I agree Notes sucks, but sadly we use it at my company. I soooo miss Outlook! Either way it's what we have, so I hope my company adapts it....I doubt that they will as they are overly paranoid about security....to the point they don't provide us with all the available options to be more productive.
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IBM Previews Lotus iNotes For iPhone
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I agree Notes sucks, but sadly we use it at my company. I soooo miss Outlook! Either way it's what we have, so I hope my company adapts it....I doubt that they will as they are overly paranoid about security....to the point they don't provide us with all the available options to be more productive.
well it hasn't improved in ten years so you're still up to date.
anyway, i'll hope they release it soon and our company allows me using it. i could need access to notes but i don't want a blackberry on top of my iphone. checking work email and seeing my work calendar is good enough. no need for a work phone.
that didn't take long...
... for the Notes bashing to begin.
I've worked full time with Notes and Domino for 10 years, and to be honest, 90% of the time, the organizations where it's hated are the organizations where it's been badly installed, managed, and never upgraded. Yes, version 5 and 6 were not great. The UI got very stale.
However.
Notes and Domino 8 were completely re-written almost a year ago. The mail/calendaring UI is so Outlook-like (imitation being the sincerest form of flattery?) it's creepy. Even our rah-rah Outlook types like Notes 8.
Those that whine about it are stuck in the past based on Draconian I.T. departments that keep them mired in ancient history.
Get over it folks. With several years of growth in an otherwise saturated market (messaging), guess at who's expense the Notes marketshare is expanding? 22% growth in last quarter alone. Stop counting seats people - as you should know, MSoft counts an Exchange/Outlook seat when it's sold as part of an Enteprise Agreement, even if the company is still using Notes. It's bad math.
The performance, scalability, and security is still better than what the MS fanboys are pushing. I've seen several tens of thousands of concurrent, real users running on a single Domino server with sub-second response time across terabytes of data. Do that with another product.
Notes 8 runs on Mac, Linux, Windows. Access the data from any number of mobile of devices. Loads of choice.
Ever wonder why so many organizations can't get away from Domino applications? It's not because they can't. It's because it's so damn expensive to do so. Why is that? Nothing else can touch it in terms of rapid development, deployment, management and scalability. Yes, Domino is not the magic hammer with every problem looking like a nail. Too bad it's been used in the wrong way, for the wrong problem, or so very very badly done by people who consider themselves developers. How many times have I seen a small, badly written application work okay for a team or department, yet get scaled out to the enterprise and fail due to bad design? Many times. Just because it's easy to write crap software doesn't mean it's the technology's fault.
Then, consider the organization that is so called "stuck" with Notes (see above) - they can't afford to port to another platform, so they stick it in maintenance mode, never upgrading the clients, servers, or even web-enabling the application. The software get's older and older, and people hate it more and more for it's dated look and feel. Who's fault is that? IBMs? No way friends. Don't stop watering the vineyard and then complain all you can see to the horizon is raisins.
Exchange/Outlook is a pig wearing lipstick.
... for the Notes bashing to begin.
I've worked full time with Notes and Domino for 10 years, and to be honest, 90% of the time, the organizations where it's hated are the organizations where it's been badly installed, managed, and never upgraded. Yes, version 5 and 6 were not great. The UI got very stale.
However.
Notes and Domino 8 were completely re-written almost a year ago. The mail/calendaring UI is so Outlook-like (imitation being the sincerest form of flattery?) it's creepy. Even our rah-rah Outlook types like Notes 8.
Those that whine about it are stuck in the past based on Draconian I.T. departments that keep them mired in ancient history.
Get over it folks. With several years of growth in an otherwise saturated market (messaging), guess at who's expense the Notes marketshare is expanding? 22% growth in last quarter alone. Stop counting seats people - as you should know, MSoft counts an Exchange/Outlook seat when it's sold as part of an Enteprise Agreement, even if the company is still using Notes. It's bad math.
The performance, scalability, and security is still better than what the MS fanboys are pushing. I've seen several tens of thousands of concurrent, real users running on a single Domino server with sub-second response time across terabytes of data. Do that with another product.
Notes 8 runs on Mac, Linux, Windows. Access the data from any number of mobile of devices. Loads of choice.
