Notes Migration Blog: Results

March 27 2008

I think this may be the first time I've linked to the Notes Migration Blog.  This blog, started six months ago, is written anonymously by an IT person going through a Notes to SharePoint migration.  While I don't know who the author is, at some point, jonvon vouched for him/her, so I consider it worth reading.  The mission of the blog, stated six months ago:

To document the real-world situations encountered in a migration from Lotus Notes/Domino technology to a Sharepoint/.NET technology platform. I hope to be fair to both technologies, and will prefer to focus on their strengths, rather than documenting their weaknesses.
Fast forward to the last few weeks, and the postings have gotten pretty interesting.

On February 17, the bloom was off the vine:
we've finally started trying to architect our first major apps in SharePoint. That effort has shown just how short SharePoint falls. All the people who have been pushing SharePoint, saying that its "out of the box" functionality can build entire apps have realized that that is not true.

The final conclusion is that while SharePoint can handle maybe 30% of any given apps functionality out of the box, the other 70% needs to be covered by BizTalk, .NET coding, and other Microsoft technologies. SharePoint is not living up to its marketing.

The most ironic part of it all is that SharePoint shares exactly the same weaknesses as Notes.
On March 18, an "updated strategy" was disclosed: "After a few months of working with both Notes & SharePoint, I have updated my strategy to the following: Don't try to get rid of Domino -- just get rid of the Notes Client."

On March 20, the author was soliciting feedback, looking for quantified data about time / money / effort around SharePoint development and maintenance efforts.

Yesterday, they shared the results of that query.
After all of my inquiries and research into real measurable data comparing SharePoint Dev and Maint costs.... there is no data.

Everyone I talked to is in the same boat we are - just getting going, spending more money on SharePoint at the moment, but with no real idea of what it will cost long-term. It is all guesswork.

I've seen no evidence that anyone really is having a successful migration that saves them money. If anyone does have evidence, feel free to share it.  ... In general, SharePoint feels like a big old marketing scam to me. It doesn't do as much out of the box as Microsoft would have you believe, but it does give Microsoft and their partners a good chunk of money. A decision to go with SharePoint is a decision to tie yourself into their full product line.  ...

Why shake up the status quo for a new technology that nobody is skilled in, that costs more money to deploy, that is guesswork for long-term costs, and that ties you to a specific vendor? Even if it did perform as advertised, I just don't see justifiable answers to that question.
Maybe this is a truism and maybe not.  When I talk to partners who are doing work with SharePoint, I hear statements like "80% of SharePoint deployments are just for sharing files."  Sean Burgess coined the term "file server 2.0" to describe SharePoint in a blog post a few weeks ago.  To be clear, I know there are successful SharePoint applications in market and in use.  I am not trying to make a blanket statement questioning the technology.  I highlight the Notes migration blog at this moment because, as has been predicted a few times by publications such as CMSWatch, the reality of what SharePoint can or cannot do is finally becoming clear in the market.  And that should be useful at separating hype from reality.

Link: Notes Migration Blog >

Ed Brill Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Microsoft  Add/View Comments [60]

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  1. 1  Rob McDonagh http://www.CaptainOblivious.com | 3/27/2008 8:52:57 AM

    Since you mentioned CMSWatch in the context of SharePoint, did you read this report yet? It's not particularly positive for Notes (they call SharePoint "the new Notes"), but the information about SharePoint is interesting, given the frequent contention that SharePoint is enterprise-ready.

    { Link }

    I enjoyed this bullet point:

    Unfortunately, as you grow very large SharePoint environments, the controls that enterprises would want to see simply don’t exist natively within the platform. "Whether it’s the lack of a workflow-based provisioning process, or enterprise-level administration, or the ability to effectively categorize large numbers of documents or PowerPoint slides, SharePoint remains ill-suited to enterprise-wide collaboration and knowledge management," notes CMS Watch analyst, Alan Pelz-Sharpe.

  1. 2  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 3/27/2008 9:21:40 AM

    I met a guy on the cruise I took last Fall who does Sharepoint development for a very large law firm. He isn't familiar with Notes at all, and when he saw some of the apps I have created in Notes his jaw hit the floor. (Yes, I took a laptop with me on vacation.) Doclinks in particular wowed him, but the security model really made him sit up and pay attention.

    The one major thing Notes didn't do well, which was sharing files, has finally been addressed with Quickr 8.0.1. It will be extremely interesting to see how that plays out in the marketplace.

  1. 3  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 3/27/2008 9:23:10 AM

    The point of that disjointed rambling was Domino and Notes now have everything that Microsoft has promised for Sharepoint. Sharepoint, though, falls far short.

  1. 4  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 3/27/2008 9:27:33 AM

    Y'know Ed, it really doesn't help when you're this focused on the competition. You should quit worrying about Microsoft and start worrying about your own products. Focus on your core strengths, not the competition's weaknesses. All this bashing doesn't help anybody.

