Gone fishing
by Volker Weber
Photo Manel
I am taking a few days off to learn about Exchange 2007 and Hosted Exchange.
Before I go, I want so say this: something has started in the last two weeks, and it has not stopped yet. I am not naming any names, but guys, you are on the wrong track. If you want to play a GWB-style "with us or against us" game, you are going to lose big time.
vowe is a good mother. A Grizzly mother.
Comments
A MotherVolker? :)
Have a good time!
Illegitimi non carborundum
I would love to get your opinion on what the SMB's response to Exchange 2007 is going to be. Is the effort necessary for upgrading from 5.5 or 2000 going to be worth it for sites smaller than 100 people? What are they going to be gaining from the upgrade?
Sean---
vowe will tell you that they should migrate from 5.5 / 2000 to Lotus Notes 7.x :-)
Hm, Olaf, I don't think vowe is a missionary for Notes. Actually, he is pretty openly addressing what he considers issues with Notes. And I think the hint in this post can only be interpreted that some Notes people have approached him in a "Don't touch anything else" manner recently. But that's just my two cents, of course.
It's a tough love!
Personally I like Notes very much -- I make some of my living from it. But that doesn't mean I'm not blind to its faults. I criticise it where I feel it needs it, because I want Notes to become even better. I can't imagine that vowe feels any different. He's certainly not "anti".
Besides, IBM is big enough and ugly enough to look after itself. And it should expect to be razzed when it does silly things ;o)
Sean, I have absolutely no idea. What I see is that Hosted Exchange is becoming a very good alternative to hosting your own mail infrastructure. This includes connectivity to Outlook, mobile devices with ActiveSync (Windows Mobile, Symbian) and web access. You don't have to worry about updates, because that is done by the service provider. We are talking 10 € a month, which is very competitive.
Olaf, yes, I have done this actually.
Ragnar, it's not about touching anything else. It is just that a very small number of people have lost their cool. I hope they win it back.
Thanks, Ben. Indeed. IBM is no sheep.
People will always niggle on Notes, because that's the basic approach. They are looking for a complex product, being able to do what ever they want, with a GUI that intuitive you don't need any knowledge or training at all. What ever you click just produces what you want and if something goes wrong it's the products fault - offcourse!!!
But what VOWE does is not niggling. It's feedback. It's feedback, why the heck you can't save a mail to the file system in a format you can double click and re-open in Notes. You can take a doclink, paste it in a text document and save it as a .ndk file. Et voila! You have a Notes doclink in your file system. Why isn't there something similar for a whole document? That's a legitimate question.
Notes is a great product. I love it. But it has it's faults and annoyances. We all know them. And not talking about them will not improve anything. You can't turn the weaknesses of a product into a "if I tell you that, I have to shoot you" secret and hope nobody will ever stumble across. We need a discussion about the good things AND the bad things. And sometimes we need somebody kicking in IBM's big ass. And IMHO VOWE does a good job here. Carry on VOWE!!!
Nice photo - Manel has some other good pix on Flickr too. Thanks for pointing to him!
@Olaf:
That would be the first story I hear, that a company is migrating from Exchange to Domino :-). I'd love to see such a story, but there aren't any...
It's a common trend that companies are doing it vice versa , at least what is happening here in Germany often. E.g. FESTO AG , a sub from Thyssen Krupp, is currently migrating its 3-4000 people to Sharepoint/Exchange (and FESTO has been a heavy user of all that Domino Stuff: Sametime, Domino 7.0.1 , iCodex, LEI Servers )
Sad things are happening recently ....IBM, wake up!
@marc:
I know that Festo AG is a long time notes user. Did you know why they are migrating to Exchange ?
I was not aware that Festo is a sub from Thyssen Krupp.
@marc
try here http://www-142.ibm.com/software/sw-lotus/lotus/offering1.nsf/wdocs/messagingcompetitive
RoB
@Olaf,
FESTO a sub from Thyssen? Sorry, I think that was a mix-up.
The migration step was, as often, a management decision and is influenced by marketing and business connections. And Microsoft is a strong player in these areas.
It's not a desicion based on TCO, that's what I've heard from people which are involved regarding price discounting.
@roberto:
Thanks for the link, but I'm far from beeing relieved:
CCPOA - 160 employees.
Municipality Prostejov - 250 users
and so on ...
Ok, the 'Morphy Richards' (8.000 employees) and 'Frisco' (20.000) stories are mentioned, but that's long ago, if I'm correct.
It would be better to talk about Exchange migrations before they happen. There is at least one fire exitinguisher at IBM that can be reached nearly 24/7. There also is absolutely no reason to migrate to Exchange now with the Hannover release coming next year. Not that Hannover will cure everything but the release is big enough to at least wait the few months and decide after having a look at V8.
And if you talk about IBM you must also talk about IBM Business Partners. IBM already woke up. Notes 8 is probably going to be the best release ever.
3 pane Layout, message recall, enhanced spell checker, better Out of Office, improved calendaring, unread marks in bold not red, better address book support and an overall more modern UI with the productivity components that might finally solve things like "Notes is not a Word Processing Engine" or maybe "Notes cannot print".
It is a direct shot at Outlook with taking some of its best features (and more) and putting it into Notes. Something that has been heavily requested for years.
So "Sad things are happening recently ....IBM, wake up!" should be better called "Good things are coming soon ....Business Partners, wake up!"
@Henning:
I don't know where you get your optimism since I have'nt seen Hannover yet (only screenshots) nor there is a proof that the mentioned features will make their way into the final release.
And can we expect a RDBMS storage and 'pushmail' in R8?
If not, Domino will loose the next marketing round again in the latter case. There does'nt help any fire exitinguisher ...
I agree the 'Business Partner' argument. Since many of them are pretty lame and most of their products are too expensive or a big laugh, why does'nt IBM ship some nice mini apps with Domino (let's say e.g. a small CRM and a small Sales Force App)? I recommend to have a look at Sharepoint and the standard plugins /features which are shipped with it....Pretty hefty arguments here, when you want to bring Domino in the position.
