There seems to be fewer and fewer Notes jobs advertised on the internet each month that I look. My Notes admin contract is due to finish in the next few months and I would like to know what sort of state the Notes market is in. Has Exchange won the battle yet? There seems to be a huge amount of Exchange support roles in comparison to Notes.
Subject: And what’s the future for Exchange after MS’s lack of roadmap at TechEd and David Thompson’s comments to ComputerWorld?
Subject: According to Radicatti, Exchange Edge Server! w00t!
Subject: How is Notes currently doing against Exchange
I agree that if you look at Email only that Exchange has won the battle from the user’s perspective - Outlook simply is a sexy client. YET we just decided to from from a multi thousand Exchange installation to Lotus for the overall Package (Sametime, Quickplaces, Workfloc, .Doc, Websphere etc.)
The Products are SUPERB ! only pity is that IBM doesn’t market and support them as a combined package very well.
Still this shows that there are companies (like us) that are “buying” / searching for Domino know-how.
cheers
alex
Subject: RE: How is Notes currently doing against Exchange
I would have to agree with most of the comments posted so far. The combination of mail, c&s, instant messaging, group collaboration, and a stable app development platform puts the IBM/Lotus product offering head and shoulders above everything else on the market. Wrapping all of this into a slick web interface and enabling to run on any number of platforms just re-inforces that position.
And here comes the “but…”
I have not seen any marketing of these products outside of IT related media (print, web etc) for several years. (Remember the Dennis Leary ads?) A common perception, rightly or wrongly, is that the lack of marketing presence indicates that IBM is slowly backing away from the Lotus product family. While we are all aware of the ongoing development and enhancement of these products, I’m not sure the decision makers, especially the at the SMB’s, are aware that there is a viable, competing product on the market.
My thanks to Mr. Brill for participating in this forum. I’ll try to avoid the “Lotus’ advertising sucks” theme, but it is getting hard to ignore the silence.
Subject: RE: How is Notes currently doing against Exchange
This might be an indication of how much more labor-intensive it is to run Exchange servers…
Subject: RE: How is Notes currently doing against Exchange
I don’t know about other small companies, but we don’t keep a full-time Notes admin on staff anymore. There’s just not enough work for them do to. Any serious Domino issues are covered by our developers. Our “junior” network admin handles the various person/group tasks in the Domino directory.
Best new feature in Lotus Notes 6? Users can undelete their mail (soft delete). It’s been a year since I had to restore a user’s mailbox.
Subject: How is Notes currently doing against Exchange
Howdy!
At our company, we are getting rid of everything Notes in favor of everything M$, including Exchange. Applications will be re-written in .NET using SQL dbs and SharePoint portals.
As a Notes developer, I’ve been able to work with C# .NET & VB .NET for the past few months to start “translating” these applications. I am sure of this: it will take several years for .NET to equal Notes. There is very little documentation, and the little there is has bugs galore.
It’s kinda funny to search for something, and find “This method is not supported in this version”, yet they don’t say what version it IS supported in!
I’ve found 3 “googlewhacks” when searching for error messages!!! (a “googlewhack” is when you enter search criteria in Google, click “Search”, and come out with only one, single solitary hit). Try and find some on your own! It’s not easy. ~8|
This won’t be the first time that M$ has been able to squash a superior product. I don’t see Notes lasting more than 5-10 years in the future, I’m afraid. I say, make while the goings good!
I like Notes a lot more, and so does my boss! He just doesn’t like what IBM is doing (or not doing) with it. How can we continue to support Notes, and say “it’s the best”, if IBM doesn’t feel it’s worthwhile enough to push?
I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think so. 
My 2ø worth…
Steve in Montreal
Subject: I’m not sure why you say IBM isn’t pushing Notes.
I encourage you to read this posting on my personal weblog: http://www.edbrill.com/ebrill/edbrill.nsf/dx/07182004100552PMEBR4GQ.htm
While nobody can see the future, I’m surprised to read “5-10 years in the future” is a death sentence. What software products are you certain will be around 10+ years in the future?
To answer the original question, Gartner recently published a report indicating that Notes/Domino is #1 in e-mail (and that Lotus is #1 in collaboration software). There’s a reference to it on http://www.cmpnetasia.com/ViewArt.cfm?Artid=24452&Catid=8&subcat=83
The topic of the number of Notes jobs comes up from time to time. You didn’t say what geography you are located in. It talked to a Notes contractor in the UK yesterday who said he is fully booked (overbooked even) to the end of 2004.
