Why indeed! I’ve been a IBM/Lotus Notes/Domino user since 1997 and I’ve been doing Domino admin stuff for probably 7 or 8 years. I’ve always been comfortable with it so I’ve effectively been a proponent of it as well. Add to that, the companies I’ve worked for relied on the Domino platform for custom applications, which made it all worth it. Or did it? Have I been blindly supporting a heaping pile of bullshit? Yes, I’m afraid I have.
I recently attended Microsoft’s TechEd 2010 in New Orleans, Louisiana with two of my colleagues from overseas. During this trip I got a look at a lot of new stuff that Microsoft has to offer, and we had a lot of in-depth conversations about why we’re using the platforms we’re using, and why we shouldn’t be. Notes/Domino was a big part of these discussions.
So as I said, my support of Notes/Domino has always come from the standpoint that we use it for custom applications, but for some reason it’s taken me a long time to realize that those custom applications (for the most part) are pure garbage from both a design and functionality standpoint. So if we don’t have good development happnening, why are we still chained to this dinosaur of a platform? Politics and inaction, primarily.
What we should do is migrate the applications to another platform like SharePoint, and then migrate the email to Exchange 2010. We have over 45 Domino servers globally to support ~3700 users. For real? Yes, I’m afraid I’m serious. If we were to migrate off of Domino and host Exchange on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, we could scale down to 3 or fewer Exchange servers globally. With our applications web-enabled and on SharePoint or another platform, those could be hosted centrally as well. Do you think we could convince the business that this is a worthy project to pursue? In some companies it would be an obvious, and easy, choice. Drop Domino. Right. Now. Go! Well that sort of thing doesn’t happen where I work.
Some of my main gripes about Domino in a Microsoft environment: no integration with AD. What the hell are we doing using IDs anymore? The UI is unpleasant. Yes R851 is better than all previous versions combined but it still falls miles short of most current applications as far as asethetics and intuitive interface. Sure one might argue that form should supercede function, but I argue that in this day and age of design savvy that applications should look as good as they work. And lastly my final gripe, and this has very little to do with the actual platform, is that Notes/Domino developers and admins seem to think that they are king/queen of the IT universe. News flash, folks, you’re awesome at something that sucks.
I’ve always had a bit of disdain for Microsoft and their product line, even taking the occasional opportunity to go with a competitor’s product out of spite along the way. In the last few years, however, I’ve really begun to appreciate what Microsoft is bringing to the table, and after attending TechEd 2010 that appreciation has exploded. Microsoft is truly bringing some great products and innovation to the table when so many other companies are bringing tired, rehashed technologies around yet again.
So I’ll wrap up by saying, good job, Microsoft. May you challenge all of the other companies in the technology marketplace to step up, and may they challenge you to do the same. And may IBM/Lotus just stop the nonsense, that too.
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