My IT department is so adonment in migrating to MS office, it has already been 3 years already, only than they start migrate to MS Outlook. However, I have not seen any applications migration yet. When I asked them the details, (those usually will not be asked by top management, who does not know domino architectures) like how will MS-Exchange/ sharepoint dealt with replication, etc, the response is only we will look into it.
Than I go deeper, of course if one can think of the logic, it can also be done, I believe even linux can also do it. But the issue is more of Total cost of ownership, with Notes, it is only one click away to do replication, and I can design huge big database, accessible by unlimited (not sure notes limits) of users.
However, with Exchange, it might be a daunting task to design every application with such features, and may be with a lots of separate files needed. Not to mention the resources it will take if I need such applications oversea. For notes, it is just a setup of domino server, communication and replication.
Any constructive feedback is appreciated, my comments may also be based on my findings thus far.
Subject: I see Notes might stay for at least 2 more years in my organization
Every MS attempt to provide something similar to Notes Domino in the past has been thrown (by MS) to thrash (any one remember Collaboration Data Objects?). Now you talk about Sharepoint, but in vista there is Groove (MS bought Groove who was a startup by ex-Domino guru Ray Ozzie); so my question is: will Sharepoint be replaced by Groove?
Ask management if they are willing to give up a mature technology for a technology no one is able to guarantee it is here to stay.
Also ask if there is any offering for Disaster RESILIENCE (not recovery). With Domino clusters over WAN, you can stay up even after a disaster hits a site with no intervention required. Compare to disaster recovery where you need to do something to come back up in a certain acceptable time.
Subject: I see Notes might stay for at least 2 more years in my organization
I’m in the same boat. I don’t think I can comment as this is a public forum. You said it all for me. I wanted you to know you’re not alone. The TCO for Domino seems quite inexpensive in comparison.
Subject: I see Notes might stay for at least 2 more years in my organization
The last company I was contracted to had been trying to migrate a large, critical Notes application into a canned product for 4 years with no success. They bought the rights to modify the product, but so far have been unable to write in all the bells and whistles that Notes provides–like workflow, replication and richtext fields.
This application is used world-wide and is replicated to at least 5 servers 24-7. They haven’t even begun to address the issue of how they’re going to handle that problem.
So far, I would estimate that the company has spent 500K+ trying to duplicate this one application just because someone in management didn’t understand Notes.
Good luck. You’ll probably be doing Notes for well over 2 years.