MC Press Online: Collaboration: Building the Application Team
February 8 2006
Joe Pluta takes a look at the state of the collaboration software market:
This category has long been the stronghold of the Notes/Domino products, having been virtually invented by Lotus in the 1980s. The term "groupware" has until very recently been practically synonymous with Notes.I could understand this assertion if the article was published 12 to 18 months ago. But during 2005, with Notes/Domino 7 shipped and "Hannover" announced, most of you tell me that the strategy and direction for Notes is clear and logical. I understand that it can take very long time to recover from mixed or erroneous messages, though. I'll be reaching out to this author to see where his market understanding comes from, and if there is more to do. Well, really, there's always more to do.
Microsoft really has no competitive answer. Ironically, Notes' worst threat is IBM itself and the new Workplace product line. Although it seems that IBM is putting into place a reasonable strategy to guide Notes/Domino users to the new Workplace technology, there is still a lot of uncertainty among IT professionals--so much uncertainty that if Microsoft had a real process management product, it would be able to move in on Notes in much the same way it displaced Lotus 1-2-3 with Excel.
(Note to Mr. Pluta: re your comments about Microsoft and CDO, " I haven't been able to determine what the future of CDO is in the .NET paradigm") -- that's because there is no future. Microsoft is stabilizing or dropping all existing APIs like CDO in the Exchange 12 release.)
Link: MC Press Online: Collaboration: Building the Application Team > (thanks, Domenic)
Post a Comment
- 2
Frans Maas www.waudamaas.nl/fransblog | 2/8/2006 11:21:31 AM
Fully agreed, but I remain concerned about the future of the Mail applications. (Multiple because Notes Mail and Workplace Messaging are really two fundamentally different products). I wonder how Notes mail will converge to Workplace Messaging? How will Notes Mail users benefit from the advances in Workplace Messaging without having to go through a complex migration?
I made the following observations:
- The Notes Mail Template has reached its limits and gets little innovation.
- The DWA design is excellent, breaking out of the barriers of the mail template, and making good use of state-of-the-art web technology (JS, CSS, etc). Plans look good, but will this ever get connected to the Workplace Messaging Mail store?
- Workplace Messaging is a complete rebuild, based on J2EE/Eclipse. Here is where the innovation dollars go. A lot of work is required to bring this to the functional level of Notes Mail, DWA AND Outlook!
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Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 2/8/2006 11:52:02 AM
@2 I completely disagree that the innovation is going into Workplace Messaging. Have you seen anything of the Notes "Hannover" release yet?
{ Link }
This is work being done within the existing Notes Mail infrastructure. There's new innovation in the Domino Next server for messaging, too.
Workplace Messaging is a component of the overall Workplace Collaboration Services matrix... while it has a different UI than DWA and some new capabilities, much is very clearly going into Notes and Domino going forward.
To my point in the article -- why is this message still not getting out? The "Hannover" story has been out there since June 05.
- 4
Bob Warth | 2/8/2006 1:07:04 PM
The ambiguity is gone. From a Notes/Domino perspective, the future has never looked brighter. Notes/Domino continues to evolve, and if anything the pace is accelerating. New releases are more solid than ever before. I already have a 7.0.1 server in production. And, while each new rev adds capabilities, the Notes apps I wrote 10 years ago continue to run *unmodified*. Updating or replacing an old app, or moving it to a new platform -- these are choices I get to make; they're not mandated by my software vendor. I agree the message was ambiguous when "NextGen" was first announced, but that's ancient history. Anyone who can write something like "guide Notes/Domino users to the new Workplace technology" (making it sound like Notes/Domino is being replaced by WorkPlace) is living in the past.
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Sean Jennings | 2/8/2006 1:35:35 PM
Why is the message about the "Hannover" story is 'not getting out'?
The general computing press (ie not specialist like "Notes Advisor"), both printed and web-based covers both consumer-related and business-related stories. Stories concerning MicroSoft Outlook, Word, Excel or Office will get greater coverage because these are products used by both home-consumers and businesses. As business software with little/any relevance to home-users, Lotus Notes naturally gets fewer column inches as editors believe it will appeal to a smaller portion of their readership.
Easy copy is what non-Pulitzer chasing journalists are most interested in. So perhaps feeding them "Hannover" related news-pieces, giving them frequent beta previews, showing interest in the comments and criticsms (even if its rubbish) would all help. Maybe IBM is already doing all this anyway and they're just not biting?
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Frans Maas www.waudamaas.nl/fransblog | 2/8/2006 4:09:23 PM
@3 The message is really getting out, don't get me wrong.
But it is a complex message as well, with room for interpretation.
When I look for instance at presentation "ID206: Rich Client Innovation: Extending the Value of IBM Workplace Solutions with IBM Workplace Managed Client", slides 10 and 22, I see two mail applications: Notes and Workplace Messaging, nicely placed next to each other in the same UI. That is confusing at the least.
Similar "JMP205: IBM Lotus Domino and IBM Workplace Collaboration Services: Comparison of Collaborative Application Platforms", slide 30.
Admittedly slide 42 is positioning Notes Mail as the only mail application in "Hannover".
An overall more consistent message would help.