If there is something I can do to change the situation at your organization, e-mail me at ed_brill@ us.ibm.com
–Ed/IBM Lotus
Subject: RE: I’m not sure why you say IBM isn’t pushing Notes.
Notes/Domino is #1 in e-mail (and that Lotus is #1 in collaboration software)
Albeit not in the US. But if anyone in, say, Ireland or New Zealand wants to offer me a job…
Subject: RE: I’m not sure why you say IBM isn’t pushing Notes.
i am sorry to say after IBM bought Lotus , Lotus lost its life. I also personaly feel better all Lotus notes guys change there skill set. we should honestly agree that IBM is not doing proper marketing in Notes, I am in india watching all the web site and oppourtunity column , there is negligible job opening for notes.regds
soma
Subject: Lotus lost its life?
We had sold about 2 million licenses of Lotus Notes when IBM acquired Lotus over nine years ago in July, 1995. Today we’ve sold over 110 million. We’re #1 in e-mail worldwide according to Gartner. Notes/Domino 6.x have been incredibly successful releases, and we’re in beta with Notes/Domino 7.I’m not as willing as I used to to take the “Lotus marketing sucks” complaints, sorry.
Subject: RE: Lotus lost its life?
Yes, I was just thinking the other day while I was explaining to a user that there is no difference between iNotes and Domino Web Access that Lotus marketing is doing an amazing job. And every time I have to try to lookup on the web site to figure out what Domino.Doc is called this week, or whether IBM Lotus Team Workspace is a part of IBM Lotus Workplace server, or if it just has a similar name, I think to myself "Wow, great job of marketing."That’s harsh, I know. Lotus is doing a great job of creating charts and announcements and telling us about strategic directions. Of course, they fail to notice the fact that the Notes client continues to be user-unfriendly, crash-happy, and difficult to manage in a large enterprise. (To be fair, Lotus Workplace is now the focus of most Lotus development so we can’t expect much attention to be paid to the actual Notes functionality/stability at this point… “but it’s not replacing Notes, we swear! Really! Until it replaces Notes, we’ll keep swearing that it’s not going to!”)
I digress…
A few examples of my current joys with the Notes client:
-The spell checker cannot recognize that “MailServer1” or a canonicalized name don’t need to be spellchecked. I’ve become very accustomed to the “Send as is” button.
-Opening an attachment provides an array of options that confuse the user, and most mess it up at least once before figuring out what needs to be done.
-Calendaring and scheduling continues to be quirky, with “Document has been deleted” errors occuring often enough to shake the user’s confidence in the system.
-The notes client continues to be unable to convert a horizontal rule to MIME, and presents the user with a completely unintuitive dialog box that invites them to send a blank email to the recipient, or to remove the horizontal rule, assuming they understand what that is.
-Depending on whether you are using the Notes client or iNotes, you might be have two completely different contact lists you are managing. Training is necessary to ensure that the user can properly manage and sync these lists–why not just make it work automatically?
This is just a few, we have at least 100 more provided pretty much daily by our users, when we aren’t getting crash reports in ADC that simply complain “Notes sucks.”
In comparison to Outlook 2003 (which does a great job of handling local replicas of the mail file without user intervention or knowledge) the Notes client seems like a throwback. In our preliminary tests, users were easily able to navigate the Outlook interface, where the Notes client was confusing. Databases, documents, files, bookmarks, workspace tiles, replicator pages, address books, directories, location documents, connection documents–our users just want to send an email, not read a manual and learn about document models.
(And don’t give me the red-herring about viruses, a properly managed Exchange/Outlook system with the proper controls pushed through policies to the clients isn’t the virus farm Lotus tries to pretend it is.)
I admit that Notes 6 is better than R5, but that’s like saying that a Ford Escort is better than a Ford Pinto – it’s true, but it’s still not saying it’s good. Lotus was crowing not too long ago about being chosen “Best Overall Groupware Server” by PC Magazine. They failed to notice that PC Magazine also said in the same article that Outlook “certainly beats Lotus for client useability.” For a shop like ours that has already implemented AD, the only remaining reason not to switch is our existing Lotus application infrastructure, but that is slowly being replaced as better IDE’s and web-based Notes apps take over from the straight Notes interface.
The client interface problem aside, the biggest problem that I have with Lotus is that they treat the “complainers” like me as if we are the enemy. We’re just trying to keep our jobs, and our jobs rely on the system that we support continuing to be used by our employers. When we get long lists of complaints from our upper management, along with a directive that they be fixed or the company will move to Exchange, and we take those complaints to Lotus and are told “This has been SPR’d and is be investigated by Lotus Quality engineering” with not indication of when or if it will be fixed, it is just a little disappointing and makes me wonder why I bother championing a system made by a company that has no interest in helping fix my issues if it isn’t clearly linked to their magically-fudged license count.