    Oh.... except people that need ammunition. Which, I suppose, is every one of your customers and partners.

    Okay... never mind.

  1. 5  Ben Rose http://www.jaffacake.net | 3/27/2008 9:40:08 AM

    I've never used Sharepoint and my experience is limited to a 'portal' demo from an MS partner some time ago.

    A close friend of mine, however, has been a key part of a Sharepoint deployment within their business unit which is being used as a pilot for a business-wide document management strategy.

    She has never used Notes, so also has little means of comparing it but has pretty much project managed the whole solution. They were already an MS shop so Sharepoint was a natural solution for them.

    With no in-house skills they got an MS partner to perform the installation, which went well and some key staff were trained on the system so they could skill-share with the rest of the workforce.

    Phase 1 has gone very well, all the milestones reached and doing what they had hoped it would.

    The challenge has come now they look to expand the system. Whilst they budgeted for the external consultancy to deploy the system, they knew it wouldn't run itself. They need in-house staff to run it, but are really struggling to hire suitable staff.

    This is a fairly new technology and, whilst Microsoft Certified people are 2 a penny, they can't find anybody with real background in runnning and expanding a Sharepoint infrastructure. All the skills seems to lie with the partner who helped them deploy it. This is naturally raising the cost of ownership quite dramatically.

    The problem here is that the MS 'rip & replace' strategy keeps the MS trained guys busy enough. They're not going to spend time on Sharepoint training courses when they could be billing hours doing Exchange and Windows upgrades to 64-bit operating systems. There simply aren't any cheap contractors out there and finding a permanent hire with the required skills just isn't going to happen in the current market.

    Every time MS put another gravestone in the product list, it's wasted training for people who do the legwork. The MCSEs know there's plenty of work in the Windows/Exchange market so it's these skills they keep up to date.

  1. 6  Chris Blatnick http://interfacematters.com | 3/27/2008 9:46:39 AM

    I've enjoyed following this blog since the beginning and I've been sharing some of the choice entries (like the last few) with my colleagues.

  1. 7  Vincent   | 3/27/2008 9:48:22 AM

    Speaking of cost saving...

    Regarding the cost saving from migrating Notes to Exchange (different topic, I know), our organization actually went out and paid a vendor to do the research for us. The assumption is as follow:

    - If we migrate to Exchange, we will outsource our email system. So the cost comparison is between outsourcing to Exchange vendor and outsourcing to Domino vendor -

    The vendor we hired is both MS partner & IBM partner. After couple months of research, the vendor came back with an answer. It will cost us, on average, CAD$4 per user per month if we outsource to Exchange rather than outsource to Domino.

    We have around 3500 domino mail users. So the different between Exchange and Domino per year is CAD$168,000 ($4 X 3500 users X 12 months)

    After getting the result back, our CIO has stopped talking the Exchange migration... not to mention about Sharepoint trial run.

  1. 8  Vincent   | 3/27/2008 9:49:53 AM

    I mean "It will cost us, on average, CAD$4 per user per month MORE if we outsource to Exchange rather than outsource to Domino."

  1. 9  Gary  | 3/27/2008 9:52:38 AM

    I just read that blog - here's the most telling post I think: { Link }

    Looking for a company to host a start up project? Sounds like he's had enough and trying to create an opportunity to bail. I've seen this before with a number of different technologies that are so painful to implement. The death slog to finally get it up and running leaves the people that implemented it (i.e. your company's most valuable assets for this infrastructure) so tired and jaded the only thing they can think about is getting the hell out of there. Given the frustration level apparent in many of the posts, it seems a possibility for this guy.

  1. 10  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 3/27/2008 10:12:14 AM

    The problem here is that the MS 'rip & replace' strategy keeps the MS trained guys busy enough. They're not going to spend time on Sharepoint training courses when they could be billing hours doing Exchange and Windows upgrades to 64-bit operating systems.

    I believe MSFT described it as a "feeding frenzy." { Link }

  1. 11  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 3/27/2008 10:31:36 AM

    @1 Rob, that's very interesting and timely -- I did not see that before posting this entry. Worth reading, and yes, I agree with the parallels (even if it isn't entirely positive for Notes).

  1. 12  Bruce Elgort http://ideajam.net | 3/27/2008 11:09:23 AM

    Wouldn't you think we should compare Quickr and Sharepoint and note Notes and Sharepoint?

  1. 13  Ian Scott  | 3/27/2008 11:36:57 AM

    @12 - Dead right! It is closer to an apples and apples comparison.

    Microsoft have pushed the Exchange versus Notes line, now they are pushing Sharepoint versus Notes, and 10 years from now they will probably try to push BrandX versus Notes. We shouldn't let them define the playing field.

  1. 14  Bruce Elgort http://ideajam.net | 3/27/2008 11:39:18 AM

    @13,

    I am no Quickr developer but the little development/customization that I tried to do in Quickr was not very easy.

    I love Quickr for what it does out of the box and of course the SNAPPS templates. But it's no rich development environment.

