I'd love to argue, but I made a similar point (no where near as well as you have) on the episode 3 of This Week in Lotus.

If you live my the Magic Quadrant, you can also die by the magic quadrant.

It has been, and always will be, about the apps.

It drives me nuts that IBM hasn't marketed the app dev portion of Notes.

Look at CouchDb, NoSQL, etc.

People WANT flexible storage FOR THEIR APPS.

They WANT replication FOR THEIR APPS.

They WANT built-in security FOR THEIR APPS.

IBM has it, but nobody knows. And IBM doesn't care that nobody knows.

GREAT point about Lotus Knows.

You would think that with a free Designer, etc. etc. that there would be some marketing around Notes as a dev platform. And a push for new, young blood.

Great post all round. I suspect, unfortunately, it is all too accurate.

*Very* uncomfortable reading, but you made your point beautifully. I wish I could say 'it ain't so', but I can't.

well written, and tragic honest

It always saddens me to read posts, or see discussions, like this. The same talk has been going on for years. The part that makes me sad is the truth of it and the waste of the potential of Lotus Notes/Domino.

Despite the emotional effect it has on me, it is good to see such well-written words as it helps keep in front of me a clearer picture of the current state of Lotus Notes/Domino.

Well done!

VERY well said. And true, unfortunately.

Well done post. Consulting isn't for everyone.

However, if you are good at what you develop, go for it. Great developers are worth their weight in gold.

If i can help you from South Florida let me know.

Nick Shelness (ex Lotus CIO) banged on about how Microsoft did its marketing, and the magic quadrant at iLug in Dublin a few years ago. A very uncomfortable session for Ed Brill, I suspect, but as you point out - absolutely bang on.

Rumours abound that the #lotusknows campaign might actually start in the UK - but to be honest, too little, too late now. The brand - and I mean Lotus in this respect - has been ignored too long by marketing - especially here in the UK.

Sad, but true.

And good for you for standing up and saying it.

---* Bill

Superb analysis, excellent writing.

Sadly, it's so true.

I really wish it wasn't, as the Developer in me just loves Notes. But the realist says that you have to move on.

People are talking about Cloud Computing. Mobile Platforms. Social Software.

Yeah, Notes can do that too.

I'd just like to point out that there are some people in the Lotus brand fighting to position Domino as an application development platform and trying to do things to get customers to recognise the value and the strategy.

One other thing... it's not necessarily a case of not having Domino as part of the strategy for other Lotus products, it's about best fit. Connections wouldn't have worked on a Domino platform, and WAS is a better platform for running Connections and interacting with the required data store. It's nothing to do with not having Domino in a strategy.

And "Quickr, again based on J2EE, is replacing NSF-based Quickplace" - that's not true, there's been an enormous amount of effort and $$$s been put into the forthcoming Quickr 8.5 on Domino.

Best post of the year in our space.

You have put accurate thoughts in a way that I think anyone in IBM will find impossible to rebuke. You didn't detract from anyone, and I can feel the pain in the post.

Painfully brilliant.

I think you're not far from the truth. An interesting case in point from the UK. A developer conference was planned by IBM for 16th June. It was then renamed as The Power of Business Applications. It was then cancelled within a couple of weeks of its due date.

If IBM wants to maximise its investment in XPages, if IBM want to encourage developers to use the free Domino Developer software, if IBM want a future for Domino developers then these kind of events need to be marketed well enough to be successful. The Notes & Domino Application Development wiki is a good bit of branding, but it needs backing up. There are a lot of good Notes applications and a lot of interest in the community about XPages, but the community needs support to convince businesses to maxmise the power of the platform.

Very accurate analysis. Wonder if anyone at IBM would actually respond?

"Connections wouldn't have worked on a Domino platform"

I could not imagine a statement from an IBMer that more perfectly illustrates John's point that IBM won't treat Domino as an application platform. Connections would have worked just fine on a Domino platform, as has been illustrated to you by the success of any number of business partners who have built solutions on Domino that duplicate Connections functionality.

Thanks, Darren, for driving the point home so thoroughly. No other reply could have crystallized the problems of the last 8 years so perfectly.

Doom and gloom. Hopefully you find something that's worthwhile for you.

I've never been busier in the Notes/Domino development area -- and that's in very depressed economic conditions in my corner of the world. My work in the last 18 months or so has been all with Domino as the back end and a web front end. Ajax, Dojo, YUI, HMTL, CSS, etc... if you make it look good, and work well then many companies don't care what the back end is. That's been working for us. I guy that sits next to me at the company I'm currently contracting at is learning .net but has no front end skills and is just fumbling along making ugly, non-functional web apps and you know what ? Someone is going to say -- that Sharepoint really sucks.

As many people have said in the past -- stay current with your skillset and don't be afraid to incorporate new technology with Domino. Domino plays very nicely in the web 2.0 world. It's been working for me.

Well, while I agree about the marketing part, let's not forget that :

- XPages is a tremendous effort from IBM to revigorate Domino as an application platform

- XPages is, to me, a very good mix of Domino as a RAD environement and "standard" JEE features. Add that to NSF and Domino is clearly a killer software technically !

- Domino is more and more "JEE aware", so I think there is no point oposing Domino and JEE

We, as a community, must also get this message to our managers / customers / boss etc... We need help from IBM for sure !!!

But we also have to look ourselves in the mirror : how many of us have beeng programming with Domino 8.5 as they were doing in 5 or 6 ? How many of us have made efforts to make good looking domino apps instead of those UI abominations we see all around ?

I can't beleive that, now that Domino is fully revived technically speaking (eclipse on the client, xpages on the server), we - as a community - let it go.

Let the reconquest begin ;-)

Nail, meet Hammer.

You're spot on, John - sadly. The Lotus strategy is still the workplace strategy, and it has been so all along.

The eclipse-based designer is not about moving Java into Notes-development. It is about moving Notes-developers into Java. The same with X-pages.

Fighting it is probably futile. Instead I suppose the best thing would be committing to make any transition as good as possible for the companies we work for or with. After all, who wouldn't prefer to have somebody who loves the platform running the transition over some heartless consultant.

It's hard to hear it, but jonvon, you're quite right.

@Michael, you are right too, but the weight of the above arguments is so heavy, that is not a community effort what is needed to rise Lotus again but a corporate, end user, already promised, marketing campaign.

"Lotus knows" in Spain is just a page deeply lost inside IBM site, with emphasis in the word "deeply". Even IBM people don't know what "Lotus knows" is. Even you can not find a reference to Domino in "Lotus Knows". So what can we expect ?

Some thoughts from Spain...

Jon,

Well written article. And I agree, corporate IBM is dropping the ball and has. The community has done all it can do get the word out. But we are just that, the community. We are not the ones that sign the PO's and make the decisions to purchase the software. The wolves are and have been at the door for a LONG time. Not making the magic quadrant IS a big deal where I work. And pressure from another vendor isn't helping much either. I sometimes feel that I am running out of time. And, I've done all I can to stop it.

Best of luck to you, Jon.

Thanks to everyone for all the tweets, emails, chats and responses here - even a trackback from Mr Poole!! Very honored to say the least!

I was pretty conflicted about whether to post this or not, and almost threw it away. I hope it does some good and I did mean it in the spirit of trying to help. If I could work as a Domino guy the rest of my working life that would be more than fine with me.

Great article and spot on. I tried to whine about the inept marketing years ago and I got chided by those brainwashed in the community about ads in technical magazines and IBM not marketing 'products'.

Funny thing is it could be such an easy sell. All you have to do is show two apps in two different platforms and show the TCO and speed of development as wins for Lotus.

*sigh*

The only thing that's annoying about your post is that I had drafted and re-drafted and re-drafted a post along similar lines and it's still there in draft. And there it'll stay, as you've said it.

But, honestly, far better from you than me, as I'm in the "mr. negative" camp.

Thanks for this, but thinking about "what could have been" with Domino still makes me very very sad.

A great community, a great product, not killed by neglect. Killed by intention.

Indeed a sad story but I think you and many others can be proud of what has been achieved. I am sure that hard fighting people (inside and outside of IBM) gave Lotus Domino some more years, otherwise it would already be buried deep in the collaboration graveyard.

Personally I'll stay for a while (and Steve Mills is getting old anyway). IBM is a very big and powerful company.

This blog entry needs to be printed and given to all Lotus execs and the powers above them!

On a personal level, given everything we've been through, I am very deeply sorry it went down this way, John.

For all, I hear you. The analyst perspective was a real shock to me -- it's like the analyst can't believe that a product can do both email and apps. I wonder what bucket they put SharePoint in, or SAP, or etc.

On this thread and one or two others over the last week, I have struggled with what to say that would be meaningful and not hollow. I struggle when I see great new XPages apps, and download numbers from OpenNTF, and download numbers on free Domino Designer. I struggle when I see what we are compared against as app dev tools, since many of them have no "marketing budget" behind them -- as if the yardstick is different because if IBM isn't marketing XPages or Eclipse, therefore it must not be serious.

But actions speak louder than words. I gave away Designer and got it hosted at no license charge for developer and test images. We have posted more code than ever on OpenNTF and have seen great projects grow and mature there. I see really super-cool XPages apps like IdeaJam and Brian Benz's latest project and know that the technology works.

But how do you get developers to get on board with it? We have tried many things, but apparently not enough of or the right things. I suppose that is the topic for me to carry over to my own blog. Will do, sometime this week.