Ever wonder why so many organizations can't get away from Domino applications? It's not because they can't. It's because it's so damn expensive to do so. Why is that? Nothing else can touch it in terms of rapid development, deployment, management and scalability. Yes, Domino is not the magic hammer with every problem looking like a nail. Too bad it's been used in the wrong way, for the wrong problem, or so very very badly done by people who consider themselves developers. How many times have I seen a small, badly written application work okay for a team or department, yet get scaled out to the enterprise and fail due to bad design? Many times. Just because it's easy to write crap software doesn't mean it's the technology's fault.
Then, consider the organization that is so called "stuck" with Notes (see above) - they can't afford to port to another platform, so they stick it in maintenance mode, never upgrading the clients, servers, or even web-enabling the application. The software get's older and older, and people hate it more and more for it's dated look and feel. Who's fault is that? IBMs? No way friends. Don't stop watering the vineyard and then complain all you can see to the horizon is raisins.
Exchange/Outlook is a pig wearing lipstick.
I am stuck with Lotus Notes for 12.5-hrs/day at work, and I'l be damned if I'm taking it home!!! It is a shining example of what computer programming should NOT become!
I think the Notes-bashers forget few things:
a) Notes is a lot more than just email/calendaring
b) Notes got a lot better in Notes 8
Granted, our company is still running 6.5, but we have a roadmap for our move to 8. And yes, every few years or so we evaluate Exchange. And every single time we find out that it simply does not cope with our workloads. It just doesn't scale.
a) Notes is a lot more than just email/calendaring
b) Notes got a lot better in Notes 8
Granted, our company is still running 6.5, but we have a roadmap for our move to 8. And yes, every few years or so we evaluate Exchange. And every single time we find out that it simply does not cope with our workloads. It just doesn't scale.
It is worst, we have something like 100 Macs and the rest are either windows or Linux (mostly windows).
They don't know better. They are happy within the choices they have at hand.
I hate not being able to use my Mac.
For those wondering, yes, a good number of companies still use Notes. It's mainly used by older institutions and financial companies that have a vested interest in maintaining their Notes databases. For them, switching to Exchange (or what few alternatives there are) involves not only the pain of moving email/contacts/etc over but also a fair chunk of databases.
It's also important to note the difference between Notes the system and Notes the GUI. The backend system isn't that bad. It's database-driven, replicates well and by-and-large does its job. The Notes interface is the scum of the earth and was written by Satan.
It's customizable to a fault and fairly obtuse even for people that've used the app for years. This is what people generally hate, as that's all they're working with.
It's also important to note the difference between Notes the system and Notes the GUI. The backend system isn't that bad. It's database-driven, replicates well and by-and-large does its job. The Notes interface is the scum of the earth and was written by Satan.
It's customizable to a fault and fairly obtuse even for people that've used the app for years. This is what people generally hate, as that's all they're working with.And IT likes to keep managers in the dark sometimes.
I know some companies here in Japan that use Notes and like it.
Honestly, I would set my Safari to pretend to be Mobile Safari just to use this app instead of the actual Blotus Notes Mac client.
I understand Notes has all these other features, but my educational institution doesn't use them, and all I need is the email...
I understand Notes has all these other features, but my educational institution doesn't use them, and all I need is the email...
While this is an interesting discussion and I work for a company that has a significant number of Notes users, however web access is not what I am looking for.
In short, I want synchronization - I want to be able to carry my calendar around with me, get e-mail (push or on schedule) as I need and have my contacts available as well... All without have to be connected to some server somewhere. That defeats the whole purpose of this type of information, at least given the current maturity of the mobile infrastructure...
That is about the only reason I haven't yet bought an iPhone - because I need my contacts, calendar and mail - easily on my device (current WM5 - sorry guys!). Hopefully soon I will be released from the dark side
pw-man
In short, I want synchronization - I want to be able to carry my calendar around with me, get e-mail (push or on schedule) as I need and have my contacts available as well... All without have to be connected to some server somewhere. That defeats the whole purpose of this type of information, at least given the current maturity of the mobile infrastructure...
