most of us (and there are 100's) have made a career of helping our customers along the path. It's inconceivable we'd not be actively involved helping customers sort out the economics of their historic investment in collaboration. Yes, we don't get paid on stream but - IBM pays me a salary and, part of that money is for working with customers that have had our technologies for ages. Yeah, no net new money a lot of the time but, it's work that has to be done. And it is being done. And many many times we win... there's no parade down Main Street, no press releases, no fanfare and typically not even a "thank you" - but, we still win.

1. 158  Jason http:///www.aqu8.com | 6/16/2010 3:38:55 PM

   As a developer, administrator, and architect it's been my experience with Lotus Notes and Domino that IBM/Lotus has always been way ahead of their game. You can pretty much make Domino/Notes do what you want it to do if you have enough knowledge of everything it does and all the languages you can use. Being ahead of your game doesn't usually get the visibility as consistent teams of players. I'm fairly certain that's why you see the IBM portfolio being so big. IBM is big on proof of concept and tossing it into a product, new or existing... Part of me has always wanted to ask IBM to dumb things down. Most any developers outside of Lotus/Domino can go to (example) MSDN and find a great thing called documentation.... Lotus API at hand for our example. Ed, I encourage you to find any decent documentation and examples (that actually work). It's just not there, and franky it frustrates the hell out of me. Then when you do want to jump in and lets say use MSVC++ express to take a hack at it, you cannot find documentation on how to set that up to do it.

   Let's go one step further... Ed you are not a developer. Take 15 minutes to download any MS evaluation Dev product. Let's say VB.Net express 2010. Now install it. Give yourself these simple tasks for your program: Read a file, Run through all the lines in the file, print them to the screen. (Record the time it took you). Your ONLY tool can be google and wherever it takes you.

   Now, same software.... this time you will be reading a file (a notes database) running through all the documents in the database, printing the..... say... 'created date' for each of the files to screen. (record the time it took). Your ONLY tool can be google and wherever it takes you!

   The point of the exercise is that by now, you already have a nice vb program.. it's working fine. Because you found 400 different examples of code you simply copy and pasted and it worked just fine. You may have found (may) that you could have used COM to reference notes... you didn't find any documentation on how to even setup VB Express to reference COM....

   Just because a magician (IBM) can make an elephant levitate doesn't mean that we (companies that use Lotus Notes/Domino or support Lotus Notes/Domino) want (or NEED) to make a levitating elephant. I'm certain, that at the labs at IBM there's an entire circus of levitating elephants (RIGHT NOW!) just waiting to be inserted into Lotus Notes/Domino.... let me reiterate... "I, the developer who does swear to pledge allgance to IBM, does not need a feature to levitate an elephant. I never will. My clients will not either. You do no need to add it to Lotus Notes and Domino. Please, it was a joke and is not intented to spark an idea from people in dark rooms with big scary monitors."

   I continue to do Lotus Notes/Domino because I'm good at it... but I'm good outside of Lotus too. I steer our clients away from Lotus Notes/Domino when appropriate. (insert elephant here). Just because it can do it, doesn't make it the best platform. Example -> Lotus Domino Website VS Drupal, excuse me? Public website done in Domino... no thanks. But sure, it can do that....

1. 159  Brett H  | 6/16/2010 4:17:49 PM

1. 160  Mike VandeVelde http://www.cascadiacodeworks.ca/ | 6/16/2010 5:06:35 PM

   You asked about developers. Well I am one, so here goes. Most everything has been said, but I will at least add another voice.

   "And my invitation to you would be, other than "market to the CIOs", "get into the schools", and "more advertising", what are other things you think we should do." No problem - I am a developer, all that stuff is outside my playground, I will not add to the volumes of exactly what you were not asking for above.

   I love Notes (loved it almost instantly when I first got started), I like working with Notes (like still remains after 10+ years of frustrations). I'd like to love working with Notes.

