Venting

HCL Domino Domino Forum
1

I’ve been a notes admin and designer since 1995 and one of it’s biggest supporters in numerous buy-outs, mergers, acquisitions and the inevitable “why don’t we just move to exchange” discussions. But I really have to tell you that I think IBM has blown it. They had the market and then just stopped marketing Notes. Why? Every corporate hot button at the time IBM thumbed their noses and decided not to promote Notes, was based around email and collaboration. How did they miss that?

My biggest complaint with R8 and 8.5 is the times it takes waiting for simple tasks to complete. Like opening a mail file for the first time. It’s like watching paint dry…I know there are other factors involved in all this, but when I have the required hardware specs and the end use does as well, try telling that to your CEO, or CIO, or even a sales rep.

And the designer for 8.5…is that seriously something IBM plans to roll out for production. Every time I click on a db to open in designer it needs to compile script? You need to double click anything in the left hand side navigation pane? And please tell me why the agent for out office is scheduled and not defaulted to when new mail arrives? I’m curious as to the reasoning behind that.

Also, can you please tell me why I cannot log into our Sametime server using the 8.5 client?

IBM…you are dropping the ball. Or have already dropped it. You could have stepped on Microsoft’s trachea, but you sat by and did nothing. This was your market to win and to win going away…You’ve disappointed some of your most loyal customers and that’s what hurts the most.

2

Subject: A Few More Things…

Just to clarify on the above topics…I’ve already contacted IBM on each of them, so this isn’t just an upgrade to a beta version and hope it works. Part of the problem, I’m being told is that my servers aren’t 8.5…which is fine, except that some of these are things that worked with an 8.0.2 client and a 7.0.3 server, so why do I have to go to a beta version server to make these “simple” things work.

Here are a few more items that do not work for me, I’ve contacted IBM about and have been routinely ignored.

In the Administrator client for creating new users, I cannot create new users and add them to more than one group. I get a “Failed: The user could not be added to the group(s) specified.” error message. It will correctly create the new user, I just have to add them to the other necessary groups after it fails. But why is this happening?

Secondly, when I create a user on the 8.5 client with the 8.0.2 server, I get a weird quota problem. During the administration process if I set the quota and alert to 500MB with a 495MB alert, the administrator will later show a 5GB quota with a 4.95GB alert.

Am I the only one seeing these anomalies?

I’m afraid 8.5 will be rushed to production and cause even more companies to migrate to exchange, even though comparing the two is never going to be apples to apples.

Please wake up IBM…PLEASE!!

3

Subject: You’ve got that right

Sounds like you’re feeling a lot of pain. That appears common with the IBM of new. Don’t even get me started on their rape-like pricing on their zSeries platform or their complete lack of experience implementing newer versions of SAP on it…

Lotus Notes these days seems like a pile of garbage. I run it on Linux (finally after years of lip service!!) and it absolutely refuses to work with a distro where Firefox3 is the delivered browser. It has been no end of trouble for me trying to get Notes working at all, and it is maddening when it takes 2 minutes for the application to load and get into a mode where anything useful can be done. The various preferences and settings are in completely random and unintuitive places.

I’m no fan of Uncle Bill, but at this point I think I’d rather my company be running Exchange and I could use Evolution to connect to it. The whole world appears to be going M$ anyway…

Brian

4

Subject: Thank you…

It’s nice to know I’m not the only one feeling the frustration. I’m sure there are tons of others out there, I just haven’t had time to search the forum.

It’s sad really, I mean I really threw my hat in the ring with Lotus, not only with their software, but career-wise as well. I always felt like I was part of the family being an administrator and developer and telling other IT folks that our company purchased (luckily I was always on the buyer side), welcome to the world of Domino. We can do it all. Now? I field endless phone calls and emails telling me it’s so slow and why can’t it do this and why can’t it do that? People just don’t like to use Notes these days.

I’m with you…I’m almost ready to migrate to the dark side (Microsoft) as much as I hate to admit it.

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Subject: Yep, sad but true

These days I can’t think of a single area where IBM competes that they deserve to win, whether it’s Notes, Sametime, SAP on zSeries, storage, AIX, DB2, etc. I can’t tell you how many critical break/fix PTFs we’ve had to apply to DB2 for z/OS just to get SAP to work with it. Enterprise class software indeed.