That is about the only reason I haven't yet bought an iPhone - because I need my contacts, calendar and mail - easily on my device (current WM5 - sorry guys!). Hopefully soon I will be released from the dark side
pw-man
GroupWise isn't so bad
If you used GroupWise of 5 years ago, I can understand your loathing. However, the company I work for is currently at v7.x and it's much improved and v8 looks even better. I HATE the lookout client and exchange security and reliability is among the worst I've ever had to deal with. I had to suffer exchange at a company I used to work for and when I left, I breathed a sigh of relieve and hoped I'd never have to see that crap again.
At my present company, the IT department laughs whenever a virus cripples other's exchange environments for hours or even days while the GroupWise system doesn't even blink. Since they also use a lot of NetWare servers, there's never been a virus that even touched it while all the ms servers croaked in short order. I've been converted to Novell's side from all this. I'll NEVER use M$ crap again if I have a choice!!
On the other hand, given the choice between notes and exchange... hmmm... that's a hard choice given my previous statement! Might have to eat my words.
If you used GroupWise of 5 years ago, I can understand your loathing. However, the company I work for is currently at v7.x and it's much improved and v8 looks even better. I HATE the lookout client and exchange security and reliability is among the worst I've ever had to deal with. I had to suffer exchange at a company I used to work for and when I left, I breathed a sigh of relieve and hoped I'd never have to see that crap again.
At my present company, the IT department laughs whenever a virus cripples other's exchange environments for hours or even days while the GroupWise system doesn't even blink. Since they also use a lot of NetWare servers, there's never been a virus that even touched it while all the ms servers croaked in short order. I've been converted to Novell's side from all this. I'll NEVER use M$ crap again if I have a choice!!
On the other hand, given the choice between notes and exchange... hmmm... that's a hard choice given my previous statement! Might have to eat my words.
Lotus Notes stats
Here are some facts on Lotus Notes:
IBM® Lotus® Notes® and Domino® has over 20 years of leadership in the collaboration space
Over 140M licenses of Lotus Notes and Domino have been sold worldwide
Over 46K companies around the world actively use and maintain their Lotus Notes and Domino installations
Lotus Notes and Domino has seen 14 consecutive quarters of year-to-year growth from 4Q04 through 1Q08
Lotus growth in the first quarter results beat MS Exchange results with 22% growth
More than half of America’s largest 100 corporations use Lotus Notes and Domino
More than half of the FORTUNE Global 100 corporations use Lotus Notes and Domino
8 of the top 10 banks use Domino and Notes
8 of the top 10 insurance corporations use Domino and Notes
4 of the top 5 consumer products corporations use Domino and Notes
8 of the top 12 pharmaceutical corporations use Domino and Notes
7 of the top 10 electronics corporations use Domino and Notes
9 of the top 12 telecommunications corporations use Domino and Notes
8 of the top 10 automotive corporations use Domino and Notes
9 of the top 10 aerospace & defense corporations use Domino and Notes
As a market share leader, Lotus Notes and Domino ranks second in the integrated collaborative environments market based on worldwide total revenue
Lotus data indicates that approximately 97 percent of Lotus Notes and Domino customers are on the 6.5.x release or higher
Lotus Notes and Domino are supported by over 10,000 IBM Business Partners worldwide who have thousands of integrated solutions running on it
From 2006 to 2007, the number of IBM Business Partners delivering Lotus solutions more than doubled
Market share numbers are anywhere from 40-43% of the worldwide collaboration market and growing depending on the analyst performing the study. Some companies have both Exchange and Domino and are licensed for both so there is overlap. Microsoft licensing agreements for Office sometimes include Exchange and Outlook licenses which are counted as valid by Microsoft when in fact those licenses are never used because they are sold to a customer using Notes and Domino. Those licenses remain sitting on the shelf but MS reports that company and an Exchange customer.
Lotus developed iNotes in late 2007/early 2008 and has in beta as a part of Domino 8.02 due for release in Q3/2008 the new iNotes interface for iPhone. Lotus was given the developers toolkit by Apple this just this Spring and developers are evaluating ways to add more Lotus functionality. Anything Lotus develops has to meet business enterprise ready requirements and security concerns. Since Lotus Notes is the world's largest installed Public Key Infrastructure we have to make sure that any application developed for iPhone has security in mind and cannot be compromised. Our customers have that expectation of absolute security of the data and the PKI inside Notes.