  1. 15  Dennis  | 3/27/2008 12:01:21 PM

    @4 We've started the march to the darkside and some of this type of information has been helpful. Our business partner is now all about MS. They've lost most of their core Lotus business. I may not be in favor of it, but at least we're better informed. Management has dictated Outlook.

  1. 16  Ian Scott  | 3/27/2008 12:36:55 PM

    @14 - Agreed. Sharepoint doesn't seem to be a rich development environment either - at least not in the terms we are accustomed to with Notes.

    I haven't developed with either Quickr or Sharepoint but if the testimonies stack up - and based on the demos I've seen - Quickr seems to me to be the competitor to Sharepoint.

    I don't mind Quickr deployments cherry picking the Notes applications it can do but when it is Sharepoint deployments that are doing the cherry picking I see the thin end of a wedge.

  1. 17  Debbie Farley  | 3/27/2008 1:20:25 PM

    @4 We have been asked to evaluate Exchange and to review which platform is best for our company. We have to know what is in involved if the decision is made to switch platforms. This sort of information is very valuable to us in knowing what the pitfalls are out there. I don't see this as focusing on the competition when I've contacted Ed several times for his assistance in finding comparisons and information in general to compare the two products. This has saved me much digging and researching the products. Thanks Ed.

  1. 18  Vaughan Rivett http://st1.rivettassociates.com/Web/Vaughans.nsf | 3/27/2008 3:03:11 PM

    It is interesting to see the comment:

    "A decision to go with SharePoint is a decision to tie yourself into their full product line. ..."

    On the otherhand IBM offers freedom of choice. I have just written about this: { Link }

  1. 19  Keith Brooks http://lotustech.blogspot.com | 3/27/2008 6:35:22 PM

    Oddly enpough I just wrote some about this topic, costs of swapping infrastructures, over the last few days. Going back a week or so to a dmeo I did of DAMO and realizing just what I enjoy about Notes and what is still missing in Outlook.

    Yes you shuld be comparing Quickr vs Sharepoint, Notes vs Outlook and Domino vs Exchange.

    Sharepoint is turning out to be a file server in many places because, just like promised but never materialized in Outlook.

    You start with such very basic templates and then the development work gets scuttled by MS because they change developement environments on you. Or in the case of Outlook, changed the underlying code so much no one ported the few attempts at programs to the next version because who wants to rewrite code just because your vendor has?

    I enjoy running apps written in Notes 2,3,4,5 on my R8 client and server, some need a little dust up and others could use some updated UI but they all run and in fact help me sell Domino today.

  1. 20  CRM http://www.gedys-intraware.de | 3/28/2008 2:35:04 AM

    I've enjoyed reading this blog since some weeks. I heared about the same situation at a company in Germany. The are planing to migrate lot of notes based apps to sharepoint, including a notes based crm app ...

  1. 21  Chuck http://www.charliedigtial.com | 3/28/2008 8:41:08 AM

    Seriously now, as a relatively new SharePoint developer, I really think the complexity of the MOSS system is being overstated here. About a year ago, we started integrating our product heavily with SharePoint as a document management system.

    Now I'll tell you this: before that time, I had never worked with SharePoint at all. I had never deployed SharePoint at all. I had never developed for SharePoint at all. It literally took _minutes_ to get it installed and configured in a running state and it took _minutes_ to add another server (another VM in this case) to the farm. It's like the Geico commercials: so easy, a caveman could do it. The installation and configuration wizards makes at least that portion of it foolproof.

    Now trust me, I'm not some SharePoint guru and I'm definitely not a SharePoint nut. In fact, I HATE SharePoint (but I have to say, I hate Notes even more). I hate it because businesses see it as some magic bullet or it's sold as a magic elixir of collaboration. The truth of the matter is that I've never been a part of any organization as a first or third party that *EVER* made any productive use of SharePoint. Even NOW as I'm working on our product which layers on top of SharePoint, no one in our group uses it for anything! I still get emails with documents attached with "v##" suffixed to the document title! So IMO, there is something fundamentally broken about the whole model and how businesses idealize collaboration. It's not about workspaces, it's not about websites, it's not about anything that takes the user out of the natural flow of their work. EVERYONE is missing the boat by not using the natural communications interface points: chat and email.

    BUT, what SharePoint does have going for it is native integration with Office! For this feature alone, I think it's worth it.

    As far as application development on the SharePoint platform goes, I dunno...to me at least, it's super simple; I'm not really sure where the complexity comes in as it's nothing more than run of the mill ASP.NET development (so easy, a caveman with a laptop could do it!) and yet because it is built on top of ASP.NET, you have so much flexibility in building applications as complex as you need them to be.

    With Visual Studio 2008, I think Microsoft has stepped up to the plate by adding rich integrated support for Office development.

    I dunno...I readily admit that I don't know much about Lotus, but I do know that the complexity of SharePoint is sooo overblown, it's ridiculous. I'm 80% confident (whatever that means) that my wife (schoolteacher) could install SQL Server and SharePoint on a clean machine in under 6 hours with no supervision from me.