- 7
Axel | 2/8/2006 5:36:37 PM
I think that the whole discussions would get a bit more real, if more Notes guys were installing stuff which is there, now.
Workplace for example.
Some guys are starting that now and exchange experiences on our national notes forum.
I have to say that my subjective expectations for easy installation and startUp of IBM products before 4.0 release are quite modest. Until now, there appear to be some issues, but relative minor ones. GOOD THING.
Does anyone can recommend some good forums or newsgroups where one might ask questions, when we get into real problems?
People might choose different approach to adapt to ever changing environment. For me its more interesting to learn new technology to provide value for customers. I am less interested in debate about if the new products follow more philosophy of notes, python on tree, ajax near sea or websphere.
- 8
Randall Shimizu | 2/8/2006 6:58:15 PM
The message is getting out, but not many outside the Lotus community and the collaboration market have a good understanding of it. The main reason is that IBM has not spent enough time refining the marketing message. I have yet to get answer on what the release date or roadmap for new versions rich client is. Lotus needs to have Workplace up and running at their customer centers.
- 9
Chris Buchinger | 2/9/2006 12:24:08 PM
I can see why some individuals are still a bit confused about the strategy and direction for Notes. Although the information about the integration with the Notes plug-in and seamlessly running Notes applications in the Workplace Client makes sense and is well presented, my confusion still lies on the application development front. I do believe I'm not alone. Will Notes Designer become Workplace Designer or will they still always exist as two separate development tools? Perhaps I'm missing something, but perhaps you could shed a bit of light on the subject.
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Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 2/9/2006 1:19:36 PM
@9 That's a fair question. "Always" is a long time and I don't have that crystal ball. Workplace Designer directionally will be able to build client applications for the IBM Workplace Managed Client...Domino Designer will continue to build Notes/Domino applications. The app models are similar but distinct, so I don't think it's fair to try to predict what will make sense in terms of consolidation down the road. The good news is that the commitment is there for every notes app you write today to continue to run with Notes in "Hannover" and beyond.
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Keil Wilson | 2/9/2006 3:45:03 PM
Ed, you asked "why is this message still not getting out? The ‘Hannover’ story has been out there since June 05."(@3) There are a couple observations I have about this. First off, I recently watched the Lotusphere Keynote, and I must admit I was confused a hell. There were a lot of products with a lot of long names that were discussed/demo'd. I had no idea how all of this fit together. It looked pretty on screen, but it was hard to tell what was Notes, what was Workplace, and what was Websphere Portal. I have no idea (based on either the keynote or other Notes related literature I read) how the entire Lotus product line (Workplace related stuff, Sametime, Notes, Domino, Quickplace) will/should work together. I'm hearing the good news loud and clear that IBM is committed to Notes/Domino well into the future, but I just don't understand exactly what role IBM envisions for Notes/Domino in this future. How do all the products fit/work together? How are they supposed to fit/work together?
Secondly, it seems like manager level people in my area of the Midwest (Lincoln, NE) just aren’t hearing any message at all. I remember the Super Human Software campaign for R5. Non-technical people were drawn in by this new product (new to them anyway) that was supposed to help them meet their business challenges. I think the message was simply that this one product (Notes/Domino R5) could enable them to solve their IT problems and meet their IT goals. That's a basic message that managers (both inside and outside of IT) can understand. It draws them in and they want to learn more. It’s not their job to seek out and understand IBM’s message. IBM needs to figure out how to reach these people with a simple, understandable message.
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Randall Shimizu | 2/9/2006 5:05:07 PM
One of the big reasons is that IBM has put enough efforrt to market beyond the existing Lotus customer base. Some of the IBM Lotus vs something ad's is a step in the right direction. One good step would be for IBM to market or at least build customer awareness among their IBM Global services customers.. That alone could generate a huge amount of revenue.
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Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 2/10/2006 2:30:38 PM
@11 some good observations.
1) The general session probably doesn't make a ton of sense without more context like Ken Bisconti's Workplace strategy presentation. It's good feedback on the format we used for the opening session this year.
2) I'm not sure what's unique about Lincoln, NE. You should still see the ads in the trade publications (and the wall street journal), the white papers and web content on ibm.com/lotus, and the press / analyst / blogger coverage that is out there. The R5 campaign certainly continues to live as a high-water mark for the Notes history, but it didn't necessarily demonstrate a correlation between marketing spend and results.
As for the whole product line working together, there's a bunch of information on that found in the libraries of developerWorks, esp. the Workplace section ( { Link } ). There should be even more such info in the months ahead.
This was my take from the Lotusphere Lab as well. Being on the Workplace Managed Client team it was clearly communicated and well received the concept and architecture of Hannover. The new architecture is not limiting Domino and Notes developers but opening up the architecture to the millions of Eclipse developers.
Hannover will allow current Notes applications to run in the client (untouched) while opening up possibilities to new architectures tightly integrated with Notes, most notably the Eclipse and OSGI platform. With tight integration with the Eclipse platform Notes now has a completely open UI and services framework. The Notes UI has been without a doubt a struggle and the limitations of the Notes UI layout are now removed with Hannover. You will be able to create extremely rich, pluggable and customizable Notes applications while leveraging your existing applications and enhancing them at your convenience with the new features.