   XPages - you say to a customer: train your people in XPages, rewrite your applications in XPages, and *then* you will be playing with POWER. Well what have we been playing with for decades here?? I tried it out. Documentation how shall we say... minimalist. Tools how shall we say... not quite bug free (still preferring to use Designer 8 Basic here). Big picture idea - quite nifty actually. Great execution getting people in the community to, how was it put above, "bully" us common developers into jumping on board, as opposed to "learn Java and join workplace resistance is futile" coming down from on high in IBM. Much better introduction with XPages. Actual experience, weeeell I have to say lacking, and I also have to sadly say nothing new to me as a Domino developer :(

   What have you done for me lately? Allowing more than 1 embedded view on a form springs to mind, what does it say that I think of something so long ago and so trivial? That was immediately useful to me. Even though you still can't sort with show single category. Even though you still have to specify which view from which database in a retarded way. Even though having the same view embedded on the form more than once (for different categories) doesn't print properly. Fixing any one of those things will make me happier than DB2NSF did, or composite apps/XPages has, or Vulcan will. Probably not what you want to hear, but there you go.

   So I try to get multiple views embedded more than once to print. Compute some pass-thru HTML tables for printing instead of the embedded views. CSS in the client can be very handy, but in such *LIMITED* circumstances I want to cry. Stylesheet don't apply to pass-thru HTML in the Notes client??? So, bloat it up with inline styles :-( Fix *that* and maybe I will trust that XPages might be all that it could be some day.

   I know a thing or 2, even if I haven't tried *every* feature and found *all* the workarounds yet, what is someone new supposed to think when they come across "minor" / "working as designed" things like this?

   RAD development is the greatest feature of Notes as an application platform. And it is RAD - if you start off on the right path that could possibly end up functioning as expected. If you meander off on one of the way-too-god-damn-many paths that simply have no chance of ending up doing what you hope, then it's not RAD anymore. Sure you *could* do something in 1/5th the time of other platforms, but when you have to try 5 times to find the way that just works then what have you gained?

   It's high time for a "no new features" release, start planning for release 10 today. Bug fixes and feature completions only. Soooo many bug fixes, soooo many half baked features from years gone by. That would be my items #1 through #999.

   Beyond that, I second everything said about the free Designer. Great idea, but what the hell can I do with just a Designer client? Going right along with that, needing to pay for licenses for web only users. Yes this must be a bigger and bigger chunk of your revenue, but there must be some way to work this out. Free for users external to your organization? Until I as a kid right out of college can sit down in an afternoon and get a test Domino server up and running to play around on with my free Designer client, without signing up for umpteen IBM IDs and digging through pages and pages of download options, then free Designer just isn't much more than a few bucks off enterprise license renewal costs. And a week later when I have built something wicked cool, and want to release it to the world so users can start signing up, and IBM says umpteen thousands of dollars first please, well who is surprised at the success of LAMP etc?

   So:

   1. Take a break with the new stuff (cool as it is), and finish off the existing stuff (much more important imho). Features - Domino has em already!! The platform isn't dead if all the existing stuff is getting significant attention.

   2. Continue making it easier for fresh faces to get their feet wet.

   My 2 cents.

1. 161  Brett H  | 6/16/2010 5:37:58 PM

   I have been both a Notes dev and admin for nigh 18 on years now. I've been laid off more times than I care to count, and each time it gets harder and harder to find work in this field. It has reached a point where I am faced with tearing apart my extended family and moving away to another state/city that has 3 open Notes positions instead of none at all where I live. I look at other technologies and there are many more jobs, that there is the writing on the wall...

   I've screamed, you've screamed, we've all screamed at IBM to market the living heck out of the "new" Notes, to "show the product!" to "Get the word out!" I think we were totally duped by the "Lotus Knows" campaign. I see no mention of "Notes or Domino" in this campaign. It seems to be an everything else... but Notes campaign. No one outside the yellowverse knows what it's about, because there has been no visual connection to a specific product. This is indicative of IBM/Lotus just "not getting it" when it comes to changing mindshare. You can be the bestest of the best, have the most killer solution, technically sound and proven, secure, stable and scaleable, but if people's minds only see a dog turd from the 90's when they think of Notes, then that's what they are going to see forever, until you show 'em something shiny and new! Tell 'em it's shiny and new, then beat the living crap out of the competition with it's shiny newness at every public opportunity, invite paparazzi and reporters to record it for all to see how Notes really is the best choice. Because otherwise they will just keep spinning more negative stories! If IBM/Lotus continues to turn the other cheek while it gets it's lunch stolen by all the other players, then I for one am not confident in IBM's assertions of loyalty to the Lotus brand.

