back to article IBM thinks Notes and Domino can rise again

IBM and HCL have outlined their plans for the Notes/Domino portfolio that the former offloaded to the latter last year. Since announcing that HCL would take over development of IBM's collaborationware, the two companies have conducted a long listening tour that saw them stage 22 meatspace meetings and four online forums. The …

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  1. PhilipN Silver badge

    "reached 2,000 people"

    My goodness - That's almost a whole ... village!

    My goodness (2) - When I saw the heading I had to look at my watch to see what century we are in.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "reached 2,000 people"

      That's almost the whole ... remaining customers?

      Ok, they added all the fashionable buzzwords to the roadmap - the real question is how they will put it all together - not one of them deliver a good application by itself.

    2. TheVogon

      Shuffling the Deckchairs

      Shuffling the deckchairs on the Titanic a few decades after it sank...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        @TheVogon ... Re: Shuffling the Deckchairs

        HCL is the prequel to IBM? (Think about it.)

        A friend inside the Blue Pig told me that after certain products have evolved to a certain level, less and less work is done on them... Its at this point where the annual licensing fees are almost pure profit. Low maintenance / bug fix costs, Lower support costs, ride out the user base until they migrate to a new platform. For some of these products, its a lot of dough. So HCL is smart in buying certain products and then refurbishing them in a 'partnership w IBM' because IBM is still selling the license and managing the accounts for a share of the profits.

        In terms of mail ... Can you list all of the paid for Enterprise grade email solutions out there?

        Notes? Gmail (hosted) , Microsoft (hosted) and Exchange Servers ... and that's about it unless you want to go Postfix / Dovecot (the most secure solution) [FOSS]

        Notes refresh could be a good idea if they do it right. And that's the question.

        Can HCL do it 'right' ? Who knows....

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: @TheVogon ... Shuffling the Deckchairs

          GroupWise still exists (and there's a 2018 version) and it still scales a lot better than Exchange, has the same feature set, and has been able to be upgraded in place since the year dot. Biggest weakness, "no one ever got fired for choosing Microsoft".

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: @TheVogon ... Shuffling the Deckchairs

            "GroupWise still exists (and there's a 2018 version) and it still scales a lot better than Exchange,"

            I call bs on that. I don't know ANY 100K user+ GroupWise installs. There are numerous Exchange deployments of that size.

        2. JLV

          Re: @TheVogon ... Shuffling the Deckchairs

          C > B (think about it)

          But, yeah, after occasionally enduring the lobotomized search functions of local Outlook at corporate sites, I definitely pine for Gmail's capabilities. Very 90's technology, esp when used in lieu of proper requirements documentation.

          In comparison, my hazy memories of long years using Notes for emails and specs were nowhere as bad as Outlook. I rather doubt IBM can do much mass usage software right, but that's not saying they don't have an opportunity (that they'll probably squander).

          Plus, isn't it common in discussions about Linux adoption for commentards to say that the one item saving MS's bacon is the lack of Exchange alternatives? Could a revamped Notes, possibly with much new functionality, step in? That's a straight question: I don't enough about either's function to have a clue whether Notes is relevant in that space.

  2. Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

    Bloated Goats Zombies?

    1. big_D Silver badge

      I haven't used it in about a decade, but I can remember when it was cc:mail.

      When Lotus and then IBM took it over, it became a bloated, slow mess. I remember using it at a customer in 2001, we had Exchange and Outlook and it was relatively fast, even over a modem connection, on the other hand, on a local Ethernet connection, Notes took ages to open up view windows and most user opened their Email view and never looked at anything else.

      I then used it again around 2010 and its performance hadn't really improved...

      I don't know whether both clients somehow managed to misconfigure their servers and clients, but I never saw an installation that worked in "real time", as opposed to feeling like I was waiting for batch jobs with low priority to be run in the background.

      1. kingkane

        ccmail and Notes were different products.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Yep, entirely different but in the IBM world Notes was offered as the "upgrade path" from ccMail.

          The interesting thing about Notes was that if you had a Notes "evangalist" in the company you would find pockets of little Notes based apps all over the place doing clever (and sometimes not so clever) little things under the radar. Long time back in a company I worked for that led to a lot of difficulties when Notes was to be phased out because there was no easy replacement for what those apps did.

