What would a five-year roadmap really look like?

December 10 2009

The Microsoft competitive trick of the month is to ask Lotus Notes/Domino customers to ask IBM for our "five-year roadmap" for Lotus Notes/Domino.  One account was even told to go to Google and type in "Lotus Notes roadmap".  I'm not sure what's so sinister about that, since one of the top ten hits will get to my Lotusphere 2009 presentation which includes a roadmap for the future.  It's not like going to Bing and typing in "Microsoft Exchange roadmap" brings solid responses:
Image:What would a five-year roadmap really look like?

Still, I hate to give Microsoft any ammo to use their tired false logic against Lotus Notes.  The facts make this easy -- IBM has shipped new feature releases or maintenance releases every single year since 2002; in the same time, Microsoft shipped two feature releases and a point release, each of which has required a fundamental rip-and-replace migration of servers, operating systems, or even data.  I'll hold my track record of delivering innovation and value up against Microsoft's any day of the week -- and doing it in the only approach in the industry that allows for full customer control over when/how/if to adopt new architectural features and manage interoperability.

So I have been thinking of writing a white paper over the holiday season that addresses this concept of a five-year roadmap for the future of Lotus Notes and Domino.  The reality is, some of it would be informed conjecture.  This industry moves too fast for anyone to put solid bets on exactly where the market is going in five years.  If we look backward five years, IBM had not yet announced the "Hannover" vision for Notes -- announced in May 2005, delivered in 2007.  Clearly we had some thoughts about "Hannover" in 2004, but we were able to deliver more quickly than a five-year innovation cycle would have required.  Looking back reveals much more about what wasn't on the radar in 2004/2005 -- the explosion of public, worldwide social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook; new application development constructs now used in XPages; mobile devices such as, oh, the iPhone; and increasingly ubiquitous connectivity.

In other words, a five-year plan is an outmoded concept.  It was invented in the 1950s and 60s in a series of nation-building exercises, at a time when the world was not hot, flat, and crowded.  It's never been a successful model in the modern era of client/server, desktop, or web computing, and it makes even less sense as cloud computing increases in importance.  There's always been a double-standard here -- Microsoft constantly asks customers to ask IBM about the future of products like Notes while remaining tight-lipped about the future of products like Exchange -- but I don't mind playing the game to shut down the attack vector.  It'll be good timing to publish something after Lotusphere, anyway.

The question I want to ask before I start writing is, what would a roadmap white paper say to you that would matter?  I'm not likely to be able to commit to version numbers or specific dates, based on IBM's interpretation of Sarbanes-Oxley and other compliance thoughts (we don't want you to make a business decision that relies on our forward-looking statements, it isn't good for either party).  I can certainly talk about concepts, themes, what my colleague Mr. Peters has in mind when he waxes poetic, and anticipated trends.  

Beyond that, though, the future is anybody's game.  That's why most "roadmap" whitepapers from vendors, including what I'd likely write, spend a lot of time emphasizing the here and now -- we know that there are always customers whose needs are met by what we ship today, and that there are more prospective customers who could use the same.

Let me know what you think.

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Lotus Notes  Add/View Comments [46]

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  1. 1  Reynout  | 12/10/2009 10:10:19 AM

    Wasn't the five-year plan of the former communist countries, ie out dated, outlived, etc.. :-D

  1. 2  Dan King  | 12/10/2009 10:21:36 AM

    Maybe just to satisfy those that want one, have a nice big link to a roadmap on the Lotus front page. It needs to be the top link on Google search for Lotus roadmap of course (currently that search brings up a 2 year old page from informationweek)

    All it needs to say is that IBM are committed to supporting and releasing new versions of software every x months for the next 5 years. This is, of course, what anyone that wants to know can already find out, but not easy to find when just searching for roadmap

  1. 3  Peter Presnell http://www.dominoframework.com | 12/10/2009 10:25:18 AM

    Hey Ed.... What is left for me to blog about if you start publishing roadmaps :)

    I think it always helps to know what to focus on NOW if I know what may be coming around the corner "soon". Why waste my time solving issues that IBM will have a better solution for soon (or may no longer be relevant at all).

