Update on ND8 availability plan...

July 18 2007

The July 16 pre-release candidate of Notes/Domino 8 is in the hands of beta testers and design partners tonight, as the march towards release continues.  Mary Beth Raven commented last week about our role in the release "jury", voting on readiness of each candidate build.  I know part of what I'll be doing tomorrow...

Outside of the development labs, the extended team has signed off on the availability plan for Notes/Domino 8.  In prior postings, I've teased a bit that I scheduled vacation to coincide with that availability plan.  But my vacation starts two weeks from tomorrow...and it now looks like I'll be out at the time of or just before the actual code availability.  We're talking a few days one way or another at this point, and any which way, the code will be out the door in August.

My days at the moment include a fair bit of ND8 presentation planning, document review (FAQs, new papers and brochures), reference acquisition, and internal communications.  We're also working hard on the 8.0.1 and "next" (8.5/9.0/whatever we call it) plans for Notes/Domino, which are moving along and more detail should be available soon externally.  Add in some customer meetings and ad-hoc work...and I'm pretty ready for the beach....in what I suspect will be the last calm before the excitement storm going from ND8 availability all the way through Lotusphere 2008.  Which, oh yeah, we're starting work on that, too.  Did someone say beach?

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Notes and Domino 8  Add/View Comments [17]

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  1. 1  Keith Brooks http://lotustech.blogspot.com | 7/18/2007 8:06:36 PM

    Not that I expect you to be heading to Florida right now for the beach, but if you are, you are always welcome.

    And now a shameless plug for my LUG:

    Anyone from South Florida seeing this, Thursday the 19th at 5:30pm at IBM Miami is the Southeast Lotus User Group meeting. Email me for more.

  1. 2  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 7/18/2007 8:19:18 PM

    no, my beach is half a world away. :)

  1. 3  Volker Weber http://vowe.net/about | 7/18/2007 9:12:47 PM

    And you are not longing to see Keith in your vacation. SCRN. :-)

  1. 4  Keith Brooks http://lotustech.blogspot.com | 7/18/2007 10:33:38 PM

    Good, I was worried you might be hounded by Lotus crazies if you stayed in the US. :-)

  1. 5  Bill Geimer  | 7/18/2007 11:19:36 PM

    Enjoy your vacation. I am enjoying the V8 beta.

  1. 6  Marco Foellmer http://www.ebf.de | 7/19/2007 1:34:11 AM

    enjoy Your vacation and thank YOU for all this information!

    ciao marco

  1. 7  Roberto Boccadoro  | 7/19/2007 3:27:50 AM

    Beach! For sure in a few days for me :-) I will definitely be at the sea when we ship Notes, since I will be away for the whole month of August :-D

  1. 8  Kevin Mort  | 7/19/2007 8:52:14 AM

    As always, appreciate the update. Exciting times ahead.

    I also think it is important to note the development progress of future releases. This always helps.

  1. 9  Mark Hughes  | 7/19/2007 11:07:39 AM

    I am guessing no public availability of the pre release?

  1. 10  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 7/19/2007 11:12:16 AM

    no. The cycle time to kit up and stage interim builds to open servers, and the public tolerance for any issues with them, make it counter-productive to post them.

  1. 11  Rob Ingram http://www.dominoblog.com | 7/19/2007 12:39:58 PM

    We are looking at finishing up the 8.0.1 plan once we ship 8.0.

  1. 12  David  | 7/19/2007 10:31:57 PM

    What is interesting:

    7.0 released Aug 30, 2005

    7.0.1 released Feb 7, 2006

    7.0.2 released Sep 29, 2006

    7.0.3 Est. release date October, 2007

    I understand ND8 has been a huge drain in developer resources, however 8.5/9.0 will be same.

    Is IBM Lotus addressing the large time cap between maintenance releases, especially when there is no FP’s for Notes Clients.

  1. 13  Lars Berntrop-Bos  | 7/20/2007 5:55:46 AM

    @David:

    But you can easily run the Domino fixpacks on the client, just point the update app to the correct directories.

    I am running 7.0.2 FP2 both Domino and client (with 7.0.1 JVM for correct Sametime 7.5.1 operation)

  1. 14  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 7/20/2007 6:30:12 AM

    @13 ND8 hasn't been a huge "drain". It's a big project with more developers working on it than any other Notes/Domino release, but it's distinct from efforts put in to maintain the 7.x or 6.5.x codestreams.

    Many customers have told us that client maintenance releases on the old quarterly schedule were too frequent, and that they picked an MR and stuck with it for the client. Fixes for the server have been indicated as more critical, thus the fixpacks etc.

    I'll pass your feedback along, perhaps attitudes about client updates are changing.

  1. 15  Peter LaComb  | 7/21/2007 7:19:06 AM

    I'd have to agree that in the past we've just picked an MR and stuck with it, but with the way the smart upgrade has improved we'd be more inclined to apply more frequent updates.

    @14 - that sounds dangerous (for the client).

  1. 16  syahid ali http://coolware.blogspot.com | 7/23/2007 6:23:48 AM

    sorry for the post hijack (don't know how to post where) but pc world has something to say on lotus notes --> { Link }

  1. 17  The Turtle http://www.weightlessdog.com/shell.nsf | 7/23/2007 11:28:56 AM

    Aw, man... I haven't even unpacked all the stuff from Lotusphere 2007, and here it is, almost August and almost time to crank up the LS machine again...