          1. nijam Silver badge

            > if you had a Notes "evangelist" in the company you would find pockets of little Notes based apps all over the place doing clever (and sometimes not so clever)

            Yeah, we had one of those. "Sometimes not so clever"? In fact, usually not so clever, we found.

            > ... because there was no easy replacement for what those apps did

            Our experience was that the main difficulty was in finding out what they did (what they were meant to do was often somewhat different), so they could be ported to an actually-supported system.

  3. Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

    And will the bloated zombie, upsi, goats, server run on Windows only, or on Linux and OS/2(eCS, Arca Noae) as well?

  4. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

    It would be nice to have some half decent competition for Exchange.

    1. iron Silver badge

      Clearly you've never used Notes / Domino.

    2. AMBxx Silver badge
      Coat

      Return of GroupWise?

      Edit:

      OMG

      https://www.microfocus.com/products/groupwise/

      1. Pirate Dave Silver badge
        Pirate

        I was a Groupwise admin for 15 years, then migrated to Office365. Never used Notes in the least. For on-prem, Groupwise was hard to beat (at least through 2012 when we jumped ship) - it was fast, took care of its own databases pretty reliably, and was easier to maintain and upgrade than what I'd read about Exchange. But lack of integration with desktop apps (ie - "it's not Outlook"), and Novell self-destructing, eventually forced even me to say "we need to move". As an admin, the biggest benefits I found in O365 were the deep Powershell abilities (we won't talk about EWS, though), and the fact I never have to add another drive to the storage array.

  5. IglooDude

    "IBM and HCL think Notes can rise again"

    And I think we should take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Nuke notes

      fine, as long as Office 365 is taken out at the same time especially the [redacted][redacted] for Sharepoint.

      Before my job went to India, we had more issues with Sharepoint than anything else.

      It was WORN

      Write Once Read Never

      Apparently and with a team three times the size as we had they still can't get it to work properly.

      Spending days working on my allotment or in my 'shed' making things is a far nicer life than sorting Office shite.

      1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

        Re: Nuke notes

        Is it fair to blame Office 365? Has Sharepoint ever worked? I've used it (well tried to use it) a couple of times in my career - and don't recall it every actually working for more than a week. You either couldn't save files - or were forced to save a duplicate or couldn't open them. Or all of the above. I'd rather use Dropbox. Or just print all my spreadsheets out and pin them to a noticeboard...

        1. HmmmYes

          Re: Nuke notes

          Sharepoint's a funny thing - well, as long s you dont need to use it.

          One of MSes response to all that trendy open source wiki stuff.

          'Quick Steve, lets do something or all the kids will be using LAMP'

          Absolutely monster of a fucking a product whcih seems to try and get as many of MSes expensive servery products into the 'solution'.

      2. J27

        Re: Nuke notes

        SharePoint (and Dynamics) are both huge steaming piles. Microsoft doesn't seem to know how to write customizable software, you always end up writing around half of it and it takes more time that if you write an entire web app to do the same job. Not only that, the results are pretty much always sub-par.

        And it really shows, the only companies that use SharePoint are ones big enough that they don't care about throwing vast sums of money at it. You need an entire team to maintain the thing, what's the point of that?

        1. fobobob

          Re: Nuke notes

          Not long after I started my current job, I was actually asked to look into using sharepoint as a platform for file versioning/"cloud" syncing. It did not go far, and I eventually convinced them that it was about as broken of a system as their existing network storage equipment... a USB stick stuck in the back of a consumer gateway router. Went on to repurpose one of two desktop computers in our entire company, which was being thrown out, to serve us via Samba... and an actual hard drive -______-

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Nuke notes

            "Not long after I started my current job, I was actually asked to look into using sharepoint as a platform for file versioning/"cloud" syncing. It did not go far"

            Sharepoint is what runs OneDrive corporate version so it can certainly do that on a very large scale.

          2. Christopher Reeve's Horse

            Re: Nuke notes

            My company used to use Notes for an extensive Quality Management System. It ticked the necessary functionality boxes, but it was utterly abysmal experience to actually use it, and I mean really ****ing terrible. I'm not keen on the prospect of it returning.