Honestly I don’t know why they’re still in business. Their professional services is decent at least, if you can afford it.

Long term I’m hoping to steer my company clear of any further dealings with IBM, period. I think a lot of people are in your boat, having touted IBM/Lotus solutions to their company only to havr it bite them on the rear end now.

Brian

6

Subject: Not sure whether my response will be useful…

…but for sure we do not see the across-the-board problems you indicate with Notes/Domino 8 in production or the 8.5 beta. There are 20,000+ postings in the Notes/Domino 8 forum, and based on survey and call data we know that 50% of Notes customers have begun ND8 rollout. At IBM alone, we’ve rolled out Notes 8 to more users than the size of nearly any of our clients…it works and we know it.

As for marketing, this is a favorite criticism point and an area where we can always do more. I suggest you listen to the Bob Picciano podcast from last week http://www.lotususergroup.org/submissions.nsf/lscontest?OpenForm

and read some of our PR from 2008 such as http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Ibm-NYSE-IBM-884845.html

–Ed / Director, Product Management, IBM Lotus

7

Subject: Why Notes market share is slipping

IBM does not do anywhere near enough to explain why Notes is worth having. IBM also prices it far out of the realm of those who would actually have reason to use it.

IBM screwed up when it positioned Notes and Domino as a messaging platform (even though it does do it, and fairly well) – because that allowed Microsoft to set the tone of the feature-debate.

I also have multiple friends who work or have worked in the IT support departments at IBM. They all tell me that IBM can’t even configure Notes and Domino correctly to run smoothly, with a minimum of network traffic (problems with replication seem to be one of their largest headaches), or with any kind of speed.

I had to explain to one of them, last night, what precisely it is about Notes that makes me think that it’s a wonderful thing. He said, “Thank you for explaining why it can be useful. Up until now, I thought it was a worthless POS.”

It’s slow, it’s clunky, it’s got a huge amount of cruft, it’s difficult to properly administer, it’s even more difficult to learn how to properly administer, it’s even more difficult than that to learn how to properly initially set up, it’s got some wonderful capabilities that are astoundingly poorly marketed, it’s expensive, it’s built on technically brilliant underpinnings with a whole slough of features that don’t play well with themselves or others…

…and the only things I hear from my colleagues (both within and without IBM) when they have to deal with it is that it’s an overwhelmingly negative experience. I’ve watched several companies go away from Notes, because the administrators they hired were unable to figure out how to get it to work. One of them was shocked to find out that he couldn’t simply change the ID file and have the system work “properly” – in his eyes, the new credential should have removed access to all resources under the old credential, including the old user’s mailfile.

I appreciate that you’re the one in charge of the many projects – but we have 2.1+GHz multi-core processors. We shouldn’t have to wait longer on average now to perform our tasks than we did ten years ago on 300MHz processors.

Why can’t there be a project kicked off to make it easier to administer the client? Why can’t a project be launched to figure out where the “common admin” is trying to go to perform a given operation, and then at the least create redirection linkages to take her to the correct spot? (By “common admin”, I mean someone who’s come from the depressingly overcommon client-server paradigm and has never been exposed to Notes or Domino before.)

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Subject: I would strongly disagree with the characterization of our internal deployment

and I wish you hadn’t gone there, because it distracted me from reading some of your other points.

Specifically, I’d like to know more about your comments related to pricing. I think we have a heck of a lot of flexibility on pricing, and I’ve seen many deals over the last several years where our price was more aggressive than the competition.

As for education, you’re right, there’s always a need for more. Our new wikis and other content on IBM developerWorks are designed to deliver a lot of that, along with the end-user training on portions of our site like IBM Developer . We’ll continue to invest more in this with 8.5 and throughout 2009.

Thanks for the feedback.

–Ed/IBM Lotus

9

Subject: But…

Ed, I respect you quite a bit and read your blog looking for helpful hints and tips, but…really?

Notes has always been slow compared to Exchange…and I grant you it’s not always apples to apples, but when a user can pull up an email in Exchange in the time the Notes client is still refreshing or doing whatever it is that it’s doing behind the scenes, it’s a hard sell. Bottom line. And people don’t care that Notes can do ten times the things that exchange can without further licensing, or other products, etc. He’s right…they went head to head in the messaging department and got squashed. And trust me, it pains me to say it, too…but that’s the reality.