    I personally think a "5 year" roadmap is somewhat artifical and contrived. For the Notes products I would focus more on what are the "current" plans for the next point release (in detail) and the next major release (at a much higher level). Ideas for what may come next should be represented as "ideas" and not firm plans for any subsequent release.

    For the development platform I think it is a lot more important to outline a strategy of where the product is going so developers can start to re-skill themselves and re-architect their current applications if there is a plan to change the direction of programming languages, use of specific design elements, Web v Notes client etc. Our ability to earn a living is based upon how well our skills match what is needed in the work-force.

  1. 4  Darren Duke http://blog.darrenduke.net | 12/10/2009 10:29:22 AM

    To be honest I think 5 years will is absurd. However, from a client perspective maybe a quarterly update of the features that are penciled in for the next point release and the next major release would go a long way to address and issues, perceived or real. I think a lot of the clients who remember the "dark days" are still wary. It is IBM's job to rectify that. Will a road map solve that? Don't know, but any type of openness and transparency helps.

    For instance, it would be nice to know what IBM are looking at with regards to feature in 8.6 (if there is one), or even 8.5.2 and 8.5.3 given the agile methods in place now. Then outline what is being thought of for R9. I think that would suffice.

    Road maps? No. Potential feature additions and very loose time frames? Yes!

  1. 5  Tim Tripcony http://www.timtripcony.com | 12/10/2009 10:38:27 AM

    I remember a failed attempt (ironically, about 5 years ago) by the newly hired CIO of the company I worked for at the time to develop a 3-year internal roadmap for the IT department... a department of only about 20 people, if memory serves.

    The reason it failed was because it was TOO detailed. It took the form of a gargantuan spreadsheet that mapped out individual project tasks in single-day (and, in some cases, 15-minute) increments. Not only did it fail for the reasons you've already outlined (e.g. industry needs changing too rapidly to anticipate years in advance), but the amount of work it would have required to keep it current would have rendered all of us horribly unproductive (the age-old goals/accomplishments/timesheet trifecta: everyone's telling their boss what they're going to do, what they did, and how long it took them to do it... and nobody has any time left to actually do anything).

    I suggested instead that we take a pyramid approach:

    - 3 years out, the strategy should simply be 5 bullet points outlining high-level attainable goals

    - at the 2-year level, define categories of projects that should be complete by the end of the second year

    - at the 1-year level, define specific projects that should be complete by the end of the current year

    - at the 3-month level, define detailed project deliverables that should be complete by the end of each month in the quarter, and who is responsible for each.

    In other words, the further the goal, the less detail is maintained. Once a month, the quarterly detail is updated; Once a quarter, the 1-year goals are reassessed; once a year, the 2-year and 3-year goals are reassessed. Each update provides an opportunity to determine if the previous goals are still attainable, if more can be achieved than previously thought because we're ahead of schedule, and if new opportunities/needs have arisen that are important enough to render previous goals less important or even obsolete. Seemed like a good approach at the time. Instead, after a month of trying to keep their "living document" alive, the plan was scrapped entirely and we all went back to doing what we'd always done before.

    I don't know if my notion of a detail pyramid model would be at all applicable to a product roadmap, but since then I've always been curious to see whether that idea had any merit in practice.

  1. 6  Volker Weber http://vowe.net/about | 12/10/2009 10:39:28 AM

    Five years ago Twitter did not exist, and Facebook was for students.

    The Soviets had five year plans.

    The situation is that nobody wants to be the last to migrate from Notes. I was recently asking a large Notes account why they are investing in (and increasingly using) Exchange, Sharepoint and Office Communication Server. Two answers: (a) user demand, and (b) others are leaving the party as well. Notes apps? They are not managed in their IT asset management tool. So they might as well not exist.

    How do you turn that around? Not with a five year plan. Customers are confident you will be around. They are not confident they will be around.

  1. 7  NeilJ Davis  | 12/10/2009 10:40:18 AM

    I agree that its hard to predict 5 years in advance, but in a large enterprise 5 years can whizz by which is scary.