  1. 22  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 3/28/2008 8:59:29 AM

    @21 Chuck, I think installation and building business value from that installation are two completely separate thoughts. Nobody has said that it is difficult to install Sharepoint... in fact, this is one of the seduction points of SharePoint is that it is so easy to install.

    On the other hand, your points about being unable to get user buy-in and about it being sold as a "magic elixir of collaboration" are exactly what is being discussed here. The coolest magic box in the world doesn't have value if the function of that box is irrelevant.

  1. 23  Chuck http://www.charliedigtial.com | 3/28/2008 9:14:33 AM

    Ed, see post #5:

    "The challenge has come now they look to expand the system. Whilst they budgeted for the external consultancy to deploy the system, they knew it wouldn't run itself. They need in-house staff to run it, but are really struggling to hire suitable staff.

    This is a fairly new technology and, whilst Microsoft Certified people are 2 a penny, they can't find anybody with real background in runnning and expanding a Sharepoint infrastructure. All the skills seems to lie with the partner who helped them deploy it. This is naturally raising the cost of ownership quite dramatically."

    This is specifically in reference to expanding the deployment. @5, bring me in man, I can expand your deployment in a matter of hours.

    Also, as I've stated, SharePoint is as easy to develop for as ASP.NET is to pick up and we can all agree that VS and ASP.NET have dumbed down development to the point that most average housewives can drag and drop their way to a passable application.

    But as I said, there is enough flexibility in the platform that you can build and design solutions in "quick and dirty" mode or "bit-shot 'enterprise' application" mode. I don't get where the perceived idea of "complexity" comes in at all with SharePoint. I can take any ASP.NET developer (**ANY**, even some high school kids) from Dice and turn him/her into a competent SharePoint developer in a matter of hours.

  1. 24  Alan Lepofsky http://www.alanlepofsky.net | 3/28/2008 9:17:24 AM

    Chuck, when you say "native integration with Office! For this feature alone, I think it's worth it.", can you please describe this in more detail? I hear that phrase a lot, but it always seems to just come down to saving file attachments from Outlook and Office. Notes and Symphony can save to Quickr the same way. I also think SharePoint also has good calendar integration from team sites to Outlook, which is an area we need to improve on.

  1. 25  Axel  | 3/28/2008 11:34:13 AM

    First of all: Very good that such blog exist and someone talks honestly - as I do suppose - about that endeavour.

    On the other hand, it makes me think. Similar stories could be told about migration - or often partial migration, complementing - Domino with Lotus Websphere Portal Server. I have nothing against WAS Portal, am certified dev for that product and some guys here are running quite a successfull project with it. Of course there are different stories.

    If there are issues now, simply doesn't mean that they won't be fixed at a later stage. If you run now into high cost, doesn't mean that it won't pay off in 4 or 5 years.

    A lot of companies also simply lack evaluation capabilities to estimate the costs.

    They tend to believe the marketing hype. It seems to be to costly to find a trustworthy cost evaluater. So they just go, telling lies to their management and hope that in the end the migration somehow will survive. Nearly allways with much higher costs than estimated first.

    Of course companies which are now building up expertise in Expeditor or WAS Portal may face the same issues. In the longer run it may pay off.

    One important reason for our evaluation problems is our believe to being able to turn high school kid into Sharepoint Developers in a matter of hours. The Sharepoint Developer I trust is certainly no High School kid.

  1. 26  Chad Scott  | 3/28/2008 12:29:36 PM

    @21 Chuck, if I boil your comments down, I'm left with the following:

    It is incredibly easy to get no value out of SharePoint.

  1. 27  Mike Lazar  | 3/28/2008 1:36:41 PM

    @24 - While what you are saying is true, I don't know how relevant it is in today's world. I try to avoid the extreme words "always, never, everyone, etc.", but in this case, it's almost warranted. Virtually every corporate collaboration user has Office. It doesn't matter if you're a Notes shop or Exchange shop, you have Office. That offers far move value with SharePoint than Quickr. If you could could simply save to Quickr from Office and Notes, you'd have something. Extend that to Outlook, and now you're on par with SharePoint (actually, better). Perhaps someone has built an app for this, but I don't know of any. I'd love to be proven wrong here. Since Symphony isn't really a player at this moment, the ability to go from there to Quickr isn't very compelling at the enterprise level. From virtually every SP implementation I've seen, it really is a glorified file server. Since so many Exchange (and Domino) admins are being pressured to alleviate space concerns, shoving their problem over to another group is often a desirable play.

