What is Lotus' stance on Solaris?
by Volker Weber
Andy Mell comments:
I really need to tell you all that I am intensely irritated that IBM have apparently chosen to drop Solaris as a supported platform for Quickr. I was expecting Quickr 8.1 to work on Solaris like all the previous versions of Quickr, as nothing was announced to the contrary. Did they announce they were going to drop Solaris support? Did they heck.
We even bought new Solaris servers to run it on. IBM have screwed their customers once again. Can we get an assurance that Domino itself will continue to be supported on Solaris?
What's the deal? Is this just a minor slip and Quickr will soon be supported on Solaris, or is Lotus stepping away from the platform?
Update: What I did not know when I posted Andy's comment was that The Turtle had already posted about the end of Solaris support for Quickr. THe IBM support page leaves no room for interpretation: Quickr on Solaris is left behind.
Commentary: This is going to cost IBM dearly. You don't surprise your customers like this without penalty. What happens here is a career damaging surprise. Go ahead and tell management that your expensive Solaris boxes can't run the new version of Quickr you have been gloating about ever since Lotusphere. What would be your next logical choice? Linux? Sorry about that, but that would only work on WebSphere Portal. Harrumph.
What's the next surprise? Want to upgrade your Domino servers on Solaris? Sorry about that?
The only safe platform for Lotus software is Microsoft Windows. Microsoft wins.
Comments
We are currently setting up a Solaris Domino 8.0.1 server based on a really huge Solaris SPARC machine. This system will replace Linux and Windows boxes. This is/was a huge investment into this platform. Everything looks very nice so far, but we'd be more than disappointed if Domino or Quickr would not be available for this platform!
Didn't IBM and Sun announce something about supporting each others platforms? Was that just about Java?
Ouch, if true that’s not good. I’ve seen huge Notes / Domino installations run beautifully on Solaris, and Quickr would have been a part of such set-ups. I wonder what prompted that decision? I know Solaris isn’t very hip, and that Sun have had their issues, but Solaris always struck me as a pretty solid platform.
Mind you, so was OS/2.
Hah, might just be an April fool's joke - if not, it certainly isn't funny at all.
At least they now have an easy way out of the dilemma: On April 2nd, 2008, IBM publicly announced that the earlier end of Solaris support for Quickr announcement was actually an April fool's jokeI'm afraid that the end of Solaris support for Quickr announcement however wasn't made on April 1st, was it?
So the deal I was thinking of was that IBM became an OEM provider of Solaris on it's kit. Details on the pony's blog.
I assume that will all be about Solaris on x86, and Domino doesn't work on that. When this announcement came out I thought it would be nice to see Domino on Solaris in x86, but really there's no chance.
@ben "Mind you, so was OS/2." but was OS/2 in active development when domino support was pulled?
What's really surprised me in all this is finding out that Quickr for Domino isn't supported on Linux! What's up with that? I can imagine there are plenty of shops trying to get Windows out of there data centre that have no interest in putting AIX or i5/OS in there instead. Sometimes IBM just leaves me scratching my head.
@Kerr, re Quickr for Domino on Linux, thats you, me, and quite a few others!
It kind of puts a damper on their claim of OS choice. But yes, I know, technically we have a choice.....
@Simon, Ah yes, there's no choice like Hobson's.
:/
Solaris is a fine system, and it beats every other system in speed when it's used correctly. Solaris is designed to be a multi-threading system, which means any programs which run linear will be very slow on Solaris. Programs which utilize multi-threading technologies will be about 10 times faster than the same program running linear on any other system, even on AIX. Domino is not designed as a multi-threading system, so that's why the volume unit prices are also so small for Solaris systems. Ironically, even Java programs run much faster on Solaris systems, well after all it's made by SUN, as is Java. So Java is a good language, but only on Solaris.
As a side note:
If you read the new Lotus Quickr Support Flash for for Quickr 8.1 from April 1st, it is clear that Quickr 8.1 based on Domino for Linux x86 is also not available!
We all cross the fingers that this Sun page here will not become absolete:
Another somehow strange aspect is the fact that afaik Quickr is written in Java - a language that should be running without any problems on Sun hardware!
The Product selection page on Fix Central has a selection option for Solaris Quickr 8.1. Whether that means anything is open to interpretation.
I am working through various levels of IBM management to get an answer on this issue, will update when I hear something.
Unfortunately we were unable to contain Solaris support within the IBM Lotus Quickr 8.1 release cycle. We are currently working with Sun to investigate how we may be able to add support for Solaris to Quickr Domino services in the future. We are working on this issue with the small number of customers that have been impacted.
Domino 8.0x currently supports Solaris, The next version of Domino, now under development, will support Solaris. Speculation that Domino is dropping support for Solaris is completely inaccurate and false.
@Peter, Is there an official public statement of commitment to Domino on Solaris?
When was the decision made to not support Quickr 8.1 on Solaris? Will Quickr 8.1 be supported on Solaris at some stage in the future?
I'm sure you can understand that people feel they have been blind sided by the drop of support for Solaris and will wonder if it can happen for Quickr, why not for Domino?
Speculation that Domino is dropping support for Solaris is completely inaccurate and false.
… but completely understandable.
Just to update folks, in case someone reads this post: we had extended conference calls with the Quickr people and then later with the Sun people. The story is this:
IBM wants Sun to fund continued development for Quickr on Solaris. However, at present, they are at something of an impasse and Sun would like very much for existing Sun customers to ping IBM's marketing and development-planning people, possibly all the way up to Bob Picciano, to say, "hey, do not abandon Solaris." Since there are a lot of Domino-on-Solaris customers, but fewer Quickr-on-Domino-on-Solaris customers, but the Quickr customers include such minor players as Chrysler, Price-Waterhouse, Seagate and the US Federal Government, basically they want us to help push IBM to continue development for future Domino versions on Sun.
And I can confirm that there is NO plan to end support for Solaris for Domino.
Me, I'd like to see them expand to support Solaris x86, which has never really been supported, and eventually, OpenSolaris. Cutting off a bunch of big Sun/Quickr customers will send a really bad message and encourage some shops to move Domino off Sun as well. The worst part of this is that it also gives Microsoft an opportunity to say, well, since you're moving Domino off Sun, why not, while you're at it, also move to SharePoint and Exchange? My guess is actually that most shops that move off Solaris will move to Linux, not Windows.
I heard from an IBM contact today that they have changed their mind, and will support Quickr on Solaris by December. They are working on bringing this date forward some more. Good news!