    My view would be that a 5 year roadmap would be useful but I'd expect it to curve from definitive plans into more of a fluid discussion.

    So year 1 would be quite definitive to allow good preparation by the customer. Years 2+ would become more and more about potential directions for the product and possible technolgies or targets to integrate with planned releases from other vendors.

  1. 8  J Chavez  | 12/10/2009 10:58:23 AM

    I guess they needed a 5y roadmap from the beginning because

    1) They were playing catch on the Collaboration arena

    2) They needed very "solid" "promises" to made to their customers

    3) It was used to stir people away from IBM with their "innovation"

    4) It's helpful to tell their customers when they will finally get the promised feature they couldn't get on the last release of a product

    5) To have a dream to cling to?

    5y roadmaps are unrealistic, to detail a set of features and capabilities; unless again you need to catch with a competitor way ahead of you.

    Not even a 30% of the features established on Azure's "roadmap" were release, the biggest feature announce on Vista's "roadmap" (WinFS) had to be dropped to be able to ship the product, several times MS was unable to state when the "roadmap" for Longhorn and the "roadmap" for Exchange 2007 will concur, will they be compatible, should they go with Longhorn first, Exchange later, the other way around...

    So for them to brag about 5y Roadmaps, well it's funny...

  1. 9  Erik Brooks  | 12/10/2009 11:47:26 AM

    "what would a roadmap white paper say to you that would matter?"

    I echo Peter's response. Particularly:

    "For the development platform I think it is a lot more important to outline a strategy of where the product is going so developers can start to re-skill themselves and re-architect their current applications if there is a plan to change the direction of programming languages, use of specific design elements, Web v Notes client etc."

    This will also encourage existing IBM/Lotus customers to continue to consider N/D as an app dev platform.

    To quote Nathan: "I think the application development strategy coming from the Notes/Domino team right now is a mess."

    { Link }

    The only hints of 8.5.2 and 9.0's feature sets are rumors floating around the blogosphere.

    What's coming next in DDE? Was XPages a "flash in the pan" from the failed Workplace effort, or are there more significant enhancements in store? Are there any plans to build a J2LS bridge so that legacy LS apps can become integrated with XPages? Is IBM strategically looking to compete with ASP.Net via Domino/XPages?

    IBM obviously can't give a 5-year roadmap, but 1-2 would be nice.

  1. 10  Henning Heinz  | 12/10/2009 12:14:25 PM

    For sure I cannot say it better than Erik in (9). I don't need a roadmap for Exchange as I probably don't need one for the mail part of Domino either. But as a development platform the current IBM politics of only announcing short term features at Lotusphere is far from best. Maybe a comparison to Java (with version 7 coming next year but beta already available) and .net (with 4 promised Marched 2010 but having a beta since March 2009) is unfair or apples to oranges but as a developer you have much more time to see what is coming (for Java you can even take part in the decision process or at least you feel like you could). So kindly asking for a roadmap (or criticizing the lack of) to me is much more than Microsoft speak.

  1. 11  Irv Schor  | 12/10/2009 12:49:45 PM

    Roadmap??? Notes apps written 10-20 years ago on Notes .x still running on Domino/Notes 8.5: Shouldn't the spin on this correlate to something called a Track Record? This is a golden marketing opportunity, no?

  1. 12  Mike Kinder http://www.acadiasolutions.com | 12/10/2009 12:58:22 PM

    Thanks for this info Ed, but I think there is a typo in this sentence on your post:

    IBM has shipped new feature releases or maintenance releases every single year since 2002; in the same time, they shipped two feature releases and a point release, each of which has required a fundamental rip-and-replace migration of servers, operating systems, or even data.

    You are missing a NOT as shown below in all CAPS:

    IBM has shipped new feature releases or maintenance releases every single year since 2002; in the same time, they shipped two feature releases and a point release, each of which has NOT required a fundamental rip-and-replace migration of servers, operating systems, or even data.