{ Link }

@17 - Nathan, what products built on Domino duplicate Connections' functionality so well? I'm not saying that Connections couldn't have been built on Domino (my wording wasn't good) but I was saying that Domino wouldn't have been the best platform. There's no point in building something on a platform to be loyal - the developers looked at the architecture and found that WAS was best for that solution. Likewise there's solutions that fit Domino but wouldn't be as good on WAS.

@Ed, I could say what I've said since about 2002. Marketing. But you've heard it all before.

---* Bill

@Ed "But how do you get developers to get on board with it? "

Developers develop for platforms where they believe there is a market and they'll get their money back for their investment.

@30 I'd have to completely disagree, and say it this way: The developers built on the IBM platform, and the IBM platform is WAS. Lotusphere after Lotusphere, I've talked with IBMers and this has become more and more clear.

and you're right: it absolutely had to do with fit - fitting in with IBM's direction.

And all this was clear a couple of years ago when the IBMotus message was that N/D was the "premier Collaborative application server", and then launched Connections on WAS.

@Ed, With all due respect to you and your position - I don't think that the issues that Jon and others have discussed this week can be resolved with the small steps that are possible given the restrictions that Lotus seems to work under.

The roots go back too far and sit too high in the IBM machine to expect that they can be resolved by good committed loyal folks like yourself. I can't imagine that we'd ever get it, but I'd love a response from someone in SWG (outside Lotus) as to how they perceive Domino within the IBM software development strategy. As I say, I can't imagine we'll get that now or in the future.

As Jon has so eloquently demonstrated, this isn't about blame or rewriting history, just where we are at and how it can be changed, if that's possible.

@34 +1

@30 - "Nathan, what products built on Domino duplicate Connections' functionality so well?"

DominoBlog, Blogsphere, LinkJam, Squawk, any number of discussion forums, any number of "homepage portal" solutions, DomWiki, Xpages Wiki, the generic doc library template, and just about everything ever posted on OpenNTF.org.

Shall I just assume you've never heard of any of these?

The only thing that Connections does that would be challenging on Domino is the Activity Templating stuff. And there was a time when Activites was a Domino addin.

"I was saying that Domino wouldn't have been the best platform. There's no point in building something on a platform to be loyal"

ROFLMAO. This is exactly why Microsoft and Google are kicking our collective asses.

There is EVERY point in building something on a platform to be loyal, when it's YOUR platform. It's called "strategy."

John, a very well-written, and sad, post. I was one of the voices outside the company 10 years ago saying that the end was visible...and was widely excoriated for it. I spent ten years at Lotus in many Notes-related roles, and when Zollar started hanging around in late 1999, it was obvious that things were going to take a different path, because at that time, anyway, he'd made a career shutting things down for IBM...remember the Network Computing Software Division? OS/2?

In fairness to IBM, from the very beginning, Notes and Domino presented them (at least SWG) with a conundrum. Notes has a directory. IBM had Tivoli. Notes has a database. IBM had DB2. Domino was (or could be) a web server. IBM had the IBM HTTP Server, which ran on top of WebSphere. I've heard Notes/Domino described as the "pre-www portal technology." IBM, of course, has WebSphere. Etc. You get the point, I'm certain.

Cliff Reeves, who was a TJ Watson Fellow, and part of the IBM team which acquired Lotus, before he ran product management for Notes/Domino/Sametime, has said, provocatively, that if IBM valued Notes/Domino, you'd see the .NSF embedded somewhere in the IBM Software Group Portfolio outside of core Notes. You'd see the PKI translated to work with WebSphere and other things in the portfolio. You'd see the app dev environment at the very least tightly integrated into WebSphere development. Again, etc.

Though he'd probably not appreciate the compliment much, I think Ed Brill has done yeoman's work keeping the message positive for Notes, and trying to keep those of us calling "bring out your dead!" at bay. I don't like his often shrill and abusive style toward those of us on the other side, but I do think he's done both a service and a disservice, in my opinion, to those, like you (and me), who are still so enamored of what a great product Notes was...

IBM is not a registered charity, and so they must run their business in the most profitable way possible. Shortly after IBM acquired Lotus, I asked an IBM rep whom I came to know why, even before the acquisition, when Lotus was offering a pretty generous revenue share to IBM for Notes licenses they could sell, IBM wasn't selling more Notes licenses! Her answer to me, I think, is also telling here. It was that she carried something north of a $160M quota, and even if she sold Notes to every single user at her customer, that would enable her, at best, to retire maybe 2-3% of her quota, and she could retire much bigger chunks with other things.

If Notes were a) so wildly profitable, b) the focus of enough energy to make it, truly, an industry-standard, open, up-to-date-user-experience, product, and c) stupidly expensive, and requiring IBM Global Services hours to install and configure it, IBM would likely look differently at it. Alas, it is not. IBM didn't acquire Lotus because they though Notes was a great product...in fact, for some time following the acquisition, they tried to keep alive a product called (I think) FlowMark, which was an IBM attempt to create something Notes-like. Instead, IBM acquired Lotus because they'd systematically, and repeatedly, failed to produce a product of any kind that attracted end-users, and Notes clearly had a large and devoted user base. Their biggest mistake was in thinking that they could keep those users even if they did little to nothing for them. And so we arrive where we are...Notes has lost its relevance...to IBM, to the analyst community, and to more and more customers each and every day. Sad...

Great post John. Well done on making the points of an important issue as well as you have. I feel/share the pain. Like many of us, I too am finding it harder and harder to secure work as a Lotus Notes developer and have to question seriously what I should do to keep putting food on the table for my family. To me it doesn't matter about how many Notes CALs are purchased, or wins in a few accounts, or the TCO per seat for mail, or if Notes appears in a particular quadrant of an analyst's report, or even how we got to where we are. What matters to me is if there is a strong job market for people with skills as Lotus Notes developers. I have grown tired of contracts with companies where Notes has no perceived long term future. Like many other developers I would be looking towards IBM to make it clear, not so much why Lotus products have a future, but why Lotus Notes developers have a future with the Lotus brand. Just what is the strategy for Lotus application development?

I feel like I'm the last corporate Lotus Notes developer out there.

Must re-watch the Last Samurai.

Good luck, John! Hopefully you don't drive yourself crazy thinking: "I could have done this in 1/100th the time in Notes"

Jim, I'd really like to understand why IBM bought Lotus. It's not the tens of millions of Notes users. That did not happen until after the acquisition. Maybe Cliff can share this.

"But how do you get developers to get on board with it? We have tried many things, but apparently not enough of or the right things."

Start with a coherent strategy on how app dev ought to be done on the platform. Then a strategy on how to get customers from where they are to where they should be. Stop waving false flags about existing skills remaining relevant.

Then start funding tools developers with cold, hard cash so you can jump start a proper development ecosystem. How many LOTUS partners do you have today in the tools arena? 4?

Finally, put a DE in charge of platform programmability. If you don't have the right DE today, promote someone. This current faux division between the server and the client means that programmability is the red-headed step-child of the platform. (Which is damn near the literal truth, actually.)

In reading this post, and while it is very insightful, the same may be said of any development platform depending on the solution you are coding for the right tool for the job.

It reminds me of what Benjamin Zander said about classical music:

"There are some of us who think classical music is dying. There are some of us who think "YOU AIN'T SEEN NOTHING YET!"

That said, I somewhat disagree with the thought of Lotus marketing being the solution for adding Lotus Designer to your company development strategy. Stakeholders don't know or care what you are coding with; they want solutions.

So, what do you say Lotus community? How about showing those solution seekers what they're looking for?

Is there anything that can be done? After years of neglect, it was great to see xPages bring some really great new technology to Domino app dev. At the time I feared xPages was just going to be too late to pull app dev on Domino out of the dive it was in. We haven’t hit the ground yet, but nor are we flying clear.

Carl is quite right. Developers develop for platforms they think have a future. How a developer determines this is a complex formula, based on a many factors. Certainly demand for developers, market growth and coolness are all going to be in there.

Is it all about fashion? Maybe Domino is simply not cool enough to attract new developers that are not being paid to learn it? And who is paying people to learn Domino now?

If Domino app dev is to pull out of the dive, then it needs to grow its developer base. If IBM is serious about that, then it needs to pull out all the stops. Limited licenses for Domino Designer and access to development server instances make it easier for someone who is interested to learn Domino, but is it enough?

The only thing I can think of that would make any difference at this stage would be to substantially increase the market for developers and then let people know about it. The only way that could be done would be to radically change the licensing structure for Domino. It might be difficult to make Domino cool, but getting more servers out there with more customers would at least make it possible for developers to see a market for there skills.

With nagging Nora calmly intoning “Pull Up. Pull Up” in our ears, how many more developers will opt to put one of Martin Baker’s fine products to the test rather than see if we can pull out of the dive? That’s even assuming it’s the developers own choice and not their employer or family who are tugging on the ejection handle.

Good luck Jon and have a safe landing.

I don't think Marketing/IBM has anything to do with the current state of affairs either.

I truly believe that every time a developer puts variables in the Declarations section of LotusScript, IBM/Lotus loses another customer.

This is indeed a sad story. The silver lining is that you get to learn a new platform on your company's dime.

Reputation has so much more to do with this. The fact is that the average IT guy still thinks that Lotus Notes is old software, and they're surprised when they find that people are still using it.