You know why we hang on to Notes? Because everything we do is tied to db’s. Our time tracking, our help desks, our payroll, finances, hr, expenses, travel…EVERYTHING!! But do you think any of our newly acquired people care about that? NO…they care about the time it takes to open those databases either via client or the web…it’s all about what have you done for me lately…and what has IBM done for us lately?

I am more than willing to take this off-line and show you and whomever else you’d like to see what TITAN Technology Partners does with Lotus Notes and how we can improve what we’re doing, or to show you the problems we are having because we are an ardent supporter of Notes, but it’s only a matter of time before we have to take our back end to SAP or ORACLE, since that’s what our consulting business mainly revolves around. And out of our hundreds of clients, do you know how many actually use Notes? I can count them on one hand. And do you know how many have gone from Notes to Exchange? I can count them on two hands with help from my toes. We’re not a small company: www.ttpartners.com.

Take a look and let me know if you’re interested in having some serious IBM and TTP discussions, because I am. I’d love to see us stay with Lotus, but man, it’s not going to be easy.

10

Subject: Thanks, but…

We’ve rolled out R8 as well…to over 500 users, but I continue to get complaints about how slow it is. And unless I’m actually sitting in the same office as the server is located, it’s painful opening up a mail file on the client. Now, I know we may not have the best hardware, but they’re not exactly junk and they’re well about the recommended hardware requirements from IBM. And even sitting in the same office, it’s much slower than it used to be. Seriously, it’s painful for a lot of our users.

And then to get the typical IBM response, well, we know it works…it must be you, isn’t really what I want to hear either.

Like I’ve said I’ve been a loyalist of Notes for over 10 years, but I really feel like the product and the customer service is slipping.

11

Subject: Is that 8.0.2?

If not, please check out 8.0.2 and let me know what your results are.

12

Subject: Yes…

it’s 8.0.2

13

Subject: Registration issues

The quota issue was a regression introduced to many codestreams (RPOE7J38TA). It has been fixed in 8.5.

I’m not aware of any issues with adding users to groups in 8.5. Can you check the local log.nsf for additional information?

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Subject: There isn’t anything that gets logged…

It will actually register the user, but I get a pop up saying it can’t add the users to the groups…it will add the user to the first group listed. But the rest have to be manually added.

This is on a 8.5 beta 2 client registering users on an 8.0.2 server.

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Subject: Client local log.nsf?

Did you check the clients log.nsf? I would have expected logging like this:

  • could not be added to the group: ‘’.: Entry not found index
  • The user could not be added to the group(s) specified.

It sounds like a regression (ETHU7HJQBW) we found and fixed in 8.5.

16

Subject: You’re correct…

I did find those errors in the local log file and it has been corrected in the gold release. I can register users in as many groups as I need to with this release. Thank you.

17

Subject: complains

Hello together, a agree that not all what IBM has done was best or even good. As you mentioned, advertising for Notes was boring or inexistent. That’s also the reason why people discuss of replacing Notes with Exchange, Quir with Sharepoint, Sametime with Office Communicator… but as usual if you know both worlds in realtime not on paper or from the vendors one is clear: Take a Notes 4.5 Database, connect it under an 8.0 client and it works… Take Exchange 5.5 go to 2007 you can’t!!! Someone told that the Hardware he uses could be not best but it works still… try it once with Exchange 2007 → no chance. We have a new Infrastructure for 2500 clients sized by Microsoft (you heard right) and when you click on a user you wait 2-5 seconds to see the mailbox infos on the Exchange server (load today 150 clients… that’s boring)… Unified Messaging from R1 → upcoming R2 no Upgrade path (sounds cool, not) you saw that once by IBM? Or you have an idea for the Sharpoint Indexing Server how much memory you need to start (designed by Microsoft themselves)? 64 GB of memory… ha ha i never saw a notes server having that for email & Databases… That’s ugly… or a last example… you like the Cluster Servers in Domino… Then take a deep breath before you go to Exchange 2007… no more active/active Cluster (written in their technotes… we abandoned active active because we had problems with earlier versions)… that’s really weird… now let’s reflect the problems you found and compare to that i explained here in a few seconds and you see there are 2 big differences within this 2 companies: IBM is used to deal with longterm strategie (not always obvious, you’re right)… or end user strategy → install from scratch… I do not defend IBM’s weak marketing or since the change from Iris to IBM, answers in the forum have lost quality, but it’s still a good and robust product (if you give him the right Hardware to run on it… for a last example i’m still running Lotus Domino 8.0.2 on a old IBM Server x232 with 1 GB of RAM and it works (with hosted Homepages)… means for mail/databases/Webservices… try that once with Exchange 2007 and tell me your feedback (if you will finish the installation successfully)!!!