  1. 13  Charles Robinson http://www.cubert.net | 12/10/2009 1:09:35 PM

    I'll echo Peter and Erik: It would be tremendously helpful to know about the plans for the development tools. It doesn't need to be a whitepaper as much as a statement of commitment and intent. There is a huge laundry list of things us developers keep asking for, much of it surrounding things that are incomplete, broken or improperly implemented. At various times there have been commitments made to addressing it, but things keep slipping. It would be great for Lotus clear the air on those issues.

    @12 - I thought the same thing, but Ed's original is correct. It could be argued that it would be clearer had he used "Microsoft" instead of "they" after the semicolon.

  1. 14  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 12/10/2009 1:12:36 PM

    @12/13 which I did change subsequent to the original posting (are you seeing it as "Microsoft shipped two feature releases..."?

  1. 15  Mike Kinder http://www.acadiasolutions.com | 12/10/2009 1:17:42 PM

    @14 - says Microsoft now, missed the punctuation that meant Microsoft.

  1. 16  Keith Brooks http://www.vanessabrooks.com | 12/10/2009 1:40:38 PM

    Funny Darren once again took my idea, I was going to suggest a 5 quarter report, basically a year + some extra bit to show the here and now and what is just beyond the horizon.

    No one needs a 5 year, plan, the President only sits for 4 years, unless re-elected.

    What people want to see/hear of how Notes et al will reign over the others to follow your path. Not that we will integrate with Facebook or iNextPhone or include some other development language.

  1. 17  Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 12/10/2009 3:23:30 PM

    I've always favoured the message of boring consistency. Domino has proved itself to be scalable, secure and robust, so there's no need to make wholesale changes to the architecture. And the ability to be upgraded from one version to another (or even skip versions) is often taken for granted by Domino customers (why settle for less?) and is a nirvana not experienced by customers of other solutions on the market.

    It would be rash to comment on a product not even on the drawing board yet, but who would bet against Domino 10 being an in-place upgrade from Domino 8.5?

    So the key points are what goes around the edges or sits deep within that consistent architecture. And how does Notes evolve... already we've seen it's ability to pull in other types of collaboration, but I'm sure that's just the beginning (and I assume we'll know a bit more after Lotusphere).

  1. 18  Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 12/10/2009 3:27:54 PM

    And one more thing... do Microsoft have a 5 year road map? Right up until they announced Exchange 2010 many people were expecting the next release to be based on SQL Server. If they had a 5 year road map we'd have known the answer.

    So in return Microsoft, look at my slide that shows Domino 4 to Domino Next which has the word upgrade in every gap and shows arrows skipping versions. Now show us your version of that slide with the Exchange heritage and futures.

  1. 19  Karl-Henry Martinsson http://www.bleedyellow.com/blogs/texasswede/ | 12/10/2009 4:36:14 PM

    I agree with what several mentioned above. A five year plan is way too long and too much can change. But a five year committment could useful for potential/current customers.

    Then a number of shorter term goals, getting more detailed the closer to current date you get. This plan should be updated avery 3 or 6 months and be linked to from www.lotus.com.

    Perhaps something like this (all data made up by me):

    "IBM will continue to deliver a major release of Notes/Domino every 12-18 months for at least the next five years. Within 3 years, the goal is to deliver a top-notch development environment for the Notes client as well as for developing web applications. Support for Xpages will continue and expand, and a number of pre-created controls will be added, to make development even easier. In the next major release, "Notes/Domino 9" the following is planned: XYZ, ABC, EFG. The focus for that version is the Domino Server. The next point release will be 8.5.2, Q2 2010, followed by 8.5.3 in Q4 2010. They will contain further performance improvement, and 8.5.3 will contain Symphony 2.0, based on the OpenOffice 3.x code stream."

    Something like that. :-)

  1. 20  Neil Wainwright http://www.nexonia.com | 12/10/2009 4:42:50 PM

    I'd set out some guiding principles and then go into them in a bit of detail. Things like user interface refinements, TCO, performance, rapid adoption of new technologies in ways that help businesses grow and be competitive, etc. Go into the past to highlight how this is how you've run the business prior so as to build credibility. That kind of stuff. IMHO.