Organisations in many sectors are moving to Google Apps to "improve" the mail experience. They see the 25Gb storage, know how cool the calendar is and see an easy way to create fancy sites, then, when the decision has been made, finally remember that they need encryption, and to be able to search attachments, not just the email body, and hold on, why don't these sites support RSS?

So how easy is it to find a .NET developer in Russia, India, and China? Now - how easy is it to find the same guy with Notes expertise? Much, much more difficult - organisations are looking to offshore and outsource development services, but they can't find the guy that they need at the right price. So, amazingly, they change their dev platform so the budgets add up.

Great article - thanks to Stuart McIntyre for tweeting it.

SB

"Stakeholders don't know or care what you are coding with; they want solutions."

Ah, but they DO care. Hence the reason entire IT departments such as John's get platform mandates.

Notes is not alone in being abandoned for the wrong reasons. RAD tools fell out of favor when IT Governance became a standard function in most corporations. Unfortunately, the momentum has shifted away from Notes even though the product is better than ever. As a 10+ year Notes developer I still love working with the product. Unfortunately there is virtually no job market for Notes applications (with or without XPages). After drinking the Yellow-aid for the past 10 years, I am now forced to learn .NET in a very challenging job market.

I often wonder where we'd be now if IBM had simply re-named Lotus Notes two or three years ago. I wonder if that simple move might have had big consequences for the perception of the product.

Wow -- I'm done reading these comments. The sky sure is falling !!! Learn some modern skills and you won't have to worry about what platform you're coding on. Domino, LAMP, .net, whatever -- they all need web 2.0 skills and the rest is just another scripting language.

The problem is that Gerstner bought Lotus as a "Strategic Platform," and he extolled the wonderous benefits of the "Lotus Business Partner Program." That set internal IBM executives into a tizzy, because THEY thought they had the "Strategic Platform" (wither iSeries, or IGS, or whatever that generated cash), and the BP folks KNEW they were' better than Lotus. So, the infighting began, and the leadership of Lotus was off that grid.

Everything IBM knows about marketing products can be set in 72-point type...and stuffed in a thimble. IBM has NEVER marketed Notes/Domino in any comprehensive way, and the marketing that was done was never clear to potential customers. Contrast and compare with the FUD from Bellevue, who deliver inferior products and market the HELL out of them.

Microsoft creates cadres of believers who can proselyte for M$ and their products. IBM considers that marketing attitude "beneath them," and tried obsolete and time-worn "mass marketing" methods that have been discounted by competent marketers.

So, while you and I agree on the results, we come to it from different directions. The outcome is the same: A few of us will keep supporting Domino/Notes until IBM finally quits the market, leaving us stranded. The rest are all now racing down the lines from the boat to the dock (named M$), fleeing the sinking ship.

"But how do you get developers to get on board with it? We have tried many things, but apparently not enough of or the right things."

This misses the point, it's not the developers that need to get on board with it. It's not the developers that are making the choice to move away from it. It's at the executive level and that's who is not being targeted properly and that's who is saying to move to Sharepoint, etc.

This became clear for me with something rather simple. When the Lotus Notes workspace went behind the "Welcome Page", and "BookMarks" were introduced. Or "Other BookMarks" or "My Favorite Bookmarks" or whatever difficult to use thing was placed there.

Suddenly it was hard to find applications. People, still to this day, pin them to the little real estate on their left-side bookmark bar (though users don't often know about that). We used to develop quick apps (RAD) and people would use the workspace (which looked like an iPad homepage) and they got work done. Suddenly, that wasn't so "in their face", and apps became forgotten.

On top of that the "Welcome Page" never got proper attention. It could have been the front, or way, to consume Lotus Notes apps -- but never got serious templates or design.

It just felt like apps were not as important any more.

Ed: I think this might be a great opportunity. Perhaps finding that exact argument that tipped the scale to IBMs disadvantage might give you very specific marketing targets?

Excellent analysis!

We don´t sell Lotus actively any more: no support from IBM: no marketing, no adequate BP support no whatever a smart ecosystems needed. We use it inernally and love our applications with all the strong features Lotus has.

To cheer you up: the ecosystem of all other IBM Middleware brands is frightening weak also!

PS.: the lates victim: killed Foundations also. Seems to be an financial Institution rather than a Software Company. Like BP?

@53... bookmarks and the home page wouldn't be that bad if our Admins didn't lock it down. Our current home page has nothing useful on it.

I have to use a toolbar button to change a profile field that allows me to unlock the settings... then I can set it back to my workspace.

Every time I reboot the policy changes back and I have to do the same process over and over again. Talk about productivity...

When Gerstner (who was running IBM when Lotus was acquired) replaced Akers at IBM, he shelved the idea of breaking IBM in smaller companies.

In the case of Lotus, would not more value be derived by spinning it off ?

I liked this part the best

"They say if you don't understand the story you are in, the story will live itself through you. If you do understand your story, then you can do something about it. You become the lucid dreamer. You can change the course of your dream."

How does one learn more stories so we can see them play out in our lives and the lives of others? How much knowledge and wisdom is locked up and not shared? It's crazy.

-steve

This is the same story which has been going on for years. You have written a very cleaver post to try to turn the idea that Lotus Notes is dying into something very emotional. It looks like quite a few others have fallen for your story.

Lotus Notes is still the leader in the collaboration space. It is being tackled by the mighty Microsoft marketing machine and in a lot of cases they are winning. However, this is because we are not out there doing enough solution selling.

My biggest concern about Lotus Notes is that it's own supporters are giving up on having a passion about it. I think it would be a sad day for all of us to give up on the mothers who gave birth to us (and I know that there are some ugly stories out there), it would also be a sad day to give up on Lotus Notes which has sustained our lives for so many years.

Good thought, Jeff. It's strange that Apple pushed apps with a UI element, that Lotus tried to hide.

@60 - maybe we should just bring back the workspace and get rid of the bookmarks and the welcome page. Perhaps some of the users would say "Wow - it looks like an IPad!" :-)

"...try to turn the idea that Lotus Notes is dying into something very emotional..."

How is being faced with the choice to either quit your job or spend your days doing something that depresses you NOT emotional?

Excellent post, and thanks for sharing. I'm sorry to hear about the direction your company is heading in. Thanks also for those who have responded in the discussion here. It has been very thought provoking. I want to digest this more before diving headlong in.

One comment for Vaughan @59 though--that's a low blow. There is nothing in this post that rings of a story people have "fallen" for. Your response is demeaning.

Does the greater Lotus community share in the responsibility of the current state of the market. Yes, IBM is not in this alone, and we share in the responsibility to positively contribute what we can to make us all successful. But putting on a happy face and uttering "this is the best of all possible worlds" is certainly no recipe for success.

#9 you're not alone.

Great Post. And great comments. Certainly a lot to think about.

All I can really add at the moment is that I'm a corporate developer and Notes as an App Dev platform is alive and well where I am. We're in the process of doing more and more with XPages. The most important features to us are offline replication and readers fields.

@62 It's all about what you make of it. If you want to make it succeed, then pull out all stops and do something about it. Sell it to management and keep them engaged.

From what I have seen of your contribution to the Lotus Community, you are a very capable person when it comes to things Lotus. Find the needs within your organization and show that Lotus Notes is the way to solve them. Work on solutions.

@63 I guess that my post is something like putting the wolf in with the chickens. I hope that it has gotten people thinking beyond the emotion and a bit more focused on the reality.

Try this for another spin a couple of days ago:

{ Link }

And try this also

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Jon,

I completely understand your post and your decision. Four years ago, my company decided that our mainframe needed to go away. Management started looking for a financial package to replace the home-grown accounting system. They found Oracle Financials. After 2 years of customizing, it was suggested that Oracle’s CRM system would help the transition. Our current CRM system is 10 Notes Applications that I had created over the previous 10 years.

My company was going to retrain me as a functional admin for Oracle. I went to San Francisco 3 times. One was the same week as Lotusphere 2007, which really bummed me out. I started looking for another Notes Developer position. I found one and was offered the job. About the same time, the Oracle CRM was shown to our sales people. They said No way. Biggest problem: Replication.

It was decided that we wouldn’t use Oracle’s CRM until a new release was useful to us. I didn’t change jobs.

I still hear all of the rumblings about Lotus Notes is a legacy system. But I am trying to keep my users (our sales force) happy and addicted to Notes, so it stays a little while longer.

I don’t know how long I will keep doing Notes development. There are not many Notes development shops in Memphis. I also have 4 weeks of vacation a year, which is hard to give up. Staying with my current employer in these hard times is a more logical choice.

I understand family versus career decision. It is a very hard choice.

I hope your company sees the error of their ways. Maybe a small trip down the wrong road will lead them to make a different decision. My thoughts are with you !

@67 - "I guess that my post is something like putting the wolf in with the chickens"

Or you're just being a tool. I'm going with Occam's razor.

@Ed, I don't think the problem is getting developers to want to develop for Domino. Developers will be there when there are jobs. As John said, developers are pretty agnostic.

IBM should really be trying to keep customers' CxOs from desperately wanting to dump Notes. If IBM is *already* trying, then sorry, it's not working. Somehow, they all seem to think that Sharepoint is somehow better, easier, and cheaper.

Maybe Microsoft is giving away free licenses like there's no tomorrow. I don't know. But whatever it is they are telling the CxOs, it *is* working.