  1. 28  Flemming Riis  | 3/28/2008 1:38:12 PM

    -It is incredibly easy to get no value out of SharePoint.

    yeah but atleast its cheaper than running a weather portal on WPS :)

  1. 29  Chuck http://www.charliedigtial.com | 3/28/2008 1:59:17 PM

    Axel, Native integration with Office means the collaboration features built into every Office application which tie into SharePoint workspaces. The runtimes know when they've been opened from SharePoint workspaces and automatically enable the document management and document information panel which is the core interface for document level collaboration and current editing in the Office world. This includes versioning, diff/merge of Office documents with multiple collaborators, and permissions on Office documents inherited from the SharePoint workspace when opened from a URL.

    How about native support for check-out/check-in to SharePoint? Browsing of SharePoint sites? Synchronization of task lists between Word, Outlook, and (I believe) Onenote?

    These things just work out of the box with SharePoint.

    As Mike Lazar @27 states -- and as I've stated, the fact of the matter is that Office is nearly ubiquitous and that can't be denied.

  1. 30  Chuck http://www.charliedigtial.com | 3/28/2008 2:04:24 PM

    To add to my statement, in addition to the integration points I mentioned, in a SharePoint connected environment, Office documents also inherit content types from SharePoint. What this allows is a synchronization of metadata between the document itself (stored in the documents CustomDocumentProperties) and the SharePoint properties assigned to the document.

    Where this comes into play is *search*. Once properties are defined, it is possible to perform SQL-like property based searches as well as basic property searches using SharePoint's search index. This is a HUGE bonus. This concept is at the very core of the development that I'm currently working on (using content types and metadata to make large content stores searchable using complex SQL like queries).

  1. 31  Alan Lepofsky http://www.alanlepofsky.net | 3/28/2008 2:36:59 PM

    "If you could could simply save to Quickr from Office and Notes, you'd have something. Extend that to Outlook, and now you're on par with SharePoint (actually, better)"

    Save to Quickr from Office, Done.

    Save to Quickr from Outlook, Done.

    { Link }

  1. 32  Mike Lazar  | 3/28/2008 3:34:49 PM

    @31 -- Released today...very good timing. Now, no one is going to ever accuse me of being able to see well (charter member of the barely able to see Domino crew with Bruce & Dovid), but nowhere in that announcement did I see integration with Office. Outlook, yes. Office, no. Perhaps I'm missing something?

  1. 33  Alan Lepofsky http://www.alanlepofsky.net | 3/28/2008 4:25:57 PM

    "With Lotus Quickr, organizations can leverage their investment in desktop software, including Lotus Notes, Lotus Sametime®, Microsoft Office, and Windows® Explorer. The new connectors, available with Lotus Quickr 8.1, extend the Lotus Quickr experience to users of Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Symphony. "

  1. 34  Alan Lepofsky http://www.alanlepofsky.net | 3/28/2008 4:56:20 PM

    Here are some screen shots of Quickr integration with Notes, Outlook, Office, Symphony, and File Manager. These ARE NOT IBM official screen shots. I just through these together for demo purposes.

    { Link }

  1. 35  Ian Scott  | 3/28/2008 6:27:39 PM

    @21/23 - I read expansion as application penetration meaning extending the deployment to include applications beyond file sharing. You state that you have no experience of Lotus Notes and I suggest that this perhaps lowers your expectation horizon.

    Notes is easy to develop but some applications are significantly less easy than others. If you can turn someone into a competent Sharepoint developer in a matter of hours it strongly suggests to me that you either have an over inflated opinion of yourself of that the potential scope of Sharepoint applications is significantly less than the potential scope of Lotus Notes and Domino applications. The interpretation of Chad @26 seems to be on the right guage there.

    @27 - Some of what you say about the ubiquity of Office is fair enough but I think what we are talking about here is Notes to Sharepoint migration. To stay on topic in the context you allude to we would need to be talking about Exchange shops which continue to run Notes and Domino and I think that there Quickr competes with Sharepoint and is a viable alternative. Since you use the word 'glorified' I assert that in likening Sharepoint to Lotus Notes and Domino Microsoft are aggrandising Sharepoint's capabilities and thus glorifying its file sharing capabilities. Buying Sharepoint because Office is ubiquitous sound like selling Sharepoint for the sake of Office rather than on the merits of Sharepoint which is the basis on which Sharepoint should be sold.

    @29 - "The runtimes know when they've been opened from SharePoint workspaces and automatically enable the document management and document information panel which is the core interface for document level collaboration and current editing in the Office world. This includes versioning, diff/merge of Office documents with multiple collaborators, and permissions on Office documents inherited from the SharePoint workspace when opened from a URL".

    Please explain to me how this works when offline and please respond more fully to Alan's request for a definition of integration with office.

    When I first got my hands on Notes it nearly blew my head off. It took some years for me to calm down and take a rigourously pragmatic and, dare I say, realistic view of what Notes should be used for as opposed to what it could or might be used for. I don't fault Chad and Mike for their enthusiasm but by the sound of things they are short in the tooth, have a lowered level of expectation of what is realistically achievable compared to Notes practicioners, and haven't yet addressed the human factor and the transformation management issues that arise when trying to properly implement a collaborative environment

    Even if Exchange took the entire Notes mail market which it won't do most shops who use Notes beyond mail would still be running Notes for other applications. I believe that even if Sharepoint was to cherrypick those remaining Notes applications it would take no more than 30% of them such that those shops would still be running Notes.