            They're currently rolling out Sharepoint and Onedrive, and we're told that this will 'replace all network drives'... I find this all rather terrifying, especially as there's no explorer integration planned for it yet!

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Nuke notes

              You are doomed.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Nuke notes

          "And it really shows, the only companies that use SharePoint are ones big enough that they don't care about throwing vast sums of money at it. You need an entire team to maintain the thing"

          That's not accurate - I have worked for circa 20 SMEs that used SharePoint. How do you need a team to manage it? You just set up your templates / site for your departments (for the current Asset Manager i'm at with ~ 500 users it took a guy with a bit of website experience about 2 hours to get it up and running with portals for each department and a home page.) and then you just let it run. Microsoft manage the backend so you never have to touch it. It just works.

        3. JLV
          Trollface

          Re: Nuke notes

          >You need an entire team to maintain the thing, what's the point of that?

          Keeping the ClearCase team company?

      3. fobobob

        Re: Nuke notes

        Holy crap am I ever glad the company I work for experienced a management change a while back... we were headed down that dark path... These days, we're still trying to debride latent Sharepoint/OneDrive/DropBox injuries... they seem fine for light individual use (and more importantly, sharing data with clients), but there's not way in hell I'm going to spend most of my time as the sole IT guy fixing stupid sync and CPU-spinning issues.

  6. Sarg

    IBM desperately needs to update Notes.

    It's been ten years since 8.5 and hasn't changed a lot since.

    Hopefully this new partnership will lift Notes into this century and give us a better toolset, up to date built in browser and more platforms on which to develop.

    1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

      I can recommend a good source for updates:

      https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/02/putin_mystery_nukes/

      Just ... give the right coordinates to your friendly APO Arsenal dealer.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "IBM desperately needs to update Notes."

      No, they just need to migrate to Office 365 like everyone else. Notes was terrible a decade ago and it's has only got worse since.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    10 years too late

    Lotus Notes marketshare is evaporating quicker than a 99 in the Sahara.

    As an end user, it's client is a disgusting abomination

    1. Aladdin Sane
      Coat

      Re: 10 years too late

      It's taken quite a licking.

    2. Christopher Reeve's Horse

      Re: 10 years too late

      "disgusting abomination"

      Seconded.

  8. EdFX

    LOL

    It was garbage when I used it 20 years ago... Good luuuuuck !!

    1. GruntyMcPugh Silver badge

      Re: LOL

      It was also garbage 17 years ago when I started using it, and three years ago when I stopped. So we have several data points.

      Who would consider a renewed Notes environment? We are an Exchange house, we are migrating to Win10, moving into O365, Exchange integrates with our Office Apps, One Drive,.. etc etc. Notes has a lot to do, to integrate and replace all that functionality, and even if it could, why would we?

  9. SnapperC

    I have to say it's a hell of an uphill struggle to bring Notes uptodate.

    However, Domino itself isn't the easiest thing to work with in the world are they going to make the whole config less of a chore?

  10. Whitter
    Devil

    Interface Hall of Shame

    Does the Interface Hall of Shame still exist I wonder?

    Yes it does.

    http://hallofshame.gp.co.at/lotus.htm

    As they say in the product listing:

    "Lotus Notes (We needed to devote an entire section for it) "

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: Interface Hall of Shame

      But sites like this have been scrubbed from the web. How soon people forget and make the same mistakes again...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Interface Hall of Shame

      Ah, the Interface Hall of Shame. I love that site. It's a pity that nobody seems to be updating it and all of the examples are really quite old now.

      We are surrounded by a relentless tide of utterly crap user interfaces from washing machines(*) to web pages and "user experience" designers could learn a lot.

      (*) Don't get me started. My machine has a set of flush black buttons arranged on a smooth black background. When you eventually find the "start" button and press it, you are not sure whether you really did because the travel of the button is miniscule. It feels like you are pressing on a hard panel. Fortunately, an indicator lights up and the display shows the washing time still to go. Has it started? Has it buggery. To actually get it started you have to press and hold the same black button for about 5 seconds until you hear a click. Even then you are not sure and you end up waiting until you can hear the water filling the machine. The result is either you come back an hour later and the machine hasn't run or you end up waiting 30 seconds each time you start it. Utter, utter crap.