As Bill has been saying for so long: Marketing.

IBM should also be re-thinking the idea of taking campaigns from the US and running them everywhere. It just does not work. I've heard of sales people in Germany who are extremely unhappy about that. That must have been the two guys who are still trying to actually sell Notes.

Sorry if this sounds bitter. It probably is. I started doing Notes work in 1993. Back then, we built stuff on Notes 3.x that many companies still don't have today. Heck, we had a basic CRM package that many customers wanted. And yes, we used Wilfredo Lorenzo's sum formula and two agents to do loops.

It's now 17 years later and the product that - based on features - would rule the world today is being dumped for what Bill has described as "Notes 2.x with the security features removed".

Something has clearly gone wrong. Ed, please get IBM to fix it. ;-)

Oh, and if anybody has Notes work around Wiesbaden/Frankfurt or Cologne starting around October, please let me know.

Well, I guess it's back to the stack of Sharepoint books that's been waiting for me ...

@67 I've always believed that it's better to publicly look at the positives than the negatives and focus on the value that you can provide with your solutions. And no doubt, Notes almost always can provide a true value for many businesses. Especially when the alternative is a massive rip and replace project before you could start realizing value with new-technology-of-the-day.

I applaud your positivity and would happily cheerlead for you. I, as many other BP's here, definitely have cases where we get those fantastic moments where a client had no idea that something could be accomplished so easily and cost-effectively with a Notes solutions. We still have them today, we still have new businesses where Notes is being introduced and having that kind of impact and excitement.

However, I'll certainly acknowledge the truths of this post and many of its comments. I'll always fight for the Notes platform when it makes sense, as it does a lot of the time. However, I'll also not watch my customers walk away from our company because they've made a decision to do business in another technology. Why should I let that valued relationship, trust, and intimate knowledge of their business processes disappear on some perception that we are some kind of Notes bigot and wouldn't bother with any other technology? Would that have worked 5, 10, 15 years ago, maybe so. If it was ever true, it's certainly not true today. In truth, expertise in all kinds of systems, makes you better in every system as you ARE better able to recognize strengths and deficiencies and integration points.

We'll happily continue to support and promote Notes solutions in every case where it makes sense, AND we'll take every opportunity to help our customers in whatever IT solutions they are considering. That's part of being a consultant.

Best of luck in your new endeavors!

A great post that has deservedly attracted many comments from the great and known in the community.

From an App/Dev perspective it does feel that in SMB many customers have long moved away from Domino as an application platform and use it primarily for messaging and collaboration.

It is difficult and costly to move messaging platforms, but if your only Domino developer leaves and you need a new app, then it becomes very easy to draw a line in the sand and go with whatever skills are to hand (remembering this is SMB).

Perhaps we missed a trick in 8.0+ in spending so much time extolling the virtues of the UI and server, and not the dev side? For sure at LCTY in London this year there was a great demo of smart text and widgets and it strangely felt like something new, which it isn't.

It may be we are seeing a contraction back to the core, which of course for IBM is Enterprise customers. These customers tend to maintain in house teams, unlike SMB's who utlise BPs more - hence a lot of comments from people (us included), who see their market shrinking.

Whilst there may be an overall contraction there are still a lot of happy Domino customers. Just today we finished a 6.5 to 8.5 upgrade for a 500 seat customer. The users love it, have adopted Sametime as part of the client upgrade and are piloting Quickr this month.

Of course, they still have a (singular) Domino developer, maintaining and creating apps for the business. If he were ever to lose faith in the platform it would be an interesting call when it comes time to upgrade again.

I'm not going to try to detract or go tangent from this post at all. But have to mention to Vaughan @59. Your comment is as stupid as it is insulting to the very intelligent people that commented already. I could say a lot more here, but I won't as it's Jon's house. And he is more of a gent then I.

Everyone commenting here has a passion for the product in some form. Either in the past or present.

@jonvon: Brilliantly written, sir. Best post I've read in ... well, I can't remember better.

@NTF (69): +1. Million.

So, for sure, that's a post we all remember.

It's hard to say but now, at the present day, notes/domino development alone, it's not enough to let us survive; that's happening to me and I belive that most of us, however skilled, need to be proficient in other platforms to be able to get enough work to pay the bills.

There are people inside IBM that are strong believers of the platform just like us, but my estimate is that they're not numerous enough or strong enough to steer IBM on a different path: there are changes for good but still... maybe it's the economy, maybe the technology evolution, all these efforts seems too little and too late for me.

Vulcan is nice and great, but we have families to feed and bills to pay today, not next year or whenever.

The only way out I see, a way that I don't believe we'll ever see, is IBM spinning off Lotus as an independent controlled company and see if Lotus could be strong enough to survive. Yah, I know. not going to happen. But a boy can dream!

Not going to happen, as you say. And there are only two moves that would be worse:

1. Calling Notes "strategic". That's the IBM death knell.

2. Releasing Notes as open source. That's the desperate endgame if nothing else works.

For the first time ever we are developing which will be coded once for the web and the client, we have sold it to a non notes customer and it will be run as an appliance on an open source platform.

It is an aspiration I have had for a long long time and it is here now. Some might say it is too little too late but it is definitely much better than it has ever been - its an exciting time to be a Notes developer if you have the work ( and I know that is hard at the moment ).

But what I don't understand is why IBM have done it, don't get me wrong I am really pleased that they have but why have they given us these fantastic new options when they won't get the return from that investment ?

Why do I say that ? Without marketing will it sell many extra licences ? We have the tools ( albeit with poor documentation ) but how can I licence apps to run on it ? Why is there such a stupid step change from domino utility express to domino utility server ? How do you become a hosting provider for domino applications ? Why is no-one engaging with ISVs ?

Why why why is it so difficult to do stuff with this new functionality ? IBM will think that these are stupid questions but that is because they have not tried these simple things – Ed I challenge you to get a hosting agreement in place without pulling strings or forking out money on a full blown utility server – EC2 is a nice idea but the Amazon costs alone are 1,000 USD per year.

IBM if you can’t pay for advertising ( lets face it you have shown that you can’t ) then be brave, be bold, do something radical and cheap – why not give it away ?

How hard could it be to have the HTTP server display a page when you hit 10, 20 ,50 users in an hour – it would prove its worth and customers valuing it would pay to remove the restriction – how hard can it be ? 1,000 man hours ?

I’m thinking aloud here, but image notes with the “nifty 50” and how powerful that would be. Why don’t you run a universities competition to design the nifty 50 with some good cash prizes ?

The desperation on this page is palpable and it is coming from your most die hard supporters. The old formulas have not worked for at least 10 years and unless you increase your marketing by a factor of 20 they will never work.

Seriously though, why has IBM invested 10’s of millions in Xpages ? Will it win over email customers from other platforms ? Will it keep notes accounts ? ( yes but IBM only cares about net new ), will it become a popular development platform ? ( not with IBM we know ). It just doesn’t add up for me.

Either IBM is way ahead of me ( HTML5, Vulcan, merging of the fat and thin client paradigms ? - shame Notes could be dead by then ) or we can than the IBM developers for Xpages because somehow they have pulled off the most magnificent coup and sneaked it in under the radar because they knew it was the right thing to do even though that makes no business sense on its own.

Jon your piece was very eloquent, please excuse my jabbering . I hope that your piece is the catalyst for a shift in awareness within IBM.

Well, John, haven't you gone and stirred the pot? ;-)

In my 15 years with the platform I have heard the Notes Is Dead mantra many times, as have we all, but never quite so eloquently as you have put it here. My knee jerk reaction to this, partially based on some recent experiences, is to say that I find your outlook on Notes to be sad, but accurate. I clearly remember the “two lane highway” and my reaction to it was “bullshit!” I told everyone who asked about it, and many who didn’t, that it would never come to fruition. I was so confident in Notes and my position in it’s ecosystem that no one, not even Al Zollar, could knock me from it! But now, today, I just don’t feel that we have as solid a foundation as we once did. Maybe it is the economy. Maybe it is just the natural attrition cycle of technology. Or maybe I am just not as positive as I once was. Whatever the reason, I feel this platform slipping away from me.

That said, I am not convinced that IBM has lost all faith in the platform. I believe that the introduction of XPages alone is a telling statement to their commitment to progressing Notes and Domino beyond just e-mail. But, as other’s have said, the fight comes down to marketing. Marketing to C-level, to developers, to admins, and to the end-user. Notes has its grounding in an era when software was not only allowed to be complex, but complexity was expected. Today with Google and iPhone/iPad apps targeted to a specific task, software is expected to be simple. It is expected to be capable of being summed up in a single sentence, not hundreds of bullet points. Notes is of such complexity that I recall several years ago many blog threads dedicated to the topic of how to sum up Notes in a concise enough way to make an elevator pitch. The problem is that it cannot be done, at least not in a manner that adequately describes what Notes can do to those around us who are not technically savvy. But what about Sametime, Quickr, Connections, and Activities? These can be summed up quite simply, can’t they? So, while I don’t agree that Notes is dead, I do feel that its pulse has weakened considerably.

On a personal note, I am much more saddened to hear that there may come a time where I do not seen you at conferences any longer. For years you have been one of the people that I look forward to seeing and will miss you at future conferences if/when there comes a time that you do not attend. However all of this plays out, in the end I do hope that it is for the best for you. There is nothing wrong with branching your skillset and moving on to other projects.