    This topic is about migration and I contest that migrating from Sharepoint to Notes is a misnomer at best because Notes would still remain. Microsoft are overstating Sharepoint's capabilities. Quickr competes with Sharepoint and I believe that is a powerful message that will be understood by the market.

  1. 36  Mike Lazar  | 3/28/2008 7:06:05 PM

    @34 -- Thanks for the screen shots. That makes it clear that it is available, which the release didn't (at least for me). Maybe I'm just too literal, but I read that and see the plug-in/connectors are for Outlook and Symphony only, and the first part is simply stating that Quickr is going to help you get more out of your desktop apps, which could include (but don't necessarily mean they are integrated into Quickr) those listed. Again, it's been a long week so maybe I'm the only one. But to me, it reads poorly. By singling out Outlook and Symphony as having connectors, I read it that there isn't integration or a connector for Office.

    Now, as for the Symphony touting...honestly, I would avoid the focus there. This announcement should have the Office integration piece in about Arial 48 bold. Simple integration with Office and Notes into Quickr? That's a story to tell. There'd be zero reason for a Notes shop to go with SharePoint. They could never justify the extra infrastructure and skillset needed. You need to focus on what the market has and needs. Integration to Symphony, while nice and helps a fledgling (and free) tool produced by IBM, is not going to move any Quickr licenses. The Office piece will.

  1. 37  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 3/28/2008 7:51:31 PM

    Again, it's been a long week so maybe I'm the only one. But to me, it reads poorly

    Hey, now IBM's customers and partners have such a hard time getting the IBM message, THEY BLAME THEMSELVES.

    That's sad.

    Mike, you didn't know Quickr had integration direct from Office's menu because IBM didn't tell you, not because it's been a long week.

    That being said, I'd disagree about the importance of highlighting Symphony. The Office integration needs to be apparent. The Symphony integration needs to be in-your-face. Because if the message is: "Quickr provides you with complete integration with Microsoft Office. But even better, it provides you with the same integration with Lotus Symphony, which is ABSOLUTELY FREE!!!" then both points get made plus you deliver the additional message on the spending involved with Office.

    But, y'know... this will all happen on the day IBM wakes up and smells what the end-user is cookin'.

  1. 38  Ben Poole http://benpoole.com | 3/28/2008 8:58:08 PM

    "With Lotus Quickr, organizations can leverage their investment in desktop software, including Lotus Notes, Lotus Sametime®, Microsoft Office, and Windows® Explorer. The new connectors, available with Lotus Quickr 8.1, extend the Lotus Quickr experience to users of Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Symphony. "

    But I haven't invested in MS Office or Windows Explorer. What about people like me? :-D

  1. 39  David Bell  | 3/28/2008 9:35:36 PM

    @36 - the connectors in prior releases (8.0, 8.0.0.2) already covered explorer, notes, sametime and office. The "new" connectors released with 8.1 (today) extend this capability to Outlook and Symphony in addition.

  1. 40  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 3/28/2008 9:51:34 PM

    @39 - Just because it was debuted in a prior release doesn't mean it's not still a feature. That has plagued Notes since v3.

  1. 41  Mike Lazar  | 3/28/2008 11:25:35 PM

    Thanks Alan. I hadn't remembered that from the initial Quickr release notes I had read. That being said, the Office integration definitely needs more play. It's a great story to tell, especially to Notes shops.

  1. 42  Alan Lepofsky http://www.alanlepofsky.net | 3/29/2008 10:28:20 AM

    Here are the official screen shots of the Lotus Quickr Connectors. { Link }

  1. 43  GarryL  | 3/29/2008 3:41:15 PM

    Symphony is a good tool for a Word and PowerPoint replacement, but the main star of MS Office is Excel and always has been.

    Most business could not run without this tool. As an example Excel 2007 can handle some 1 million rows of data and as far as I am aware symphony and open office is stuck at the older 65,000 limit. This really does let it use large data sources for BI type applications (it already is the standard OLAP client). So you'll either need to beef up the spreadsheet side of things or alternatively offer a native reporting application in there as well.

    Now, if you could also add-in to Symphony the Gantt/Project tool from the original Workplace rich client, you'd have a real cool office pack for business.

  1. 44  GarryL  | 3/29/2008 4:00:43 PM

    ...oh and while you're at it could you also put in a replacement for Visio as well? (maybe a beefed up OpenOffice Draw?)

    Project and Visio do not have any real competition.

  1. 45  Graham Dodge  | 3/29/2008 8:41:05 PM

    @43 You'd seriously want to manipulate c. 1,000,000 rows of data in a spreadsheet? I'd think there are better hammers than Excel or Symphony to do that sort of juggling but IMHO Symphony is aimed at the people who don't need that sort of power anyway. Symphony is great for people who's needs fall into the middle bracket.