   Case in point...

   When we needed IBM/Lotus presence in a major decision by the City government that I work for, to choose a web meeting solution (use the installed Sametime solution but expand it or go to Webex) we had a very tough time just finding out who our rep was! When we finally connected, we talked, we invited, we planned, but in the end, the IBM/Lotus folks were no-shows! Pretty much dropped off the map and the deal went to Webex! We never heard from them again... nice. The level of involvement from anyone else on the sales team since then has also been nil, zip, zilch.

   TBH Ed, I've already given up the ghost and begun my path in another career, I'm so tired of fighting this battle.

   Thanks for opening up the flood gates, I hope it really makes a difference. We'll see in a few months/years if Notes is still a viable career choice.

1. 162  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 6/16/2010 5:54:47 PM
   
   

   OK, I am going to get slightly defensive about Lotus Knows. The testing on it has been incredibly positive in terms of brand awareness and favorability. No the ads themselves don't show the product. But they aren't designed to. They are designed to get the reader (e.g. the ads in Wired magazine every month for the last six) to go to lotusknows.com. There, there's plenty of info on Notes, not just other products.

   BUT, it just calls Notes "email/calendar". So we have a problem, and I don't know why I never saw this before. I suspect the answer is that the "pacesetter" audience we're after with Lotus Knows doesn't make applications. Remember, this is a target outside of traditional IT.

   I'm going to close down the comments on this thread tonight. I will never be able to respond to everything that has been said here. And I'll never be able to DO everything has been said here.

   Not surprisingly, Microsoft is having a field day with the Lotus community blogs this week. I think as a community, I'll accept that as a consequence of being open and honest with each other.

1. 163  Bradley H  | 6/16/2010 7:22:40 PM

   Well I will add my two bits before the door is closed.

   I can relate to a lot of the frustrated comments posted here

   @161 - I have been in a similar situation in getting some backing from IBM for Lotus, but still lost in the end. And after they spent a lot of money going to the competitor... Notes/Domino is still in production. The truth on the additional costs was never there. How many more servers (Mail servers, SQL Servers).

   WE know what a great product Lotus has. It is a matter of educating the masses.

   I will continue to support/promote Lotus as long I can as I know the truth.

   Good Luck Ed!!

1. 164  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 6/16/2010 7:41:52 PM

   @162 - Lotus Knows there are hundreds of business applications you can download and use, for free, at OpenNTF.org.

   I TRIPLE DOG DARE YOU to run that Wired. :-P

1. 165  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 6/16/2010 7:42:11 PM

   sorry... *IN* Wired.

1. 166  Randall Shimizu  | 6/16/2010 8:35:50 PM

   Ed:

   @10 @162 @105

   I am glad to see a open willingness on your part to accept comments on marketing and other issues. If IBM top level executives talked about notes more than this would dispel notions about IBM's commitment to Lotus. I just wish Sam Palmisano would give more public speeches. I do wish you would keep this topic open. There is a lot of good comments both good & bad.

1. 167  Erik Brooks  | 6/16/2010 9:30:16 PM

   @164 - LMAO "Nathan created a slight breach of etiquette by skipping the triple-dare and going right for the throat."

   Best movie ever.

   Phenomenal ad idea.

   @Ed - I'm sure I speak on behalf of all of us when I say "thanks" for the openness.

   And deep down, the MS bloggers are probably actually jealous of the fact that you're having these conversations with us.

1. 168  GarryL  | 6/17/2010 3:01:51 AM

   Like others have said - thanks for opening up with this post.