I feel humbled by all of the great names and I have been wondering should I say anything. I just want to point out one thing.

Ed, among others, has asked how to attract new developers. Well, start by teaching application development the Lotus way in high schools. In this God forsaken place (Bosnia), there is no single high school that teaches or even mentions IBM Lotus to their students. I've been working very hard with a private university on introducing IBM SW in the curriculum, but IBM Academic Initiative wasn't available at the time in Bosnia. And now when it is, I can't get anybody from IBM to show up at the university and at least talk to the people. So, there is a lot of room for improvement. I think that the situation is not hopeless as it may seem. Don't forget there is a lot of world outside the US, Western Europe and other developed countries.

Sorry to hear this Jon.

I wish I had the official IBM response here for you but let's say that this post has been our focus of discussion lately.

Will keep the community posted.

- Bilal

When the company we work for changes the platform out from under us, it can really bring home the feeling of doom that runs through the market place on any given day. The very efficiency of the platform results in few positions needed to manage it, and as a sort of side effect, a smaller community when compared to other tools. We're left with lots of people feeling as if they're the last one out there still use the tool set.

I don't think it's time to write the Domino sever off just yet, but I also have had the fortune to meet some of the really bright people you work with. I think you're making the right decision in sticking with your company and picking up the new tools as another skill set. The people you work with and the company you work for are probably much more important factors that what the tool set du jour happens to be.

Good luck with the new tools, and feel free to give me a call if you want to bounce ideas around. I don't see the choice of platform as a religious holy war, and long ago branched out in my work to using the .net tools as well as the Domino ones and a few Linux based systems.

Tools are tools. It's the person using the tools that results in quality work.

A very gutsy and well written post.

It's always sad to hear of companies that have decided to move away from Lotus Notes.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

I know too much about many sides of this issue to provide much positive input. I can rail about the people who sought power and/or money at the expense of others. So many stories I can tell. But, if you have read the posts before this you are already bummed out. So the good news is there are millions of existing Notes applications and folks who want off of Notes need help migrating them. Thankfully most Notes apps can be migrated very easily to SharePoint. (Very few people know this) The people best qualified to migrate Notes apps are Notes developers and I tell CxOs this every day. SharePoint 2010 is sooooooo much easier to learn than earlier versions due to the ribbon interface. SharePoint Designer is now a free download and you can find tons of help and samples with a Bing search. You know all the concepts like how and why a Notes app was built like it is. So spend a few day learning about how to migrate Notes apps and add it to your resume. Once you migrate some apps add SharePoint developers to your resume. It’s a painfully time for many. I’m doing what I can for Notes developers. This community has been great to me over the years. Good luck to everyone.

Excellent post Jon - both for saying what many are feeling but also for putting a very interesting slant on it - specifically the notion of "understanding your own story". That is definitely something I will take on board. Thank you for sharing such a personal experience that adds genuine insight that I might never have had without your post.

In response to Ed and others I'd repeat again what I observed in the post Jon cited above ( "... any future in it?"). This is not about the product, it's about the perception. The development environment is as good as it's ever been - with X-pages, the Eclipse client and loads of hooks for Java and the rest. We love the product and enjoy working with it - free DDE is excellent. Domino on EC2 is excellent.

But the important story of this comments thread (to extend Jon's analogy) is in the numerous personal accounts of customers/employers moving to other platforms. We can talk till the cows come home about feature-sets and we can debate any number of statistical arguments around seats and licenses sold. The reality is that we - as technical professionals - have to judge by what we see around us, in our own home-markets. If our customers out there don't want Notes or Domino solutions - and by that I mean solutions developed for the NSF and X-pages and the like, not LotusLive, not Lotus Connections - then we're not going to invest in Notes and Domino skills.

In some ways the argument being couched here is about pragmatism and loyalty. Software developers are pragmatic people by nature, but those in the Yellowverse are fiercely loyal through their years of positive experiences with Notes and Domino (and probably through the years of having to defend the product and prove it's value). I have blogged about that dichotomy -

{ Link }

But in the meantime everyone's ultimate loyalty is to themselves and their families and for talented and committed people (as I know many commenters here are) that means ensuring they have other skills and other capabilities. Ideally those skills can be picked up alongside Notes and Domino work but when push comes to shove sometimes a choice has to be made.

After hearing "Notes is dead" since the mid-90's, finally in the past few years I've been seeing some clients moving off of it. But to hear leading voices in the Lotus community panic, is definitely cause for concern.

Fortunately for me, most of my customers have not jumped ship and are keeping my little company busy during this recession. One that I was at today, uses mission critical Notes apps, and is about to have a $50M IPO. So, hopefully they'll be around a bit longer.

Even though I am a big advocate of learning different technologies, one thing to keep in mind is that the market is/will be flooded with MS developers (Universities in the US, India, and elsewhere are cranking them out). Because of this, I would expect the rates to be significantly lower than what Domino developers get. I got an email today from a former coworker offering SharePoint development services (and boasting about having low-cost developers available in India).

As far as IBM marketing... Lotus Knows @#$@#$ what??? I know we've all complained forever that their marketing sucks. But Jonvon you've definitely nailed it... IBM can make multimedia rah-rah shows at Lotusphere about how important Notes and Domino are, but their actions really speak volumes about what is important to them and their bottom line.

For a small BP, like me, the only way forward is to promote mission critical apps within my existing customers (so that they have real reasons to keep Notes), try to pick up new customers (from the developers that jump to MS), and pick up new skills. Other survival ideas?

@85 (Don),

You don't hear this leading community voice panic. In fact, I am seeing many more Lotus Domino opportunities than ever before.

Jon,

I have to agree that this is a blog that moved me on many levels (in a good way, almost like a tear-jerker movie).

I am among a group of people who still believe in Notes as an application development platform. Even though IBM may not fully embrace it, there are hundreds of us, via OpenNTF and now NotesAppStore, that believe applications CAN be developed and sold on top of the Lotus Notes platform. Yes, SOLD. Google has Apps, and Lotus Notes has mature, customer tested apps.

Lotus Notes is a great application development platform, enabling really cool apps.

And the proof of this is the varied nature of apps, for Productivity, Development, Email and Administration.

@83 (Gary Devondorf)

I know IBM did not do right by you (and a lot of good people that were let go over the years), but can't help to think the term "ambulance chaser" comes to mind when reading your post... ("It's sooooo easy to switch to SharePoint")

@86 (Bruce E) Glad to hear I'm not the only one that still has Lotus Domino opportunities.

I am unsure how to take all of this. I like and respect John, and certainly see some validity in his post, but I also see my business where the development tools (Midas/Midas C++/CoexEdit) are selling better than they have in a long while, and the tools for people migrating away from Notes are slowing down.

I know that one person's perspective doesn't mean that much, but it does make it hard to know what to think.

As for your personal situation, John, I'll hope for the best outcome, whatever that may turn out to be.

I am just amazed that it took 19 responses before someone mentioned xPages. This has to be a major investment for IBM. Why would they bother at all with xPages if they wanted Notes to wither and die.

Like Ben, we have seen a increase in the sales of our Domino applications in the last year.

If you really look you will see that IBM is investing in the Domino brand and not just as an e-mail application. It has (in SE Asia) spent a lot of time recruiting application developers to sell there applications under the ISV scheme and be able to offer Notes at a reduced price when purchased with there application.

This is not the actions of a company that does not want to market Domino as a development platform.

Jon, your post is a very emotional one from both a personal level and a Business level. From the Business level, I think that you have just not seen what is happening to the product, or you are blinkered.

Notes is not dieing, quite the opposite it is growing and flourishing.

Long Live Notes.

Thanks for sharing John. Great post. Tough situation, but you're doing the right thing.

Despite your obvious best intentions, you will get plenty of responses along the lines of "Well I'm doing great so the market can't be that bad, there must be something wrong with you." I already see the thread turning in that direction with little whiffs of disloyalty and hidden agendas falling among the claims and suggestions....If you can't ignore them (and I admit it's hard), then just try to envy their life of luxurious myopia :).

Case in point - @85 - Don M - "the only way forward is to....try to pick up new customers (from the developers that jump to MS). Don, it just doesn't work like this at all. Not ever.

For the rest of you who think along these lines - please help me out here...I'm learning Spanish right now. At what level should I completely abandon English, never to speak it again?

@90 XPages a major investment - sorry simply not the case. XPages (and can nobody spell the damned thing after reading through all these postings? It's capital X, capital P and "ages!" Work on that IBM! Brand Brand Brand!) is a re-factoring of both "Workplace Designer' - to which we know some esteemed colleagues said "rocks" much to their personal regret today - and "Lotus Component Designer" or LCD which I learned some 3-4 years ago would NOT be the promised primary development environment for Quickr J2EE as it was being canceled (something I discovered while driving through Alligator Alley on I-75 in Florida after a Lotusphere no less, on the way to a conference at which I was to present Lotus Component Designer, the aforementioned canceled project) - into the Notes Designer slash Eclipse platform. It was NOT a major investment and not a major effort. There is no way I can be convinced of this without person-hour time-sheets. 'Fess up, IBM. XPages is a re-factor from Eclipse to Eclipse to Eclipse into a finally suitable platform. Domino. Eclipse.