    ...Neil

  1. 21  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 12/10/2009 4:59:38 PM

    @19 that would be great but is much more specific than the IBM lawyers would let me do. I realize I asked what y'all wanted, but I need to keep the expectations in-line with what is possible :-)

  1. 22  JohnD  | 12/10/2009 7:01:49 PM

    I think a 5 year roadmap could be played either way by Microsoft. If IBM/Lotus doesn't have one they will spin it to say that Notes will not be supported by IBM in the future. If you do, they will probably try to poke holes in it by saying it's too "fixed" and technology will change too much in that time frame for the roadmap to be realistic.

    The only real way to "win" the debate is affirm IBM's commitment to the Lotus platform similar to the time when you said IBM was committed to two at least two more releases of Notes/Domino. I think customers need to hear that IBM is planning on not only having Lotus around for a while, but they are investing serious money into it.

    As for features I'd point out how Lotus has been incorporating new, and relevant, features into each release - like social networking. Other than that I'd say that Lotus is always evaluating new technology trends for inclusion into the platform where they make sense i.e. not just adding features for the sake of adding features.

    One last note. I made a Facebook post about being a Lotus geek and my new friend responded by telling me Lotus was a spreadsheet she used to sell back when she was an IBM account exec. She had no clue that the Lotus collaboration platform even existed. Her response is typical when I mention Lotus Notes to clients. Given Microsoft's pinched finances these days I think now would be a great time for IBM to do a media "blitz" in order to let the average person know that Lotus hasn't gone the way of the Dodo.

  1. 23  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 12/10/2009 8:07:11 PM

    I've been thinking about this all afternoon, and there are really very few things I can think of that IBM could say that I care about that have a 5-year scope. Honestly, the times in the past when IBM has made 5-year plan statements have proven to be misunderstood at best (contextual collaboration as a general service) and disastrous at worst (Workplace Server and NSFDB2.) The only thing concrete I can think of that would be remotely valuable is "there will be a major release of Notes/Domino that ships in either 2014 or 2015." In other words "we're not abandoning this platform."

    Otherwise, only principles have meaning: "Lower cost of ownership," "investment protection," "simpler upgrades," "more mobile platforms," "increased integration with trending services," "faster and more powerful development capabilities," "increased focus on the needs of SMBs"

    Personally, I think you guys should ease up on the backwards compatibility, because it costs you a lot to maintain stuff like Rich Text compatibility back to R3.

  1. 24  Ian Randall  | 12/10/2009 8:31:54 PM

    This latest tactic by Microsoft is simply to further the lie that IBM/Lotus is not committed to Lotus Notes.

    The fact that people might fall for this lie, simply illustrates how much more effort IBM/Lotus needs to make to overcome the WebSphere message of several years ago.

    But if the credibility of five year roadmaps is in question, how many years ago did Microsoft commit to replacing JET with SQL Server as the database in Exchange?

    However, I also feel that IBM/Lotus needs to spend more focus on the application development roadmap and what their vision is deliver a world-class development environment and also what they plan to do to help migrate existing applications to a more Web 2.0 look & feel. And the best person who should deliver that message is Maureen Leland. You only need to see the reaction from the crowd at Lotusphere when she gets on stage to see that.

    Also, Microsoft seem to be making great strides in their development of no-code development, what is IBM/Lotus doing in this area with Lotus Notes? Please don't answer this by "free Domino Designer". The roots of code development in Notes came from end users, so I feel that one of the biggest tactical mistakes that Lotus Made was to remove designer from from the Notes Client. That mistake has now been reversed, but enhancing the no-code development capabilities in Lotus Notes would be an even better strategy.

    Also, Microsoft has a good story for integration of their collaborative platform with their Business Intelligence tools. However, when I look at the recent IBM Cognos releases, Lotus Notes is glaringly absent from this strategy. What is IBM/Lotus going to do with Lotus Notes in this specific area?

    In addition, I feel that the single biggest advantage that competitors have with relational database based solutions is reporting. What is the IBM/Lotus strategy to address business reporting from data within Lotus Notes databases? This has always been a weakness with Lotus Notes. What plans does IBM/Lotus have in this specific area?