   For us, a 100 user SME, Notes covers all our other processes that our ERP does not. We continue to develop with it as it's just so useful and we can't imagine business without it. We look forward to 8.5.2 and can't wait to see what project Vulcan brings.

   And no, I could never see MS having any open posts like this, just like I have never seen such passion about a software product, anywhere, as Lotus Notes brings out.

   It will be interesting to see what comes of this.

1. 169  Michael Falstrup http://www.intelliglobe.dk | 6/17/2010 4:32:29 AM

   @11 - Nathan

   Fully agree on your assessment, but i think IBM wants to have backward compatibility, which in my book is fine .... to a point. Sometime customers and developers needs to be pushed to new technology and methods, which could be done by removing features from older versions of Domino, when support for these are no longer there, ie. removing < 6.5.x features from 8.5+ now that official support is no longer there.

   I recognize that transitions from older code base to new technology and features could be a show stopper, but on that point IBM Lotus should have the tools for that, wizards to clear out old code, make change or suggest solutions to replace old code. Just like the Wizard being made for Xpages, to transform notes App to XSP App.

   And on the argument on finishing things in the current versions, i couldn't agree more, continue to expand on the XSP environment with more out of the box controls and integration techniques and please, FULL support for Composite Applications all around. But by all means, finished the implemented features and make them run like a charm.

   Oh, and on a small jote - DOCUMENTATION DOCUMENTATION DOCUMENTATION DOCUMENTATION DOCUMENTATION. I don't have to read blog after blog to read about using new features in Notes like the xPages or composite applications. It has taken to long time for Wikis (nice btw) to have a reasonable amount of information. You can do better.

   Last but not least, the Vulcan concept looks very nice and might be a road to go to meet the requirements that Nathan mentions and this concept should be implemented tomorrow, not 1-2 years from now.

   You wanna do all the right things, but you don't finish them and on some points you do too little to late, like 8+ and XSP.

   @ED

   I really hope that the big boys at IBM starts to listen to the community and give you the support and means to make Notes/Domino even more cool than it already is. I bleed Yellow, but I also need to make a living, so please help me on that, i can't fight alone.

1. 170  Lee  | 6/17/2010 4:52:13 AM

   As I read my way through this comment stream I noticed a few voices hinting at what I've long suggested to the IBM reps that visit our small 12+ dev team supporting 500+ users: give it away.

   In my opinion the only way to save Notes now, if it even can be saved, is to give it away. Increase your market share and make it the new free tool on the block.

   As a business IBM has very rarely addressed the paradigm of 'free'. OK, the developer client is free. Great. But is it free? Is it 'LAMP' free? Is it 'Eclipse' free? Or is it 'IBM' free? If I'm a lone software developer looking for a dev platform, can I d/l a free copy in exchange for nothing more than an email address, set up and code and sell my applications? If not, then it's not free.

   IBM need to embrace 'free' as a business model. That's the only thing that will save the entire Lotus brand.

   Take Sametime. Instant messaging? Great, I'll have some of that. It's how much? Enterprise grade, you say? Whatever. I'll take one of the free alternatives, thanks.

   Connections? Looks interesting. How much?! I'll skip it and make do with a free delicious account and some wikis, thanks.

   Why does everyone use gmail and/or Outlook? Because they use them at home. Why? Because they're free. Why is there no free version of the Notes client? Why can I not sign up for a cloud based free Notes email account?

   What does IBM give away today? Is 'free' a part of the business plan? You're always going to struggle when your value proposition is paying a (huge) premium for the extra 10% you don't get for free.

   Here's what I would do to attempt a rescue of the Lotus brand:

   Give it away. All of it.

   Servers (1 for free, beyond that you pay), clients (first 500 free, beyond that you pay), Quickr (pay 500+), Connections (pay 500+), Sametime (pay 500+). The whole product stack. Hell, I'd even take that up the chain in to some of the Rational tools, but that's a different rant.

   Give everyone Google in a box and make it free. Put the whole thing as a single click download on the front page of ibm.com.