If you had no knowledge of these two previous efforts, do not be surprised that XPages is not "new." For goodness sake. It's had the same exact same primary designer/developer the entire time! XPages is "version 3" of the same thing. Eclipse. Components. Custom components. Drag. Drop. Pages. Server-side JavaScript. Whee.

I WROTE the certification exams for both of the previous versions. It is not a major new innovation. XPages is a FIVE YEAR OLD reinvention of something that didn't work for Workplace, and didn't work for Quickr J2EE. Will it succeed for Domino? I certainly hope so. I really, really hope so. And I REALLY wish it had started there. I am teaching it and using it. Friends and colleagues are building upon it. Perhaps, finally, It has found its real home in the NSF. I hope so. As are esteemed colleagues, ISVs, and partners of mine.

I recall, early December in 2005 (gawd I wish I had bold tags for this) for three days ON HOLIDAY in Bruges, Belgium (side note - Christmas markets, lace and chocolates. Special present for Carl Tyler made from the last two.), spending 26 hours straight writing the exam for "Workplace Designer 2.6 admin" because at Lotusphere 2006, some crazy offer was to be made for people who could pass the exam to take it for free, or some silly incentive. Whatever. Sleep deprived.

I am in awe of people like Matt White, Delcan Lynch, and BP Elguji who have taken XPages and run with it. I even support Matt in his XPages 101 seminar in St. Louis (after IamLUG, August 4, be there or be square! { Link } and plan to skip out on my own (OK, Julian and Viktor's) iPhone seminar and attend it....

But let's not put XPages on some sort of uber-programmatic pedestal as I've read into 1/4 of these posts. It's new in the world of Domino Web 2.0 BUT dependent on some certain, specific knowledge of a database structure - NSF - isn't it? And it ain't new. It's five years old. It's mature.

What's good about that? That means, finally, it's time to learn and work with it. Show the boss something incredibly cool and innovative. Build applications you couldn't have two years ago, but on Domino. And for goodness sake, perhaps mention that it's Domino?

Viktor and I have done the "Great Code Giveaway" to an audience of >20,000 over 9 years, and for the last three have completely avoided XPages as they were someone else's turf. Perhaps, the time has come to deliver on the goods that IBM has provided us. We'll see. The Great Code Giveaway X (!0) might be our swan song (if it gets approved).

Or....who knows.

John, I look forward to seeing you soon, and working with you. Let's try to make that on Domino if possible. But if not, hey, the customer is almost always right. Almost. And if they're wrong, I'll tell them. Promise.

-Rob

Well done, Jon. I think its all be covered quite well at this point. Best of luck with your new development endeavors.

Can we expect you at LS11, perhaps for the weekend, if your boss won't cover the full week?

Buona fortuna, mio amico. Ciao...

Actually it's quite Sad. It's true that IBM does not do as much as they could, it's true that the industry sees this as "They're not interested in this" and that the Industry are thus putting notes and domino in the "mere" email pocket. Sad but painfully true.

We as partners do way more on marketing and profiling the good cause then IBM has ever done, and I guess we will continue in doing so. I for one will not stop, and will continue to spend larger amouts of effords on reaching new potential customers.

I for one still see a huge potential, and still see a great market, but due to wrong investments in the IBM side it's not getting it's potential. As an Example I for one would love to write to all "former" license holding companies to allow them to see the new potential of the notes 8.5 version. This would be so easy for IBM to do (hell they might sell some licenses to customers who they once had) . . but it's not happening . . I and other BP's would love to give some incentive (= rebates/free stuff, etc.) to those former customers to be going back to the roots of notes and domino, but IBM won't think about it.

Those customers have turned from IBM through lack of information and lack of presence. Those customers do not want to hear from IBM how they could do this. They want to hear this from US partners, but how do you reach a company which is still using notes 5 and has no clue there are newer version. The marketing campaigns from MS and others are reaching them.. They want to use windows 7, and it's shiny new gadgets, and what happens . . they move away due to lack of information.

I (and aI guess most of us) would love to help IBM reach those customers and make a difference, and thus help the basis to stay on Domino. I still love notes and domino like most of you, and I can't image searching for a job outside of this.. but we've all been down the same road, we've all ignored the signs.. Maybe we are just like the dinosaurs, about to be "deleted" just not aware of it.

IBM should really make a radical marketing change, and show the world that Domino is still the best Application development platform around to master ALL tasks around collaboration and messaging, web and mobile, office and remote. It's a shame that those marketing people can not come up with a strategy that allows them to point this out. We all suffer from this.

I't so easy to point this out. With openNTF doing so much. With the free designer. Why can't IBM do this ? Most likely because the powers at be still think they are doing the right thing by promoting the other "new" stuff as better then the old stuff.

One more example of the things notes was always about. The Workspace.. created by Ray way back in the early phase.. Used by all for more then a decade. Then seen as "old" and all needed to move away.. Now every single new "toy" in the industry has a workspace to work from.. Notes allways was way ahead of it's time.. notes users want their workspace, and love it.

Why of why can't a simple thing like that not be picked up by marketing. Showing the interfaces through the years with the worrkspace, way back in 90, and showing their improvements through the years, and resulting in a mobile app, on a mobile phone with the same thing ? It's so easy, it's so clear. Notes has had this for 20+ years.. and now every one wants to have that. No one wants to live without it. So easy and so clear. each app it's own brick in the wall and it's own entry to the world. We've done this and had many positive responces, and many eye openers. When IBM were to do this world wide, it can't go bad.

- Rudi

@36: Thank you Nathan for that ROFLMAO, I just had to join you. Getting back on the chair now.

@90 Nick

"think that you have just not seen what is happening to the product, or you are blinkered."

So Nick. Everyone else that commented. The biggest names in the Lotus community. They are all blinkered too?

Seriously?

wow !! Possibly the best and most resonante post I have ever read. I spent 12 years writting and then managing Lotues Notes Application development and I miss it greatly.

The lack of a coherant marketing drive from IBM has always been its weak spot and with Lotus it proved it all too well, but I find it interesting that as Lotus adds new functionality such as XPages some app dev environments are still playing catch up on functionality Notes has had from the start, surely this is something IBM could bang the drum about, there is so much it CAN do and all that is focused on is what it can't.

I am a firm believer of the right tool for the right job, Notes/Domino for certain apps is THAT tool. It's awesome and I don't think anyone here will disagree.....trouble is that when companies spend all that money on an app dev server environment they need it to be the best of breed for everything. It won't happen, (ever) it doesn't for any software, you buy the pieces you need to do the best job, if you don't fill in the gaps, those gaps will remain and it's the companies strategic IT failure at that point that sadly rubs off as "Notes is Rubbish"

Anyway, thanks Jon for a really emotionally moving post, I like many others feel your pain on a number of levels and wish you the very best going forward.

While some of the recent comments try to say that John Vaughan is wrong in some way he is just describing his situation. His company is moving and in consequence he is moving too. It did not work for him but this does not mean it cannot work for others.

Having read through the comments I wish that those from Microsoft employees would be marked as such.

I really like the discussion but as this is a public place it seems that the sharks are already circling.

There really is a dirty truth about Sharepoint. You set it up and then leave it alone. You develop classic .Net applications but later just call them Sharepoint apps. Microsoft gives Sharepoint Designer away for free. Not because it is a great tool but because for money nobody wanted to use it.

And now that it is free, people still seem to prefer Visual Studio any time (and indeed this is a fine IDE). I can really congratulate Microsoft for their marketing effort about Sharepoint but that's it.

@28 @Ed: I feel deeply offended by the line: 'But how do you get the developers on board'

For crying out loud, the devs ARE on board. It's all the other folks ignorant of the wonderful strengths of Domino who have been ignored by Lotus marketing, and it's catching up. Ask Bill if you are in any way unclear about this: Devs DO NOT DECIDE if Lotus Notes is replaced by something else. It's management and users. So target them.

@79, hear hear, getting IBM into schools would be huge!!

@Rudi: you nail it as usual.

@99. Couldn't agree more Lars.

And now, how can WE change this ? does IBM want to change this ? if so, how can we help ?

I, personally, am ready for the fight for reconquest cause I deeply believe in the Domino / Notes value proposition. And the more I use other stuff, the more I'm convinced.

IBM, give us the ammunition, we'll provide the guns ;-)

Michael, a little touch of positivism

If it is accepted that we will never get IBM to address the lack of marketing at CEO level, which (more than anything else) has led to the position in which we find ourselves in - then we have to accept that we all (BP's/Consultants/End Users/IBM'ers) have to predict, adapt to, and try to benefit from the inevitable paradigm shift.

Many of the comments above reminded me of the all too familiar quote from Mark Twain - “Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated”, but felt that one of Churchill’s is equally duited - “A lie gets halfway round the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on”.

I'm not suggesting that the brand isn't suffering big time right now, but let's not propagate the negativity or play into M$ hands. There is plenty of good stuff going on within Lotus, and like #86, there will be no panicking or knee jerk reactions here.

@99, Lars, I give Ed the benefit of the doubt and read ‘But how do you get the developers on board’ to mean ‘But how do you get developers, who are not already using Domino, on board.’

I might be wrong. I have met Domino developers who where happy with LotusScript and really could see the point in XPages, so I’d certainly like to see those people get on board. They are the ones that will have most to loose.