    You don't need to say when or how you are going to achieve any of these issues, but a statement of objectives would be highly regarded by your users and business partners. The difference between IBM/Lotus and Microsoft is that your partners and users would actually believe you.

    Ian

  1. 25  Erik Brooks  | 12/10/2009 9:49:28 PM

    @24 - I'd write some pretty big checks for (well-performing) Cognos <> NSF integration.

  1. 26  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 12/10/2009 10:12:16 PM

    @25 Define your parameters. IBM aren't the only problem-solvers around here.

  1. 27  David Bell  | 12/10/2009 11:57:49 PM

    @24 - take a look at Data Modeler for Notes here: www.sunandson.com

  1. 28  David Bell  | 12/10/2009 11:58:32 PM

    @27 - sorry that response was to @25.

  1. 29  Richard Schwartz http://www.poweroftheschwartz.com | 12/11/2009 12:21:16 AM

    Here's the format of what I would want to see:

    In the next two years, IBM will deliver new things A, B, and C, and we will integrate our existing things D, E and F into a more cohesive offering in which our Domino technology remains the centerpiece. In the next three years after that, A, B and C will mature and be fully integrated into our flagship offering -- so by that point everything we are talking about today will be bringing new benefits to those of you who continue to invest and make Notes and Domino the centerpiece of your collaboration strategy. Simultaneously with all of this, we will be investing significant research in areas G, H and I. The fruits of this research are things that we can only begin to imagine right now, but whatever they are, our direction will be to bring new ideas and new benefits into our flagship offerings.

  1. 30  Fredrik Malmborg  | 12/11/2009 2:21:56 AM

    Politicians sometimes answers politely when asked an offencing question, and that can give credit to them. But if they stay polite too long, they will be seen as weak.

    Maybe it is time for IBM to counter attack with full power.

    About the roadmap, yes we need to know about where to invest out competence development. It takes years to get really skilled in something new. And we also need to know in what areas Notes/Domino will get stronger.

    I also agree about stop thinking about need to be compatible with versions R5 or older. The Lotus brand does not get any credits from showing those versions today.

    Many companies are still thinking files, folders, printing, users, passwords and not much more. Microsoft is in fact still controlling/owning this area, so it gets natural for companies to keep buying from them. However this map is being rewritten when new generations enters the businesses. The picture of Microsoft is already in the mind of these new generations. IBM has the advantage to now building the picture of IBM from scratch, because few youngsters know anything at all about IBM. You can picture IBM as the new, creative and coll kid on the block. Turning Microsoft into the old, slow, grey and mainstream.

    Time will tell... and I believe IBM Lotus will still be there.

  1. 31  Darren Duke http://blog.darrenduke.net | 12/11/2009 7:39:40 AM

    @21, then get new lawyers. It is obvious from all these posts that something needs to happen.

    If you take the current "roadmap" context to the relationship with a wife or girlfriend then IBM is saying, "I won't sleep with anyone else. Look, over the past 2 years I haven't messed around on you one bit. Right? So trust me, I'm good for it".

  1. 32  Mike McP http://www.openntf.org/Projects/pmt.nsf/ProjectLookup/mPortal | 12/11/2009 8:09:30 AM

    As most have said, few are particularly interested in even a 3yr detailed plan. I'd like to see 'New version every x years, and this is a hot-list of bullet points for the next version'. Put that out yearly and that's enough for me.

    What I'd like to see is an announcement of real, budgeted efforts to attract young talent. This effort CANNOT be youtube tutorial videos and WIKIs:) This is a huge concern for corporations. When you mention the ability to utilize Java developers, that's equally terrifying to large installed bases of LS apps.

    Secondly, the 'Microsoft constantly asks customers...' line. That's key. Microsoft does constantly ask customers, and advertise to them, and offer free training, etc. I realize you're working on these efforts, but a hit on slideshare.net via google search will not be enough. As @24 said, you're trying to undo some damage that was actually inflicted internally years ago, and that's always more difficult than fending off outside attacks.