   Grow the market. Get thousands of young eager coders out there designing and building on your free enterprise grade platform. Create the black hole effect that sucks these people in to whatever's the hot cool new thing. Get yourself some free marketing in return with the resulting fan boy developer base.

   You have to ask the question of why RoR and LAMP are so popular? Really? Say hello to free. It's a very persuasive concept and, like it or not, it's the future.

   Now what I'm not advocating is 'give it away and pray' as a strategy. That would be ridiculous and only a fool with no grasp of economics would suggest that. What YOU need to work out is how you can give it away and make it pay. Create value and give your customers a reason to buy. Price and value are not the same thing.

   Charge for support, charge for consultancy, charge for apps, hell, find a way to charge for advertising if it comes to it. Eyeballs are a commodity these days. Upsell other IBM products and hardware. Make your larger customers subsidise the smaller ones in order to make the *value* of the product greater. They benefit from an increased user community and that's part of the value proposition. That's could be part of the reason why they would be willing to pay for something that everyone else gets for free.

   The Lotus brand does not need more marketing, it needs to become IBM's Marketing division. Their new mantra needs to be:

   Welcome to Lotus. You're welcome.

1. 171  Michael Falstrup http://www.intelliglobe.dk | 6/17/2010 7:07:54 AM

   @170 Lee

   Thumbs up, just down my alley. Have always liked the concept of:

   1. Single/Small Version = free

   2. Medium/Premium version = x.xx $

   3. Large/Enterprise version = xx.xx $

   Just hope that The Big old "Oil tanker" hardware company IBM can grasp the concept and change their mindset. It could actually work.

1. 172  Michael Falstrup http://www.intelliglobe.dk | 6/17/2010 7:27:00 AM

   ;-D, before you close down the comments i would like to ask you this.

   Why haven't you made SaaS, PaaS and Cloud available for partners and partner Apps long time ago. My company have been ready for this for years and so have a lot of our colleagues. But yet again, we wait for IBM.

   I miss out on Apps for LotusLive or Cloud and to follow up on 170 Lee, how cool it could be to have a huge free LotusLive community making real cool Lotus Apps, like they do in the PhP community and others. This could actually make the OpenNTF explode with new free Open source apps.

   Free the mind, free the creativity and let The Lotus rumble.

1. 173  Philip Storry http://www.not-so-rapid.com | 6/17/2010 7:34:16 AM

   @170 Lee

   To be clear, I wasn't saying that we should give Notes away for all uses, and I'm not sure I'd condone that. Michael's (@171) model is probably better.

   But an unrestricted version or very mildly restricted and labelled as a "Community Edition" is necessary. Notes won't get new blood looking at it if IBM keep it locked away.

   Even with the mild restrictions, I'm not sure that the DB2 model completely applies. DB2 restricts the maximum sizes etc., effectively preventing its use for very large installations.

   The rough equivalent in Domino/Notes is clustering - which we probably WANT people to be able to use, so that they can see how easy it is!

   To be honest, over the long term I feel that the whole industry will see revenue from licenses drop and revenue from support and consultancy rise. As a whole, IBM has been a bit schizophrenic on that - some changes have recognised this and been excellent, but in others they continue to plod along as though nothing is changing.

   I really hope that IBM can manage to realise that giving it away is one of the best sales tactics they can use right now, though. A non-commercial freely available unrestricted version is a great advert.

1. 174  John  | 6/17/2010 7:48:34 AM

   Maybe the situation in our (big financial) company is interesting.

   We went from having lots of apps (but no real backing from management) to almost no apps (because of a migration to .NET), largely caused by the Workplace initiative.

   Since then, Notes/ST/Quickr are being used and the company's logo is present on one of those IBM slides, among other "wins".

   But new app development seems far off, as the CIO calls Notes legacy (like FoxPro). Comparing app dev costs did not help.

