HCL picks up Notes, spanks total of $1.8bn at Honest John's IBM software sale

Notes sold off to Indian Firm, Microsoft twitches... no... it was just the wind

I interned with the Exchange Server team at Microsoft in the early aughts. They were proud of having won the email and workgroup collaboration war against Notes.

I have to think these days they don't even recognize it as a competitor anymore.

IT support bonanza

Presumably HCL will be making a fortune 'supporting' why Notes doesn't work. 10 years ago I was working for a large console games company who had Notes and a whole house of cards of mission critical apps, particularly legal systems.

To search email one would have to set up the search parameters before going to a meeting or lunch, if you were lucky it would serve up the results within an hour. Last I heard they are still limping along with Notes.

This is a tune up bonanza and the sort of black box head scratcher problems that are ideal for IT outsourcers to 'solve' at a cost

Do the people at El Reg...

Do the people at El Reg actually not know that IBM has been paid back -many- times it's original investment in Notes? Whether you like the product or don't like it, it has generated huge revenue and profit for IBM. The headline that, "IBM received $1.X Billion but paid $3.X Billion is just silly--and irrelevant.

Time Warp

Somewhere I still have a card that would supposedly give me a free upgrade to Lotus Notes for OS/2. The offer was from IBM in the 1990s.

Notes as Documentum Replacement for HCL ???

Lot of us grown old when you look back , simple "NotedID".. without that your Notes won't open. The Admin can only create a NotesID .. unless he has a copy of it he cant read your mailbox, offline/Online the only thing you need to secure is your notesID. Today we have token's .. during 90's.. think of it . We simply recycle old technologies .. Main frame to PC to cloud again ..

I think HCL will do extremently well .. they come from a country a $2500 Car is used for 15+ years , runs very fuel efficient , moves you from Point A to Point B , and can find a Support clinic with in few meters if you are ever stuck.

HCL tried with Documentum and even today one of the biggest SI for Documentum, this gives them the total control over their Documentum and Notes Customers , and Notes as a Email alone is a waste.. Notes is Application Platform/Middleware and gives endless Possibilities to a SI like HCL. if they execute well , its a Goldmine.

Lotus is flower widely used Hindu rituals, represents Prosperity, Wisdom, and knowledge. HCL will do well only for that Lotus name .. dump Domino (Useless Pizza joint) .

too independent

As I remember from my days at the Beast of Armonk, Lotus Research tended to behave like it was it's own independent company, ignoring dictates from on high. Perhaps, now with the looming RedHat acquisition, IBM Corporate didn't want to have *TWO* independent, directive-ignoring subsidiaries.

IBM and software

Can anyone think of one product where IBM has acquired their capability and it's flourished?

IBM acquires companies and then slowly strangles development and innovation. It's harsh but their accountants acquire a company, work out how much $ they can make over 3-5 years before product sales stall. It's a sad model, given some past acquisitions included some great capability.

IBM has little or no marketing $ either and doesn't like to market particular products. So it's very hard for any product to be heard in all that Blockchain, Hybrid Cloud noise.

In summary IBM = where software goes to die

All the best RedHat

@SVV --

I've had the drfierce ID on eBay since 1999. And have had the drfierce e-mail addresses on hotmail, gmail and other messaging platforms for years now. Not like drfierce21788, but drfierce. So it's been a while since I've been around, 20+ years you could say.

I'm not specifically criticizing naysayers. Hey, there's some truth in some of the non-troll comments. I'm just setting the record a bit straight. Notes/Domino have their weaknesses and flaws, but let's remember that Outlook/Exchange/Sharepoint have nothing to crow about as software products and what admins have to endure in the past (and still do in the present), they are not the greatest end-all/be-all the Microsoft hype machine purports them to be.

And yeah, I recently created the DrFierce account here because I read news but had little time to read comments (and even less comment on them). Matter of fact, I surprised myself I didn't have an account already. Guess I missed creating an account on this site because, you know: day job, married life, fatherly duties and all that.

If I had a record of posting thousands of comments a year, there'd be question as to whether I'm employed or not and I'd be probably called out as such.

But it's not because of that one fact that the points I made have any less merit. So there. I said what I said, I am who I am and I stand by all that.

More than a database, and still being copied.

Full disclosure - Im LATE to this post, and NEW here, but have been spending time mostly techcrunch and toms hardware guide. Today, I thought about checking on Lotus Notes.

Im a Lotus Development ex-employee, tasked with installing and managing Notes across a block of offices at Lotus (and IBM) back in the 90s - when we were using OS/2 and converting to NT. Ive been all over the world helping companies consolidate and right size their Notes infrastructure..

Im a Ray Ozzie fan, especially his early work on Notes, pre commercialization. So yes, I do lean toward Lotus Notes (and the old products.. anyone remember Lotus FM? or Improv?

I was there when IBM purchased us, and it was actually pretty good for both companies as IBM had committed to allowing Lotus to be more or less independent except for our choice of offices and back-end hardware. Cambridge always had its own way of thinking anyway, and in reality that is what lead to the success of Lotus Notes.

In defense of Notes:

The UI - is ugly and I hope that HCL can simplify and consolidate... but the back end is actually beautiful and in the last 20 years, even up to today, I still hear people say that they wish they could go back to Lotus Notes... so it is still a pick your problem situation because they both have flaws.

My point is that companies used to use software to differentiate themselves in the market, allowing them to move faster, track process and people more efficiently, and this is what Notes did. It was a new way to manage data. Now, we all have the same tools, same processes, and it takes much more to differentiate and succeed. There is more pressure on people to be better and we all get that.

I miss Lotus Notes - but mostly because I knew where to find all my data, and it was a great part of the software industry - when software wasnt on the cloud.