    * More than WordPad but less than Word ...

    * More than Calculator but less than Excel ...

    * More than Paint but less than Powerpoint ...

    ... and that should cover (IMHO) 80%+ of existing users of MS Office. The point isn't that Excel has more capabilties than Symphony but rather that the capabilities of Symphony answer the needs of 80% of users. You can have Excel for the remaining 20% but why buy it for everybody?

    Now has anyone found the revised Lotusscript Object Model which includes the methods and properties to integrate Symphony with Notes? (Be afraid Microsoft... be very afraid.)

  1. 46  Ben Poole http://benpoole.com | 3/30/2008 6:25:55 AM

    @45 spot on Graham. @44 both apps have decent competition in the Mac world ... :)

  1. 47  GarryL  | 3/30/2008 6:43:43 AM

    @45 I was simply using it as an example of the capabilities of the product. MS is fully aware that Excel is used extensively for maipulating and storing data in all companies and has improved on that. We have hit that limit several times. Rightly or wrongly Excel is used a a bit of a swiss army knife on many things, not just this. It is a real anchor point for many - go on, try taking it off people.

    And for the rest of your list, well OpenOffice already does that anyway and it's been out of Beta for some time now. Others may find Google Docs perfectly OK. You really have to be giving poeple good reasons to use things. Free alone isn't a good enough reason nowaday. Hence my suggestion to include other products.

    @46 I do not own or use a Mac.

  1. 48  Graham Dodge  | 3/30/2008 4:40:27 PM

    @47 I have no intention of taking Excel off the 20% of people who actually need it ... it's the 80% who DON'T use it who will be migrated to Symphony.

    I agree that Office suites need more features than zero cost to be attractive, hence my question about the revised Lotusscript Object Model linking Symphony and Notes. My betting is that is the feature which will be the pebble that starts the avalanche.

  1. 49  Fred Brill http://headstuffing.blogspot.com | 3/31/2008 3:41:48 PM

    Yes, Ed, my name really is Fred Brill - no fooling - we may even be related - nice to meet you - perhaps we could compare family trees one day).

    But I digress. That's not why I dropped in.

    I was very interested in the somewhat honest (and somewhat dishonest) discussion in this thread. But in the last day or so this blog appears to have become a twisted bashing excercise that has lost its point.

    Our company is working our own way through a proposed SharePoint solution while using Notes/Domino as our email engine. The twist is our IT skills are dot.net - and not one single Notes-capable developer.

    In my past - some eight years ago - I was a fully certified notes developer and certified architect / solutions provider. And I enjoyed Notes very much. But since starting with my current employer as a systems engineer - I must admit that I have also enjoyed the outlook client much more than Notes 7. Since we deal with confidential health information privacy and security are concern #1 - hence the notes/domino. But we have no qualified developers. But our IT developers - coders - are all dot.net - for valid points to lengthy to list here. I am not here to rate that decision. I am quite certain we are not unique.

    Our SharePoint project is to support a Sales Team that uses a multitude of spreadsheets to prepare quotes and results in loose Word Documents stashed accross multiple network drives. We have the skills to customize workflows and build the dot.net widgets.

    But making it or the proposed MS CRM component talk with Domino is very daunting with risks we may be forced to swallow.

    I look through discussions like this (and thanks for the tip about Quikr - I will investigate) - and find that good information is often burried below fathoms of bashing. Its too bad. There is a mint to be made to someone who work between big blue and Bill's evil empire to provide truly integrated solutions. There are companies like ours working to pull the strengths of both universes together and bypass as best we can the shortfalls of each. And honestly - Lotus Notes/Domino and the Dot.Net powered Outlook/Exchenge universes are equal in their shortfalls as well.

    Sorry for the long post - but you made me read five pages of bickering to get here :).

    PS - @46 and @48 - The mac would be sweet if coporate IT budgets could afford them.

  1. 50  Ned Brill  | 3/31/2008 3:51:44 PM

    Hey maybe we're all related. Let's get going on a family reunion :-)

  1. 51  Mike Lazar  | 3/31/2008 4:27:21 PM

    One last thing for Alan. The rule I make my consultants follow when writing reports and deliverables is that you have to assume that the person reading it is not familiar with what you are doing or trying to accomplish. Meaning, that in 18 months the recommendations we made might not be implemented, and the person we worked with closely could very well be long gone. The customer needs to be able to pick up the report and understand all of the key elements contained within it.

    For the example of the release you linked to, I completely forgot that all of those tools were already integrated with Quickr. I think a better copy would have been this:

    With Lotus Quickr, organizations have been able to leverage their investment in desktop software, including Lotus Notes, Lotus Sametime®, Microsoft Office, and Windows® Explorer, since Quickr 8.0. With Quickr 8.1, IBM is releasing additional connectors to extend the Lotus Quickr experience to users of Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Symphony.