1. 175  Stan Jones  | 6/17/2010 7:56:48 AM

   A small suggestion in light of all the big issues that have been raised here, but I believe the topic of getting developers on board with the new technologies included in newer versions have been raised, so: could licensing be set up so that for every [some appropriate number] of client seats, the organization gets an entitlement for [some appropriate number] of hours of classroom training, paid for by IBM? This might help the partners who offer the training classes, and it would definitely help organizations (such as impoverished state government agencies) with no training budgets.

1. 176  Erik Brooks  | 6/17/2010 8:21:29 AM

   My thoughts on attracting younger blood into N/D development:

   { Link }

1. 177  Bill Brown  | 6/17/2010 9:05:18 AM

   I can type "sudo apt-get install stellarium" and get a full featured planetarium program downloaded and installed with all dependencies resolved, ready to rock. There are thousands of other applications available, all can be installed as easily as Stellarium. There is also a GUI utility (synaptic) to search for applications and install them.

   Why not "dom-get install ApplilcationName" on the console to install a full featured app. Just set ACL and run! Perhaps even a Domino application that works like Synaptic? It downloads the catalog of applications and lets you search for tools you need. It could easily handle the OpenNTF stuff, and could download/install other applications that require a license key to be entered later.

1. 178  Lance Jurgensen  | 6/17/2010 9:39:22 AM

   Ed, some great feedback here on a topic that should have been on everyone's radar a long time ago.

   I agree with a lot of what @26 and @170 had to say. I'll add my perspective as a lone domino developer in a busy IT department:

   I work at a large regional healthcare center in the midwest. Our development team has grown from 5 developers (1996) to almost 30 now. We implemented Lotus Notes back in 1998.

   We have over 6000 employees using Notes email and calendaring.

   We use Sametime, Quickr and Domino.

   We have 20-30 fairly large applications

   We have implemented a "CMS" in domino using a single template that helps our end users manage over 150 departmental websites.

   We run a good portion of our intranet on domino.

   We had also ran our website on domino up until a few years ago.

   So a fairly robust implementation, but I suspect pretty standard.

   We do all of this with 1 developer and 1 administrator. A testament to how solid Notes and Domino really is. It just runs...

   But... Over that time period, we have had many different "reps" from Lotus or IBM. Probably more than I even know about, very few of them ever called on us. We are an hours drive away from a large IBM center and yet we were invisible to them. After many years of no contact, we finally heard from IBM. They needed to do a license audit on us and sent in a 3rd party consultant. I have to say, that ruffled some feathers in our department.

   That started the ball rolling on the recent evaluation of our messaging platform, we do this for all major systems every 3-5 years. To make a long story short, after a long analysis, we are moving to Exchange... Through-out the process, we had fairly regular contact with one vendor and almost complete silence from the other. I had heard afterward from a colleague who spoke with our rep at a local conference that the rep basically commented "oh well, you win some you loose some" afer hearing that we had decided to go in the other direction. Again, no calls.

   So am sad to go? sure I am, its been a good time. But it seems like it was inevitable; maybe because the "research firms" said it was, maybe because IBM didn't need us, maybe because we didn't want a platform with only 1 developer trained (too bad the free concept didn't evolve earlier on). Whatever the reasons, we are losing a good platform. I suspect many more companies will be too.

   The perception is that .Net is cool, Lotus Notes is not...

1. 179  Michael Falstrup http://www.intelliglobe.dk | 6/17/2010 9:56:50 AM

   @178 Lance Jurgensen

   I recognize that and its typical. In my book, any employee giving the statement "oh well, you win some you loose some", should be fired on the spot and just clearly state the arrogance we as partner and our customers sometime meet when dealing with IBM. Fight for your damn install base or don't you care!!??

   I experienced that myself, with a customer of mine in need of some solid backup software and I initiated a meeting with IBM Tivoli reps. After the meeting the contact completely died and they didn't return with follow up or anything. End result, customer chose another system but came back to Tivoli through a business partner, due to faulty system from other vendor. Point being that it show a bad tendency and attitude from IBM reps in general.

   No wonder Lotus is loosing it momentum, even though its the best platform ever.