  1. 33  Charles Robinson http://www.cubert.net | 12/11/2009 9:55:59 AM

    @21 - I understand that IBM Legal thinks they are protecting IBM's interests. What they are actually doing when they stand in your way like this is alienating current and potential customers. You already know that, though.

    Some inspiration for breaking out of groupthink: { Link } { Link } { Link }

  1. 34  Chuck Savino http://www.csavino.com | 12/11/2009 10:09:23 AM

    Ed,

    Providing long-term guidance on direction is still useful; arguing about the length of time is less useful.

    The challenge for Notes/Domino remains the same. Form follows function. As new, young workers are minted and pulled into the workforce, they will have new expectations about the tools they use. They want small, quick, simple apps that they can mix and match to support their own personal way of approaching a business problem. Business owners want to reduce their development times and costs to almost nothing.

    We are in a new age of development, the Rachel Ray "30 minutes or less" development cycle.

  1. 35  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 12/11/2009 11:51:04 AM

    We are in a new age of development, the Rachel Ray "30 minutes or less" development cycle.

    I always notice on those 30-minutes-or-less meals that they always seem to have an infinite amount of cookware and utensils, and the cleanup is never included in the 30 minutes. So cooking it only takes 30 minutes, but there's an hour of cleaning as a consequence.

    Somehow, that makes your metaphor about development cycles even more fitting. :)

  1. 36  Michael Kobrowski  | 12/11/2009 11:59:35 AM

    Is Microsoft (Winzigweich as we called it in Germany) getting scared and trying to use those scare tactics more because we now have Lotus Knows?

    Maybe we have Lotus Knows now because IBM Lotus realized that M$ is spending less money and therefore some marketing might help?

    I like the Pyramid idea mentioned before. Especially if you throw in there Lotus Notes/Domino is 20 years old, 10 years under IBM and it's a strategic (I hope) part of IBM's business future for the next 10 and 20 years...

    Nobody needs more than that really...

  1. 37  Michael Kobrowski  | 12/11/2009 12:01:02 PM

    @35 totally agree

  1. 38  Djalma Britto  | 12/11/2009 2:05:24 PM

    This trick is used a lot.. Why not direct the google search results for your presentation and they stop doing that right away ?

  1. 39  Stijn Soens  | 12/11/2009 2:35:04 PM

    @29 I agree with that. A lot of customers start to see the added value of the Lotus portfolio in the collaboration area and Microsoft is not able to propose a similar offering today. Roadmap presentations are product based and therefore it may be difficult to address a long term strategy. If you also focus on integration points within the Lotus portfolio, then customers will see that all products have their added value in the story IBM brings, also Lotus Domino. Still, 5 years is too long.

  1. 40  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 12/11/2009 3:56:57 PM

    Y'know Ed, perhaps in lieu of a 5 year plan, we could get a 5 month plan. I've hardly heard anything about 8.5.2 plans and objectives. Do we even have a release quarter announced yet?

  1. 41  Karl-Henry Martinsson http://www.bleedyellow.com/blogs/texasswede/ | 12/11/2009 4:00:12 PM

    @30: At my company, we are still on R5 to a large extent. ND7 have slowly been deployed, now at about 50-60% of the workforce.

    It is not until 2-3 months ago I could even install Domino Designer 7 on my computer. So backwards support is important. Our mother-company in Australia is still using Notes 4.6...

    Other investments than upgrading Notes have been deemed more important, and among some managers the thought was "it works, why mess with it? It's only IT who want new shiny toys..."

  1. 42  Erik Brooks  | 12/11/2009 4:12:31 PM

    @Ed - I agree that it'd be worth it to fight with legal a bit.

    Once of the challenges is that Lotus (and specifically Notes/Domino) does SO MUCH that it's hard to know what's coming and where things are going.

    Microsoft, on the other hand, has individualized components, making it very easy to talk specifically about each. For example, what about the next version of...

    - Visual Studio? Probably going to continue being a class-leading IDE.

    - Exchange? Probably going to continue being a leading email server.

    - IIS? I'm sure it'll do some fun HTML 5 stuff, etc.

    - SQL Server? Probably will get performance enhancements, etc. etc.