    While that obviously needs wordsmithing, it doesn't cause any confusion for those learning about Quickr for the first time, or folks like me who have a hard time remembering what I had for breakfast, let alone what I read a year ago. Just my $0.02.

  1. 52  Ben Poole http://benpoole.com | 3/31/2008 4:45:24 PM

    @49 your implication is that IT departments can't afford Macs. Twenty years ago, sure. Not now, not by a long chalk.

  1. 53  Fred Brill http://headstuffing.blogspot.com | 3/31/2008 5:58:31 PM

    @52 could you imagine - under the current corporate LAN topologies dependencies on Windows servers - the cost of migrating 1000 desktop users to Mac?

    My hope has been over the last ten years that these dependencies would subside so you could work from a toaster if it supported a java UI. But Microsoft has only more deeply entrenched itself. Linux has not had the impact I hoped for.

    That's why I'm considering selling shoes for a living :)

  1. 54  Fred Brill http://headstuffing.blogspot.com | 3/31/2008 5:58:31 PM

    @52 could you imagine - under the current corporate LAN topologies dependencies on Windows servers - the cost of migrating 1000 desktop users to Mac?

    My hope has been over the last ten years that these dependencies would subside so you could work from a toaster if it supported a java UI. But Microsoft has only more deeply entrenched itself. Linux has not had the impact I hoped for.

    That's why I'm considering selling shoes for a living :)

  1. 55  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 3/31/2008 9:43:48 PM

    @53, Yes, I can. iMacs are $1200 retail, or about $29/month. 1000 user desktops... the math seems pretty simple.

    To me, it would only depend on what you were doing for custom applications. And if they were Notes or browser custom apps, I'd think you're probably all set!

    { Link }

  1. 56  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 4/1/2008 12:12:57 AM

    @53, a few weeks ago, I highlighted an article on how a company switched to Macs, and saved money in the process:

    { Link }

  1. 57  Ben Poole http://benpoole.com | 4/1/2008 2:33:25 AM

    @54 of course I wouldn't urge a company to just do a random switch like that... that would be crazy (e.g. some outfits actually switch email systems for no reason other than the CIO wants to -- can you imagine!!)

    However, the cost of a computer workstation, to an employer of any size, comprises more than just the unit price. And for me, that is where Macs win over PCs (replacement costs, support, etc.).

    I'm just trying to get across the point that with a little inventive thinking, there are so many options beyond a Wintel machine running MS Office, and some of those options include Macs: they're no longer your father's Quark machines.

  1. 58  Olof Adell  | 4/1/2008 4:24:35 AM

    It is both uplifting and depressing to read a post like this one, Ed. I know nothing about Sharepoint, but I realize that my guess (before reading this) was that it is a good product. At the same time people who know nothing about Lotus Notes/Domino all think it sucks big time. Why does IBM and Notes/Domino have this image problem?

    I work with a small Notes-specialized consultant firm in Sweden. We have made our own Web Publishing system for Domino and have, among others, a swedish town as our customer. Their website has been ranked the best in Sweden more than once and it is based on Domino and our system. Now the town is considering moving to MS to save time and money.

    Towns and cities have traditionally been Notes strongholds in Sweden. Yesterday, there was an article in Sweden's most popular IT magazine, Computer Sweden, that told about how Microsoft is selling Sharepoint to the swedish towns and cities and that the towns and cities love it. We love Domino and we love working with it, but it is SO taxing to work with a product that you always, always have to defend.

    I get the feeling that IBM, and perhaps Domino, have a much better reputation in the U.S. than in Sweden. When I go to Lotusphere and feel the warmth of the community and the openness of the Iris people, it almost brings tears to my eyes. Then you get back to Sweden and the harsh reality. IBM here is really no fun at all. We hunted them down once to ask if they were at all interested in the fact that Sweden's best ranked city homepage was based on Domino and the answer was: "No. It is nice but we don't want to do anything about it. If you sell thousands of licenses, then get back to us. That is the only thing of interest to us." They really said those words.

    We are a very small company who want to focus on bringing value to existing Notes/Domino customers and don't have the manpower needed to sell licenses. It takes too much time. Two years ago, we tried to get the price of the successor to Learningspace for one of our customers, but IBM didn't even call us back. We called many times, left messages, sent emails, but we couldn't get through. The customer was a department that gives a master's degree in international environmental economics in one of Europe's largest universities, but apparently that's not an attractive customer for IBM. We had to tell them that we couldn't find the price for them, so instead they went with a Microsoft-based solution that is available in their university.

    So why is it that IBM just can't get a better reputation for itself and it's products? Every day we consider moving to another platform and if we didn't go to Lotusphere regularly, I am sure we already would have.

  1. 59  GarryL  | 4/1/2008 4:53:18 AM

    @58 It really comes down to which IBM product(s) stack up against the Sharepoint ones, and I really don't think that anybody has given a conclusive answer on this. For the above it sounds as though Quickr might be a good choice?