Lotus Notes 8 is based on open-source Eclipse, integrates with Google Gadgets and includes integrated instant messaging and awareness, includes composite applications, and allows anyone to change the look and feel of the interface anyway they desire. You can even change it to look like Outlook. Notes 8 has hooks into social software and other products. The Notes 8.5 Mac OSX Beta is available now for downloading and will be released in Q4/2008 with Domino 8.5. Lotus Symphony for Mac (Open Office based document, presentation, and spreadsheet editors) will also be available for no charge by the end of the year. Lotus Quickr and Lotus Connections (social software) fully support Safari on the Mac. Many of the other Lotus software products support the Mac since our customers are all looking at adopting Mac OSX as an alternate OS to Windows. Gartner reports that 56% of CIO's are looking at other OS options like Linux and Mac now.
Many IBMers are now adopting Macbook Pro laptops as an option for some IBM divisions and the Mac has quite a devoted following inside Lotus in particular.
Here are some facts on Lotus Notes:
IBM® Lotus® Notes® and Domino® has over 20 years of leadership in the collaboration space
Over 140M licenses of Lotus Notes and Domino have been sold worldwide
Over 46K companies around the world actively use and maintain their Lotus Notes and Domino installations
Lotus Notes and Domino has seen 14 consecutive quarters of year-to-year growth from 4Q04 through 1Q08
Lotus growth in the first quarter results beat MS Exchange results with 22% growth
More than half of America’s largest 100 corporations use Lotus Notes and Domino
More than half of the FORTUNE Global 100 corporations use Lotus Notes and Domino
8 of the top 10 banks use Domino and Notes
8 of the top 10 insurance corporations use Domino and Notes
4 of the top 5 consumer products corporations use Domino and Notes
8 of the top 12 pharmaceutical corporations use Domino and Notes
7 of the top 10 electronics corporations use Domino and Notes
9 of the top 12 telecommunications corporations use Domino and Notes
8 of the top 10 automotive corporations use Domino and Notes
9 of the top 10 aerospace & defense corporations use Domino and Notes
As a market share leader, Lotus Notes and Domino ranks second in the integrated collaborative environments market based on worldwide total revenue
Lotus data indicates that approximately 97 percent of Lotus Notes and Domino customers are on the 6.5.x release or higher
Lotus Notes and Domino are supported by over 10,000 IBM Business Partners worldwide who have thousands of integrated solutions running on it
From 2006 to 2007, the number of IBM Business Partners delivering Lotus solutions more than doubled
Market share numbers are anywhere from 40-43% of the worldwide collaboration market and growing depending on the analyst performing the study. Some companies have both Exchange and Domino and are licensed for both so there is overlap. Microsoft licensing agreements for Office sometimes include Exchange and Outlook licenses which are counted as valid by Microsoft when in fact those licenses are never used because they are sold to a customer using Notes and Domino. Those licenses remain sitting on the shelf but MS reports that company and an Exchange customer.
Lotus developed iNotes in late 2007/early 2008 and has in beta as a part of Domino 8.02 due for release in Q3/2008 the new iNotes interface for iPhone. Lotus was given the developers toolkit by Apple this just this Spring and developers are evaluating ways to add more Lotus functionality. Anything Lotus develops has to meet business enterprise ready requirements and security concerns. Since Lotus Notes is the world's largest installed Public Key Infrastructure we have to make sure that any application developed for iPhone has security in mind and cannot be compromised. Our customers have that expectation of absolute security of the data and the PKI inside Notes.
Lotus Notes 8 is based on open-source Eclipse, integrates with Google Gadgets and includes integrated instant messaging and awareness, includes composite applications, and allows anyone to change the look and feel of the interface anyway they desire. You can even change it to look like Outlook. Notes 8 has hooks into social software and other products. The Notes 8.5 Mac OSX Beta is available now for downloading and will be released in Q4/2008 with Domino 8.5. Lotus Symphony for Mac (Open Office based document, presentation, and spreadsheet editors) will also be available for no charge by the end of the year. Lotus Quickr and Lotus Connections (social software) fully support Safari on the Mac. Many of the other Lotus software products support the Mac since our customers are all looking at adopting Mac OSX as an alternate OS to Windows. Gartner reports that 56% of CIO's are looking at other OS options like Linux and Mac now.