Some of the comments along the lines of ‘stop whining and go out and show what Domino can do’ seem to think that all those bemoaning the state of the Domino app dev market are sitting about doing nothing but complaining. The truth of the matter is that we are doing something about it. We are using the transferable skills we used with Domino to work on other platforms and learning new technologies. When we say we are finding it difficult to find Domino work, doesn’t necessarily mean that we are finding it difficult to get development work in general.

But if Domino is losing developers, where does that leave it as a development platform? And that is where this discussion is centred; Domino as a development platform. Lotus might be doing great as a software division of IBM. It might be making tones of cash selling all sorts of things. Every major company in the world could be using Domino for messaging and Sametime for IM and be deploying Quickr and Connections. They could all be hiring dozens of admins to manage hundreds of servers. But when it comes to what they are going to use when they need bespoke applications, tailored to there exact requirements, if they don’t pick Domino, then all of that counts for naught. Domino might very well continue to do very well as a messaging platform. Can it survive as an app dev platform? I hope so, I really do.

@83 - Gary, I emailed you once, years ago, discussing the level of effort to migrate to SharePoint, and possible automation. You replied with a dismissive email stating that there were many complexities involved and it was not as easy as it seems.

I know you've done a lot of work in this area, as have I, and I think the truth is that the work is pretty average in terms of levels of effort and analysis required.

But as I've said before, the level of satisfaction as a developer on the Microsoft stack leaves a lot to be desired.

Man you guys I had no idea the response this would get. It's amazing, all the comments. And over 1,500 click throughs as of a few minutes ago on PlanetLotus. Wow.

I think everyone's perspective here, especially the business partners who are doing well, is totally valid and it is heartening to hear. If you are seeing an increase in your business, it means you are doing something right, or in a great market, or you've written some outstanding code, or your developers/consultants are a bunch of genii (hehe, I threw that in for you Ben), or all of that. And I agree the XPages stuff is great. It's all good and I hope for everyone the absolute best, just as so many have wished for me.

There are so many amazing comments here, I've learned a lot reading this thread. Some of the historical stuff is fascinating. I could probably devote two or three blog posts to the various branches coming off of this tree.

I'd like to say one thing about the tenor of some of the comments, where people are saying, hey, community, think positive, work hard, stop complaining, etc. The plain fact is that, there is no better tech community on the planet than the Lotus community. The people in this community are very special. Brilliant, creative, funny, hard working, passionate, and we've got each other's backs. To say that it's the fault of the community that IBM isn't marketing effectively enough to get the attention of the analysts or corporate level decision makers is just silly. We've gone beyond the call of duty many times over. I'm saying, IBM owns Lotus Notes. Only IBM can turn things around. The question is, will they discover the will to do so?

I recognize that the market is enormously complex; I'm sure there is growth offsetting some of the losses.

Whether or not IBM figures this out is only tangentially relevant to me now. This post is an expression of grief. What do you do after you have grieved? You move on. That's what I have to do now and honestly I'm looking forward to learning some new things.

It would be great to work with any of you guys in any capacity in the future. Thanks to Rob Novak - very kind of you sir.

At the very least I'll come and haunt Kimono's a night or two during Lotusphere. Lucky for me, I'm within driving distance.

:-)

Special shout out to Paul Mooney. You rock sir. And Nate and all those who had my back here. Man I was nervous about posting this. Andrew your comments about the team I work with are spot on, they are fantastic people.

Ed Brill you are the man and everyone knows it. Bilal, thanks for stopping by. Stuart McIntyre, thanks for tweeting and retweeting about the post yesterday. Didn't go unnoticed...

Lastly, for now, sorry to everyone that I haven't been more involved in the comments. I wrote this up over the weekend and then had to work, and with family stuff... you know. And the comments here have just been like a river, a thing with a life of its own. I've just stood back and watched and thought, maybe it was best I stay out of it and let the community do what they need to do.

Man. You guys rock.

I'm staying on the sideline for a various number of reasons, but I just can't let Gary Devendorf's "it's so easy to migrate to SharePoint" go unchallenged. If it were so "easy", we would not be looking at a quote to migrate two "easy" applications from Notes to SharePoint of 1700 hours and over $200K.

As a longtime Notes Domino developer facing an Exchange migration (and rumblings that apps will soon fold for Sharepoint etc) I've faced frustration battling the information war.

Studies and presentations to prove just what the cost would be to migrate is hard to come by. The basic cost comparisons on the mail platform are available, but there is zero material on apps. I understand, it's apples to oranges and that's why it's hard to show the cost of a MS app vs Notes/Domino in both cost and time, but without evidence supporting (and 300 plus apps with only one developer doesn't seem to speak for itself) I face the loss of a truly great RAD tool.

MS seems to have endless amounts of presentations to prove it's case. I feel that IBM needs to get resources for it's users to counter the mis-information.

@99: As I just wrote as a comment to Ed on his blog:

The way I see it, there are two ways a software or hardware product gets into an organisation/company.

1) Directive from the CEO/owner.

2) "Guerrilla warfare" from the users.

The former owner of the company where I work loves Notes. He does not know about the technology, he just love having all the info at his fingertips/on his desk. The other system we use (written in Visual FoxPro) only give him printed reports once a month, or in best case once a week. He want constant info, and with Notes he could get that.

When he left the company last year, he started another company. Most of the employees were used to Outlook/Exchange, and would have preferred that, but he said they were going to use Notes, end of discussion. Imagine if he would have been a Microsoft convert?

Now to an example for users pushing new technology. I am just saying one word: iPhone.

Users bring in new technology or a new program, other users see it and want the same shiny cool toy, or the same powerful functionality. See my old blog entry here: { Link }

But in most cases it is just a matter of something nice and shiny. Users want things that look good.

So what can IBM do? Market to developers. Market to consultants. Show the apps. "Yes, Notes can do that." "There is an application for that."

Ed asks how come Ruby on Rails are so popular with no marketing budget. Next time you are at Barnes and Nobles, count the number of books about Ruby on Rails, and then count the number of books on development in Notes 7.0 and higher. Put them in two stacks and ask any passer by which product they thing is the best, or which one is thriving and which one is dying.

I am not saying that is the case, but it is all about perception. If people THINK a product is not relevant, being developed further or is in use in the market, they will not buy it/use it.

Notes has an issue with perception. I was at a party this weekend, and heard from a developer "Oh, you work with Notes? Notes sucks!". It was mainly because he had been told by the IT department that Notes could not export XML, he was just handed the HTML generated by Domino and had to parse that himself. I told him that not only could I write him an XML exporter in a few hours, he could use ?ReadViewEntries to get the XML directly from the server...

It's all about perception.

So true. Notes has been a has-been for some years. True, new capabilities have shown up but not completely finished - e.g. DXL is a good effort but try to build an outline or include code in hotspots. The designer is not-quite-good-enough. The database is not-quite-good-enough. The admin capabilites are... well, you get the picture.

As for marketing support:

{ Link }

@Nathan (62) "How is being faced with the choice to either quit your job or spend your days doing something that depresses you NOT emotional?"

That is one of the major reasons I quit doing Notes development. :-)

@108 Duff - I'll do that in 1/10th the time for just half the cost!

Great post.....unfortunately, it is all too accurate

I think that this is a worldwide problem...

IBM should carefully read this post!

I'm moving to Microsoft .. unfortunately the current business is this at today.

I am very angry because I know that xpages are higher that Microzozz .NET ... but the customers does not even know its existence of Lotus in the enterprise application.

@108 & 113 Duffbert, my guess it the folks who gave that quote either don't know Notes or don't know SharePoint. My point is there is a big need for folks who know both. My other point is 2010 products make things much easier. I love Notes, Iris and Lotus. If you are having trouble finding Notes work, consider adding SharePoint designer (no code) and a few migration methods to your resume. That's all I'm saying. Especially if your boss wants you to train your Indian replacement. And for the folks who don't know me, I work for the other evil empire Microsoft.

You couldn't be more incorrect, Gary... that was from your own company's consulting services. Unless you want to 'fess up that Microsoft doesn't know Notes...

Oh, and yes... I am learning SharePoint stuff too. :)

Excellent post, John.

You are such a gifted writer.

Really interesting comments too, though I noticed that they all commented on the Notes thing and none commented on the Mother thing. So I will, but I'll leave that until the end of this.

Re: Notes' demise

Despite the yearly "we'll most likely kill you in the morning" threats to my current contract position, I am still a Notes App Developer...have been for the past 10 years.

What I've discovered is that it's all about the apps (as one of your writers has already pointed out).

What I built is something they need and it isn't available anywhere else. At least, not with all of the features my app offers.

Plus, for many years there were a LOT of apps that were secretly built by various departments of which management was unaware, but which were lynchpins to running the organization smoothly. We also hooked Notes into a ton of other applications, allowing a pretty (and way more useful) front end to be slapped on existing processes...effectively making best use of existing stuff.

So now, whenever someone talks about replacement or migration, they are confronted with the sheer volume of the applications that would need to be converted and the fact that a lot of the expertise behind those applications walked out the door with the market downturn.

Migration would be neither easy, cheap nor quick, nor would all the robustness of the current apps be retained.

Our UK parent company upgraded to 8.5 ages ago and we in Canucksville have been anxiously awaiting our turn.

Today we got the news. FINALLY we are making the move to 8.5.

Some of us have taken a slightly different approach to the Notes longevity strategy...we're making things that are useful to the companies for which we work; things without which the company would struggle or be diminished in some way.

