LotusSphere Bloggers
Thanks to LotuSphere having a "WiFi Lounge" this year, there seems to quite a few blogs coming out of Disney World at the moment. Matt, Bruce and Ed are all there. Also there is Warren Elsmore who mailed me this morning to say he likes using the Blog template and would be happy to repay me by bringing somthing back with him. Don't worry about it Warren. Just bring us all some reasons to be cheerful.
So, to anybody else reading this from Florida, what's the juice? What's interesting? Fill us all in on the gossip!
I forgot to mention yesterday that there was a crash landing! Not the aeroplane, luckily, but my iPod. Obviously not so keen on being a HighPod, as it died on the way down from 27,000 feet. Sorry, I inherited my dad's terrible sense of humour...
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I'd like to hear what people -- especially Lotus reps -- are saying about the new "low cost email solution".
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I'm all in favour of it. It just needs positioning correctly. Alot of the people here at Lotusphere are thinking about it for new 200-500 user deployments. But if you ain't got Websphere already, then that doesn't make sense. Lotus are trying to bit the Boeings, GE's, Wallmarts etc. Thousands of users all over the shop. Domino won't do that - well. NextGen will (does?) My twopenneth anyway ;-)
I don't have any objections thus far but it does make things more confusing, which I find odd, since IBM is trying to clarify their product lines lately.
What I mean is, for an application server, Domino is "low end" and WebSphere is "high end". Now they are saying the opposite for an email server. Crazy.
so Jake, it's not a FLIPod then ;)
Tom, that's worse than mine! But I like it ;o)
My take on the major announcement is basically, IBM has decided to convince everyone to move to WebSphere/DB2. That's all well in good, but what they're saying is that Lotus Notes will be around forever. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to piece together what is going on: IBM tells everyone about how great WebSphere/DB2 is and companies start to move. Once a critical mass of companies move, then they will start the end of life process for Notes. Granted, I think it's a long way off, but I think it's in the pipeline. So pick your flavor of the future: WebSphere or .NET and have fun!
r.
Perhaps the most annoying thing of it all is the approach & attitude, which seems to be "How can Notes/Domino fit into websphere?". Whoa, last time I checked there are over 100 million Notes users, yet websphere is supposed to be the end all. Certain announcements are exciting, such as project seoul. If this comes to fruition it will bode well for us domino developers.
Untill now I have only heard that Websphere projects need a half dozen of consultants for a small installation and if you are lucky the project will be delivered within t,$ and say quality
Yes Web(sphere) is important ;-)
Well,
instead of being forced I would like to be convinced. Show me the Java development tool, prove that I can design an application at nearly the same speed than within Lotus Notes and with a learning curve that is not that high as with Java standalone and I would maybe be with them. In the past I have seen Websphere and Java. It is a hardware monster, development takes more time and if you try GUI apps with Java you must probably be a monster coder because most results are slow, ugly and lack features (but a lot of coding for Domino is UI being either web or Domino client).
I will see what Kubisoft has to offer next month.
Recent discussion with my boss showed at least that if you are investigating moving away from Domino it is not that easy, sad that IBM does not seem to recognise that they still own a juwel that just might need some polish.
Cheers
Heini
I'm not sure that something like "end of life process" exist within IBM. Just think about OS/2.
But then again, who would like a OS/2 developer today.
In a few years we all probably going to attend IBM Software Symposiums, and we are going to have just as much fun as the Smartsuite developers had at the last few Lotusspheres.
When IBM talks about their two lane highway to future, I recomend looking for the exit ramp.
i've got a little blog happening at jonvon.net, decided to blog about lotusphere since i was lucky enough to be there. normally i don't write much about lotus stuff.
i still need to post for the last few days, but the major stuff i had to say is already there. ibm isn't too good at getting the marketing message together, but when you look at the details coming out around all this stuff, how things are actually getting implemented as they are hooking domino into various offerings (j2ee and db2) i really don't think its so horrible. in fact i think its pretty darn interesting, and i think they are giving us a choice on how we want to move forward.
basically the two big things the community has been saying are, don't take away our rad tools, and don't MAKE us use websphere and/or db2. i think that is clearly where they are going for at least the next 3-4 years. i've been as suspicious as anyone about all this stuff, but i'm actually pretty excited about things now.
the flexibility that is in the domino data store is needed by the db2 community (imagine that!)... the technology is being ported there.
the rad tools in designer are needed in j2ee, and are being ported over as well.
we aren't the red-haired-step-children everyone seems to think we are after all. there are a lot of good ideas in domino, and they are making their way around. domino IS a jewel in ibm's crown, and the people writing the code at ibm know it.
btw, i'm working off the freedomblog template at my site, its been great having a tool of some kind to blog with. wouldn't you know it, a few days after i had it going jake posted his template.
its all good. mr connell did a fine job putting his version together. comments to posts are handled a little strangely though, i may have to steal some code from jake soon. ;-)