18

Subject: Trust Me…

I’d probably look for a new job if it ever came from above that we were moving to Exchange or any of their other solutions. We are a heavy Notes shop with our payroll, finances, hr, work flow, sales reporting, expenses, time reporting, help desk tickets, discussion db’s, etc. all tied into one product: Domino.

I guess my main beef lately has been how slow things have been for our remote users, which wasn’t the case with R7. Just one example, and it drives me bonkers every day when I’m sitting at home, about 6 miles from where my “home” mail server is sitting…to open my mail file takes well over 40 seconds each time. If I get a new email and it needs to refresh the index? Well, that can take another 20-40 seconds…I’m on a 64 bit, 8GB laptop, hitting a server with 4GB and core two duo 3.2GHz Intel processors, with a T1 in the office and cable modem, no wireless from my house. Now I would expect it to be slower from my house, but not to such dramatic effect. It’s worse for or remote clients…of which most of our company is remote, we do a lot of consulting for other clients, etc. So the frustration level is growing.

I’m tempted to upgrade our server to 64 bit, more memory, etc., but that’s not cheap and it wasn’t a concern when we were running 7. We’re also implementing an MPLS circuit at the corporate office, our remote offices and our data centers, so maybe that will help, too, but really the slowness is horrible.

19

Subject: The times you are reporting are much higher than our measurements.

Using my personal mail file (on Notes 8.5, 8.02 results should be similar), over a cable modem takes me on average 6-7 seconds to open my mail, under 4 seconds in the office.

Some things to consider:

Closing the lower left view (Tasks, ToDo, etc. will reduce the time to load that view

Closing the preview pane will eliminate opening the last selected Email

Understanding where the time is spent would be the 1st step to identifying where the slow down occurs.

Adding the following to the Notes.INI will allow you to see the client/server transactions that occur while opening your mail file:

CLIENT_CLOCK=1

DEBUG_CONSOLE=1

The output will appear in the data\IBM_TECHNICAL_SUPPORT directory in the console.log (which is renames to console_xxxxx on the next restart.

On 1st opening your mail file, you should see on the order of about 20 client/server transactions to the server (i.e. [9243]) OPEN_DB) NOTE: The number 9423 indicates the transaction number, subtracting this from the last transaction indicates how many transactions occurred.

Other info that will appear in the console.log:

READ_OBJECT(REP00255C8B:00569ED6-RRV0000011E,0xFFFFFFFF at 0x0): 139 ms. [30+1948=1978]

Where 139 msec indicates that this transaction took 1/7th of a second.

If OPEN_COLLECTION is taking a long time, this can indicate that your view or folder has had many updates. If the server runs the UDPATE task, recently used views and folders should be kept up to date.

What view do you normally use to view your mail? Inbox or All Documents?

If All Documents, have you made customizations?

Which of the transactions, if any is taking, consistently, more than a second?

On each open of the mail file, do you have more than a couple OPEN_NOTEs?

Doug Conmy
Lotus Notes Lead Architect
IBM Senior Technical Staff Member
dconmy@us.ibm.com

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Subject: Preview Pane

I don’t think I need to change any ini settings to get more verbose logging information…although I’m curious and probably will do it next week.

It’s the Preview Pane…at least as far as opening the email client is concerned. I had turned it off, but never restarted the client. So although the time response had improved by about 15 seconds it was still not acceptable…25 seconds or more.

Restarted the client and I’m around 10 or under…which still upsets me. I have to tell all our users not to use the preview pane? And I mean having the preview pane open caused other issues…trying to click on a different, already received email was slow. Getting a notification that you had new email was painful…over 40 seconds to refresh. In fact my work around was to do a CTRL+Break and have it say “Operation Stopped At Your Request” then doing an F9 to refresh, which was usually faster.

So I guess the solution is to not use the preview pane? Or to at least close it before you exit Notes? Not good…not good.