Many IBMers are now adopting Macbook Pro laptops as an option for some IBM divisions and the Mac has quite a devoted following inside Lotus in particular.
Nice job
Could not agree more! Well said...I always cringe when I hear someone say they hate Lotus Notes and then I hear them tell me they are using Notes 5 or 6 which are not even supported products anymore. Don't blame Lotus for the way it was deployed, the way it was abused, the way it was managed.
Could not agree more! Well said...I always cringe when I hear someone say they hate Lotus Notes and then I hear them tell me they are using Notes 5 or 6 which are not even supported products anymore. Don't blame Lotus for the way it was deployed, the way it was abused, the way it was managed.
Thanks for posting this. This is really interesting... what is the source of this information?
Not sure of the meaning of your message, but yes, the world is waiting for thin client e-mail clients for mobile devices (especially for the iPhone). IBM also introduced Traveler which synchronizes e-mail onto mobile devices without the need of a third party application. It appears that industry trends are walking by you.
For the Notes haters, remember that Notes is a RAD development environment which includes an app that does e-mail. If you don't like it then customize it. Notes is often judged on the crap applications that are written by the company, not IBM. It is easy to write Notes apps, so everyone does and usually not well. Head to head there is no real difference in Notes 8 and Outlook mail, except the enhanced security and flexibility in Notes.
A well written Notes app is amazing. Use it on the network, use it on an airplane, use a browser, use a browser on an airplane, distributed/low bandwidth network friendly, and developed at a fraction of the time necessary of other platforms. However, historically the UI and graphics of Notes apps have been their biggest weakness due to the lack of expertise by their developers. It is hard to compete with an army of consultants coding java/html with graphic designers. Phone book in Notes - less than 30 minutes. Phone book in other platforms - well, we'll see how much of the budget is approved.
It's OK if you don't like Notes, but try to not like Notes for the right reasons.
A well written Notes app is amazing. Use it on the network, use it on an airplane, use a browser, use a browser on an airplane, distributed/low bandwidth network friendly, and developed at a fraction of the time necessary of other platforms. However, historically the UI and graphics of Notes apps have been their biggest weakness due to the lack of expertise by their developers. It is hard to compete with an army of consultants coding java/html with graphic designers. Phone book in Notes - less than 30 minutes. Phone book in other platforms - well, we'll see how much of the budget is approved.
It's OK if you don't like Notes, but try to not like Notes for the right reasons.
My dad works for Chrysler corp., and as far as I know the entire corporation still uses notes. He never seems to have a problem with it. The hospital I work for just migrated from groupwise and is now kind of limping into exchange...it works as far as the PCs within the health system, but there is not yet any support for push notifications to blackberrys and what not.
For the Notes haters, remember that Notes is a RAD development environment which includes an app that does e-mail. If you don't like it then customize it. Notes is often judged on the crap applications that are written by the company, not IBM. It is easy to write Notes apps, so everyone does and usually not well. Head to head there is no real difference in Notes 8 and Outlook mail, except the enhanced security and flexibility in Notes.
A well written Notes app is amazing. Use it on the network, use it on an airplane, use a browser, use a browser on an airplane, distributed/low bandwidth network friendly, and developed at a fraction of the time necessary of other platforms. However, historically the UI and graphics of Notes apps have been their biggest weakness due to the lack of expertise by their developers. It is hard to compete with an army of consultants coding java/html with graphic designers. Phone book in Notes - less than 30 minutes. Phone book in other platforms - well, we'll see how much of the budget is approved.
It's OK if you don't like Notes, but try to not like Notes for the right reasons.
Like:
* Abysmal performance without throwing huge blades at it
* Memory leaks STILL not corrected
* Applications that require huge efforts to export to another platform (we are migrating our G20 to Websphere = nightmare)
* Platform client costs
* Maintenance lockdowns
Et al....