    - ASP.Net? 4.0 is coming and it's pretty easy to get a long list of the enhancements there.

    Try hitting Google with "Next version of Visual Studio". We don't see things like this coming from IBM/Lotus. Try Googling "Next version of Domino Designer".

    Part of this stems from the fact that things are so integrated -- e.g. Designer isn't advertised as a product. It's simply another piece of N/D.

    Another part of the problem is (like somebody else mentioned above) that you're having to recover from the Dark Years.

    Like touting backwards compatibility doesn't really mean much to me at this point. Yes, R6 had a new formula engine, but other than that R6, 6.5, 7.0 and 8.0 didn't really have any significant Designer features from R5 so it's no surprise it is backwards compatible with R5 and earlier. When your dev platform is sitting still, yeah - people are going to just expect backwards compatibility.

    Yes, even 8.5 is backwards compatible, but again simply from the fact that the Big New Thing(Xpages) requires a bunch of new stuff (Themes, SSJS, etc.). You still have to rip-and-replace or forklift upgrade much of a (legacy?) 8.0 app to use Xpages due to lack of LS support. And this is why the app dev strategy from the N/D team looks like a mess right now.

    If you want to match MS, explain what's coming in 8.5.2 and 9.0 for:

    DDE (=Visual Studio)

    Mail & SMTP (=Exchange)

    HTTP & Xpages (=IIS)

    NSF (=SQL Server)

    Then you can throw in all the other juicy admin-type stuff (DAOS, ID Vault, etc.) that N/D admins have always gotten over the years.

    You've got MS on administration, that's for sure. I'd say you've got them on the client-side with 8.5.1. But they've got you on "Developers, developers, developers..." and we just want to know what IBM's direction there is.

  1. 43  Uwe  | 12/13/2009 1:47:33 AM

    Let us have a good working RSS solution in the Notes Client as soon as you can. If possible include it in 8.5.2!

    This is where MS is indeed ahead of Lotus.

  1. 44  Felix Binsack http://TIMETOACT.DE | 12/13/2009 6:59:45 AM

    I think a 5 year plan should make this point:

    - Improving Consumability and Thighter Integration -

    Making it easier for large and small customers to implement and utilize the benefits of a superior architecture. In 5 years from now users will not be able to tell if they are working with Lotus Notes / Symphony / Domino / Samtime (Sametime UT) / Quickr / Connections, they will just use the Lotus software stack for business productivity and they will miss it badly if they can not have it for 20 min.

  1. 45  Kevin Mort http://www.theglobalmind.com | 12/14/2009 8:31:31 AM

    I've run into this from within the Yellowverse itself so it stands to reason MSFT would try to use it.

    To wit I tend to pose the question, how long of a roadmap would you like to see? 5, 10, 20 years? Something's got to give there.

    If some folks in our own user base & community don't seem to believe the product has a future, and love to talk to others as such how would we convince those outside the existing community?

    It's more FUD hocus pocus but seems to work, especially when someone's on the fence already.

  1. 46  axel  | 12/15/2009 2:08:16 PM

    go re-engineering.

    Buy VMWare and start a Notes2 based on strong openSource components (among those couchDB).

    5 years ago quite a huge part of the crowd was singing the rip-and-replace song.

    Do electrical engineers build wind and solar plants compatible to coal-fired power plants?

    Else my prediction for the year 2030 on edbrill.com:

    IBM has introduced some incompabilities with Notes 1.0 nsfs. Some people forked away from IBM and used a huge inflation in 2015 to buy the license from to do so legally. The thing is called Truely-Notes.

    Ed Brill is their sales manager.

    Discussion will go like this:

    Henning Heinz: Here in Munich a big customer is moving over to flicker google. And I am kind of bored. For sure Erickson DBs with the Volvo transaction engine are way better, but still it pays my bills and my customers are happy.

    vowe: Orasoft now display their stuff exuding some sophisticated viola-gorse odor in some funny list of a software management app. The Truely-Notes entry in the list just flies unnoticed under their radar.

    Just joking.

    Dojo_on_Domino rocks!


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