Posted on 12/08/2002 11:31:34 AM PST by chance33_98
I must respectfully disagree.....and wholeheartedly. I'll try not to sound too much like a "home team boy" here.......ahem........but I can tell you that Big Blue has done a remarkable job of converting itself into a services/hardware company rather than just a purveyor of heavy iron. Its Linux push has been incredibly successful (I have been smack in the middle of it, and I've seen the results).......its increased emphasis on services resulting in its becoming the largest computer services company in the world (and that's just one of its divisions)........grid computing.........e-business on demand.........emphasis on middleware over "applcations software".........you name it. IBM has the ability to throw its guts on the table, take a good hard look at its talent/product pool/expertise, and redirect on a dime........with competence, profitably, and with some terrific people. For a company that big to do what I've seen them do up close and personal has been eye-opening.
BECAUSE IT IS A DUMB IDEA. People dont work that way, and companies have invested millions in trying to. Notes is one of those products that makes companies work the way IT wants them too, as opposed to being a product that conforms to the way a company functions.
Notes is a proven productivity killer, in both end users and the IT workers that have to massage it to keep it happy. Ask the millions of end-users who are on Exchange even though Notes was out for 3 years before Exchange came to market.
Those that need collabortive features can easily have them inside Exchange folders without all of the Notes overhead. The market agrees with me, The Notes market is shrinking while Exchange just grows and grows.
Dont mistake me as a fan of Exchange though, it is poorly designed from the server on down, but it SHINES in comparison to Notes.
The Battle to Streamline Business Software
Simplification -- using fewer suppliers and fewer packages to cut overall costs -- is rapidly becoming an issue that unites all CIOs
Remember it? I develop for it every day. Notes is going strong and is better than ever. IBM's buyout of Lotus has been very good for Notes developers. The product is much better.
As for the strange idea that Notes is 'bloated crapware' how many other products can you name that include forms, document and field-level security, encryption, full-text search and integration with relational systems, all in one box? As a mail client, sure it's fat. But so what? It supports all the mail standards: you can use any mail client you want and still use Notes' security and full text search and so on. You can for example use the Outlook mail client as a front end for Notes mail.
It's a commonplace that Notes is going away real soon now because of [insert name of some other technology here]. I just wish I had a nickel for every time I've heard that.
I'm taking the 6.0 certification exam tomorrow. Wish me luck!
There's a lot of truth in that, and that's been a longstanding problem for a lot of software. IBM is well aware of it and 6.0 has a lot of feature changes to make it more adapatable to how the user works.
Notes is a proven productivity killer, in both end users and the IT workers that have to massage it to keep it happy.
My users say differently.
Those that need collabortive features can easily have them inside Exchange folders without all of the Notes overhead.
Anyone who tries that should consider S&M. It would be much less painful and they'd be home in time for dinner.
The market agrees with me, The Notes market is shrinking while Exchange just grows and grows.
Oh please. Microsoft puts an Exchange client license in every box it ships out the door. They probably stuck an Exchange license in Microsoft Bob - not that anyone ever checked. The 'Exchange client seats sold' numbers from Microsoft are just a pile of used food. A Notes client license OTOH represents real software someone went out and bought because they wanted it.
It is encouraging to hear from someone else who knows what a product is all about instead of the usual FUD type comments that come from marketing lit. Notes wont be around forever as IBM plans to replace .nsf database structures with DB2, the world's best and most used relational db. As I had posted before, Notes morphs into Websphere to create a truly powerful and scalable web environment. The battle will continue on for a long time in this domain.
Good luck on your test!!
Boy, you really do need medication.
Exchange has more than 150M paying licences, so I dont think you really know what you are talking about. Exchange passed Notes 5 years ago, dude.
The US Post Office is NOT an organization that I would use, as a POSITIVE example. Exchange is in 10 times as many Enterprise-class orgs as Notes. I suggest you do some research.
I don't think that Notes and Websphere are going to merge, exactly, at least not anytime soon. I see Notes providing services to Webpshere, filling in the things that a J2EE server may not do. for example, Websphere could use Notes forms for input instead of the more-difficult-to-modify JSPs. J2EE doesn't provide for offline use; Notes can fill in that functionality, and so on. In the meantime, they're putting a version on Websphere in the box with Notes 6.
Microsoft's business is based on selling proprietary operating systems, databases, development tools, and office automation that will run on hardware from multiple manufacturers. This turns PC and Winetel servers into a commodity business, while Microsoft gets the proprietary premium.
IBM is striking back by joining the open source movement to create development tools that will run on multiple platforms (Window, Linux, etc), thereby turning development tools into a commodity business. Meanwhile IBM uses the development tools as a means to build its application and IT outsourcing business where it can get proprietary margins.
It is somewhat ironic that IBM is now the biggest player in outsourcing, which looks ever so much like the service bureau business that the US Govt forced IBM out of in the '60s (and also kept AT&T out of through various FCC and Justice Department restrictions). I'd predict that small/medium businesses with fairly straightforward IT needs will continue to be in the "do it yourself" camp using Microsoft and third party software. However, big organizations with complex IT need will outsource more IT functions to IBM. IBM needs to offer these customers a choice of doing their own application development within an efficient, easy-to-use outsourced environment, or having IBM do the application development as part of the outsourced services. In either case, IBM needs to build a great toolset and development environment particularly suited to developing high-end applications.
In our shop we can develop the same functionality for Notes in a fraction of the time it would take to deploy that same functionality to a browser. If that app needs to go to browsers also, Notes has a built in web server that renders a Notes app as HTML, or you can use IIS as the web server. Making the same app work in both Notes and browser makes development somewhat more complex.
What do you mean by closed?
After all that marketing bluster, this is what counts, and IBM will NOT be able to do that within a workable time frame.
IBM LOVES to take a bunch of different tools, and put them in a bag and shake them up, hoping something good comes out, but it never happens. It is much more likely that Micrsoft, with new versions of Visual Studio will fill that bill years before IBM does.
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