      1. Terry 6 Silver badge

        Re: Interface Hall of Shame

        Just replaced a Bosch machine by a Samsung. On the Bosch you couldn't tell if the timer had been set or not, there was no indication. Every night I'd set the timer, put away the soap and then set the timer again in case I'd forgotten the first time. The Samsung, however, has a very clear and obvious control panel. It can be done.

      2. qwertyuiop

        Re: Interface Hall of Shame

        My machine has a set of flush black buttons arranged on a smooth black background. ...Fortunately, an indicator lights up...

        Does it light up in black on a black background?

        1. FuzzyWuzzys

          Re: Interface Hall of Shame

          "I pushed this button."

          "What happened?"

          "A sign lit up saying 'Please don't push this button again.'.".

    3. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
      Unhappy

      Re: Interface Hall of Shame

      Whitter,

      Oh you bastard! Lotus "Smart Suite" came pre-installed on my 2nd PC - Windows 98. And I'd forgotten that UI.

      [Vision swims in teary nostaligia] Remember the days when tooltips were couched as little friendly yellow speech bubbles. And all buttons were grey, and square, on a grey background, with darker grey writing, dark grey lines round them and horrible clip-art icons. [whimpers] The horror! The horror! The horror!

      To deal with all the luddites using it, the UI metaphor was that Smart Suite was a filing cabinet. All nice and friendly. So you clicked on the application you wanted, out of a weird sideways list and it went zooming across the screen, opening a drawer, with all the icons you needed inside it.

      And people complain about the Ribbon in MS Office...

      I'll be the one whimpering quietly in the corner. Carry on.

      1. Whitter
        Angel

        Re: Interface Hall of Shame

        I apologise for any distress I may have caused.

        Thoughts and prayers perhaps?!

        1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
          Happy

          Re: Interface Hall of Shame

          Thoughts and prayers perhaps?!

          I find whisky much more effective. Hic!

          ...Mmmmm. Happy nostalgia for lunchtime pints...

  11. msknight

    It is not enough.

    Notes and Domino certainly did have the edge over Microsoft back in the day. However, things have moved on drastically.

    The main problem that IBM are going to hit, where I'm sitting, is that Microsoft now have everything so tied together in a licensing bundle, that trying to replace Outlook/Exchange is going to be like trying to replace Word/Excel.

    They're going to have to come to businesses with a whole solution, operating system, office suite, e-mail, browser ... for anyone to be able to consider jumping from their MS licensing... because the only way to actually make it worth the expense, is to ditch MS completely... which is no small ask. Are they planning to bring back OS/2 as well, perchance?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It is not enough.

      They're going to have to come to businesses with a whole solution, operating system, office suite, e-mail, browser

      That wouldn't take much (if they had competent architects and devs) because the Lotus productivity apps were actually pretty reasonable, and in some ways far better than the MS stuff. I suspect any development by HCL will be like most offshore code shops: vast code bloat and lots of errors.

      However, no matter how much they update Notes and the productivity apps, no matter if it lean and error free, they've missed the boat. If companies want to pay the Microsoft tax for reasonable levels of compatibility, that's what they do. If they don't want to pay the tax and will accept some kludge then they either use Google apps, or Libre Office (with or without Linux). Nobody is going to lock themselves into a new expensively licensed suite & middleware (sorry!) solution. Why take the risk for precisely zero gain?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "Lotus productivity apps were actually pretty reasonable,"

        No. I tried to use SmartSuite as a (cheaper) alternative to Office - it wasn't. Especially WordPro as a nightmare full of bugs. They also got a lot of the Notes ugly UI.

        They became so blinded by the early success of Notes, that ignored and then crushed the other products. And as soon as MS released Outlook/Exchange, they lost that market too.

        Google Apps is not free for businesses - and it's still a proprietary solution. At 25$ per month per user (to match Exchange/Notes features) it's not exactly cheap.

        There are still companies that for several reason find these products appealing - but the products have to deliver.

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