Perhaps we just aren’t trying hard enough. Perhaps there is some magic way to support this product that makes all of these problems go away, and we just aren’t aware of it. If there is, it shouldn’t be hidden so well. (Someone once suggested that we use the Notes.ini setting “Make_Notes_Work=1” but we assumed they were joking, and haven’t deployed it.) In any case, it shouldn’t be this hard to support.
We are your interface to the real customers, our users. We support and champion the product, often despite considerable pressure to switch products from a large majority of our user community.
Instead of telling me about market share, tell me how Notes 7 will be an “Outlook killer” and will provide the functionality to make the user happy.
Instead of ignoring feature requests and bug reports, provide a stable client that works the way that companies use email, instead of the way Lotus imagines they should.
Instead of renaming products and providing more and more products that provide features we don’t need, provide us with a product that people are happy to use.
I know it’s a lot to ask, but stop treating those of us who want Notes to be great (but don’t mind pointing out that it’s not) as if we are some kind of heretics out to destroy the platform. We’d love to love Lotus again, but at this point, you aren’t giving us a good reason to do so.
Subject: *While you have some good points and others over the top, you lack credibility without a profile.
Subject: I don’t really know what to say to this.
You raise some very valid points, some issues that I’m familiar with from being in this business for more than 10 years. The usability of the 6.x generation of Notes is far above that of prior versions. I don’t think it’s Escort vs. Pinto as you say – I’ve watched the videos from our usability labs where Outlook users – people who already use that product – have struggled with doing things in Outlook that they easily completed in Notes. Were there challenges in Notes? sure. Are there challenges in any software? absolutely.
I don’t believe complainers or detractors are the “enemy”. We didn’t get to 110 million users by shipping a substandard product. There are always good ideas for improvement or doing things diffferently.
I’m not sure what your interaction with my organization has been like. I think most readers of LDD know that I’m always willing to have this kind of conversation with your organization and figure out the right way to get past issues that exist in your environment.
And I’ll take the ding on the rebranding, even though I no longer am in Lotus marketing. But there’s still a lot in your list that I don’t accept as representative, including your mocking of our statements regarding the Notes client’s future. Find me at ed_brill@us.ibm.com and I’m happy to discuss further.
–Ed
Subject: RE: I’m not sure why you say IBM isn’t pushing Notes.
Howdy!
I know Notes is #1 in mail, but it seems that noone in our company or our market seems to know or care. Maybe our sales guys are going to the wrong people. I’ve built many quick & dirty internal applications which have been used extensively for the past 3-4 years. Whenever a change was needed, it would take me usually 5-10 minutes to do it. They work well, and they are very “customizable”.
Yesterday, the big boss wanted to make some changes to one of them, but my immediate boss said that we should wait until we transfer it to .NET. ~:(
Back when, it took me 3 weeks to offer an alternative to Documentum for a department of a pharmaceutical company which worked very well, and was customized to their exact specifications. It had most of the key features of Documentum, plus a few more that they needed, for a minor fraction of the price. They used it for a while until they got a note from the company Bigwig that they were scrapping Notes company wide.
Our company doesn’t really do much “development” work. We do more integration and system administration type stuff. As such, I know my days are numbered.
How much am I to blame? As the only Notes developer, am I supposed to tell the sales guys how to sell? Should I have pushed more?
Maybe you could put me in touch with that Notes contractor in the UK! 
My 2ø worth…
Steve in Montreal
“Ever stop to think, then forget to start again?”
Subject: How is Notes currently doing against Exchange
I have had no problem making a career out of Notes. In fact most of my jobs revolve around it and has earned me a very good life and career. The last month alone I had 3 job requests and several training requests. In fact I even received a spot job offer from a HR guy who had come to a Bryan Adams concert where I had gone :))
Whoever feels that Notes is dying out should just see the number of features added from Notes/Domino 4.6 to Notes/Domino 6.5.
Just see Domino Web access for a “sexy” client. Further with the Notes client I have one basic UI for all Notes workflow apps (not just mail). Notes mail signatures are recognized by the US Patent office!
Outlook with all its security holes and limited use has been uninstalled from my system. In fact i felt the Opera Suite with Browser, M2, Contacts, IRC & Sticky Notes were enough to replace the Outlook client for me :))
The major reasons for support for M$ products:
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IBM can be more customer friendly in both marketing and support
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Newbies are brought up on M$ UI.
Just my 2 cents (Not trying to flame or Troll)