1. 180  Michael Falstrup http://www.intelliglobe.dk | 6/17/2010 10:04:16 AM

   I vote for Steve Jobs as President of IBM....

   Sorry couldn't help myself, but you need to dust off your jackets and get creative on a whole new level.

1. 181  Florian Sachs  | 6/17/2010 10:23:33 AM

   I think @170 makes a good point. I am developing a small App, just for me and maybe a few friends - everything in my sparetime.

   It would be more than easy, to do this with XPages....

   The Designer is free - great. But where should I deploy it?

   If I had the possibility to deploy the App on my free server, I think i would have done it, but so it became (becomes) a python/django app.

   Without the possibility to run aDomino Server to serve my XPages app, there will be hardly any momentum like it is in RoR, PHP, ....

1. 182  Kit Davis  | 6/17/2010 11:19:29 AM

   I think @170 raises an issue that has certainly been promoted before - but it seems more and more like a good idea. IBM is a big profitable company with many many ways to make money. Notes/Domino is just one small piece and (just guessing) not one of the most profitable pieces.

   I am sure that Notes/Domino brings in a lot of revenue for IBM, but it is also expensive to support, maintain etc. Anything less than an Enterprise customer probably is not "paying its way" and using and supporting Business partners probably doesn't add much to the bottom line either.

   Why not make the client open source? - if people don't like the way it works or looks then extend it and fix it. Having Domino as the back-end and half a dozen "competing", alternative clients for the front end has to be a good thing. Open up the back-end to all sorts of development platforms. Go back to just licensing the server - free for use up to 5 users, $X for 6-100 users, $XX for up to 500 users - etc. etc. Or better yet, make the server open source and free as well, and charge a premium for support.

   It would not be an easy thing to do, competitors would use it against IBM at first, and there would certainly be a diminished amount of revenue from the product. However, if the alternative is watching customers leaving the platform and a diminishing market share which only large investments can possibly reverse, then at the end of the day, it might be a better choice financially.

   There isn't much revenue for a business partner selling Notes/Domino licenses - we only have jobs and work if people are using the product. Anything that brings people back to the platform will profit everyone.

1. 183  Karl-Henry Martinsson http://www.texasswede.com | 6/17/2010 11:58:02 AM

   @Ed (#162): The other day I watched a documentary about Coca-Cola, I think it was on MSNBC (will check when I get home). It mentioned their advertising strategy. Very interesting. The ads they run now are not primarily intended to sell Coke today, but in 5, 10, 15 or 20 years.

   They make sure they expose their product, preferably in "warm and fuzzy" situations, that people later think back on with nostalgia. You remember the commercials "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" from 1971? What about the holidays commecials?

   And why does Nascar drivers pose with a bottle of coke right after they win the race? It is all about making people connect the brand and the product with nice memories, good times, etc.

   When they later walk into a store and see a bottle of coke, they pick it up.

   Look at the iPhone commercials. they show the product and what you can do with it. Look at car commercials. They show the product. When a company choose new company cars, I am sure that most of them list say 3 or 4 different ones, and then decide from there, based on price, features, etc. How often do you an American company put say Volvo or Renault on that list? Good cars, but the CFO or whoever pick the list will list cars/models he know about. He will not go out and search, or go to a dozen car dealerships. He will pick a Ford, a GM or two and perhaps a Toyota. The big brands/models he heard about.

   That is what IBM need to do. Show the product. Show what it can do. Get a "Notes Light" out there, for the home users. Create a free "Domino Hobby Edition" server for a few users (50? 100? Unlimited internet users?). As Lee says in #170, get the product out there, make it possible to do something really for free. Build up a fan base outside the "yellowbubble".

   Make it possible for a college studentto download server and designer and use it for free, to learn the platform and then spread the word. That college student will in a few years be out in the workplaces. Guess what product he will recommend? The one he is familiar with. If he is not familiar with Notes/Domino, or can't argue the benefits, he will not recommend it. And it sounds from what I been reading that the IBM sales reps are not recommending it either...