Forget the propaganda war; we're going for 'indispensably useful'. :)

Re: Your mom

I can't even imagine how that must feel.

Abandonment has reared its ugly head in my life, but never like that. I feel pity for your mother. She is missing out. There is richness in knowing you that she has denied herself. There is a blood tie, roots, and a touchstone to that, she is denying herself. And there is the precious gift of motherhood that she is casting aside.

Yes, when she's old and alone, she may recognize what she gave up. One can only pity her.

As for you, you are strong and growing stronger every day, and for what it's worth, and though there are no blood ties (o.k. maybe we are all connected through our yellow blood), we are all a family out here. You have hundreds of brothers and sisters who care about you and to whom you are important.

I know it's not the same but, bro, you are special and we are privileged to know you.

Thanks for your honesty.

I'm sorry your story needed to include such pain.

@107 John Vaughan

"I've just stood back and watched and thought, maybe it was best I stay out of it and let the community do what they need to do."

Sounds like a resume bullet in your application for an IBM(Lotus) marketing position.

On a serious note ...

1) You can't have universities teach Notes dev and expect that to blossom into growth. For one, that turnaround is at least 5 years AFTER you get a teachable curriculum into play.

2) You can't push marketing down A, B, or C level execs and expect they will change their mindset. It just doesn't work that way with that group. see #3

3) Exposure is what's needed. Not marketing. Deliver this in several ways ... well, OK ... *one* way ... or rather one word. BONES. { Link } Can an app, any app nevermind a Notes app, look and function any cooler that this? Does this not scream "Web 2.0" (to an exec anyway)? There is *NO* better advertising!

Extend this type of idea. IBM needs to pay for development a couple of really cool useful apps, like dashboards, or whatever. Make a sales/presentation app so Sales only has to drop in some text, some videos, and have it email/print/txt the info, or scan QR from BlackBerrys to make contacts. These have to work with minimal effort out of the box.

Then, demos need to be distributed outside of our yellow-verse. Presentations need to be given to anyone that will listen. And even those that don’t. Isn’t that what sales people do :-)

4) Hire and pay technology evangelists. Guys who are vocal, and know the product. Pay them to travel to any conference, any speaking engagement, anytradeshow, and customer site. There are plenty of guys like this inside other orgs (particularly MS) and they are quite effective IMHO.

5) Be overly aggressive in competition. Not dirty, but aggressive. Every migration counts two fold, 1 against Domino, 1 for Exchange.

6) Offer training courses in more locations. These are a loss leader type of event. Look at cities where there are lots of companies too, not just lots of seats. My city of only 200,000 has 15 or so ND shops, although probably only 20 -25,000 seats. But as a result of neglect, at least 3 are moving to Exchange. No one can afford to send a dev team across the country/continent for training. It has to be available locally, with a real human.

And this has to be real training, not half fluff.

Lastly, IBM needs to junk their website and start over. There is nothing in *.ibm.com that is worth keeping in its current format. Not the info, the format.

Well, shoot. The list is endless. But it is definitely *not* what IBM has been doing so lately.

@116 Duffbert, you are right. When it comes to Notes app skills at Microsoft, its just me and Ray. I've tried to get Microsoft upskilled on Notes apps but that is not a priority. Mostly they use partners.

The ultimate irony is that IBM Global Services would be very happy to handle the migration from Notes mail to Outlook/Exchange.

@Jonvon: You, sir, are an amazing man. Your ability to make someone think about and connect with hard questions and uncomfortable ideas, and to challenge their perceptions and their way of thinking... My hat's off to you. Bravo!

I have another monster comment thread to read over at Ed's before I will venture to try to add any thoughts of my own to this conversation.

I know this wonderfully personal essay was written today, but it seems as if it could have been penned years ago. My "aha" moment was back in the early 90's. We were facing competition from MSFT on the email front and Notes was 2 to 3 times more expensive. Instead of selling,marketing and yelling to everyone that Notes was a development platform, not just email, the decision from on high was to cut the price to match MSFT's email client. Two lessons learned: don't try to beat MSFT on price and don't forget what is truly unique about your own product. Lotus Notes should be a B-school case study on what happens to a product that's 10 years ahead of its time.

SharePoint 2010 is the platform

@122, That is not correct. And I work in "IGS".

I think there are 2 sides to the whole issue:

1) Domino E-mail Server -> move to Exchange

2) Domino Application Development -> move to Sharepoint

So I'd like to extend the question, since I admit I know nothing of Exchange and Sharepoint and how well they integrate:

In a recession, why are companies making the move to Exchange Server, and not keeping just the e-mail part of Domino? What do they gain? And what is being done to show how a great web-based mail client iNotes is? How iPhone access is ready out of the box? And how Symbian/iPhone/Windows Mobile devices can easily connect to their Domino mail?

Someone mentioned ibm.com: yes, it needs serious improvement. Check out Exchange's home page, and Domino's. Can you easily see the features and benefits Domino has to offer? No. Exchange? Yes. Also, there is almost zero meaningful localized content for Domino admins to use in anything but english (not to mention for developers). Sorry, it doesn't cut it in emerging markets. Microsoft.com has tons of Exchange information, in local languages (I'm looking specifically at Brazilian Portuguese here, possibly in other languages as well).

As always, the opinions here are my own and do not necessarily represent my employer's.

Deb: :-)

Rich, I don't know what to say except thanks! :-)

@126

If IGS does not do migrations to Exchange, then perhaps reference to migrations from Notes to Exchange should be removed from the IGS web site.

> In a recession, why are companies making the move to Exchange Server

Valid question. Sorry I don't have the answer for you.

I've been doing Notes for over twenty years and I love the product. I've been an independent contractor for over ten years. When one in four Notes contract opportunities specify that the company is migrating to Microsoft. When hourly rates for Notes have been cut in half. I still have to make my mortgage payments.

I believe that these companies are making a major mistake. But they have already made the decision. Besides, everything is harder in Microsoft and therefore more hours.

@128

I work at IGS also, and yes, migration from Domino to Exchange are in our portfolio, as well as from Exchange to Domino.

I've seen a few of both kinds of migrations, and it seems to me more reasonable to move from Exchange to Domino, since you can DO MORE on Domino than on Exchange.

But, developing new solutions on Domino is becoming harder, once the guys have to know java, javascript, lotusscript, formulas, xpages, domino designer and eclipse, instead of one simple and modern IDE with a few components of other programming languages or technologies.

I believe that IBM is going to show more about what Lotus can do and offer to companies and users, but the tools the community uses to help need to be better used. IdeaJam and other stuff should mirror what guys on the other really think, not only about technology, but market at all.

(personal opinions only, here)

@126: What I meant is to challenge the "happily" term. Customer choice is the imperative, obviously. However, that doesn't mean I don't care if the customer is using IBM software or not. Of course I want them to be on IBM software. And for the team of Notes and Domino professionals that are on my team, we work our damnest hard to offer the best in services and administration of Domino to our customers.

One thing I've observed throughout the years are customers running on backlevel releases or not taking advantage of all the new features available to them. That hurts us all. Whose "fault" is it for not implementing/pushing new features on the server? For not implementing iNotes/Domino Web Access (a fine webmail client that's been around for what? 10 years? Since 5.0.8?) For not talking about Traveler? Sametime (integrated in the Notes client)? IBM's? Business Partners? Certainly not the developers. What about the Administrators?

When companies run old releases and are not taking advantage of what's available in the releases they're running as well as looking to upgrading to newer releases... opportunities open up for competing offerings, wouldn't you say? Would it be in the admins interest to stay up to date on the features & benefits of what they're running? Of having newer releases implemented? And the newer features with those newer releases? I would think definitely yes.

If this work has been done and is falling on moot ears, than that's a whole other story. But I often see admins who have no clue of what iNotes/DWA is... iPhone integration, even clustering and transactional logging!

My perspectives on leaving Notes are here:

{ Link }

(Sorry for the redirect; it's a bit too much content for a blog post comment)

After so many posts, what could I possibly contribute that would add value?

I will say that, as a Lotus professional living in Microsoft, Washington, I completely understand. I've been getting slowly squeezed the same way.

Having been through a similar experience before, with the exception that I didn't get to option to switch technologies. I was laid off after getting the migration finished. I can say it drove me to some soul-searching as well. I needed to understand how management could choose to make an expensive migration to move to a clearly inferior product with a negative ROI. That is, in the end what did they have? Email. What did they have that they didn't have before? Nothing. Well, actually, two systems instead of one. Notes apps (Ironically) still haven't gone away years after the migration.

In my search for an understanding, I read many books and talked to many people. The single best source of information on the topic that I found is this book: "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" by Robert Cialdini. This book is required reading for all MBA students at the University of Washington, University of Arizona, and others. If you google it you can find a website with some videos of the author speaking on the topic too, but for a complete appreciation, read the book. I promise once you do, it will become very obvious what IBM is doing wrong here and what the competition is doing right.

Jon, I been there. I empathize with your experience.

@40, Volker, IBM did not acquire Lotus because we had a huge installed base, but I think rather because we had a very compelling, industry-leading platform with strong end-user attraction...and IBM clearly had nothing that appealed to end-users that way, despite multiple, ultimately abortive, attempts (Cliff, if you read this, chime in...if not, Volker, I'll ask him to comment). At the point at which we were acquired, in mid-1995, Notes, to-date, had accumulated somewhere between 2-3 million sold seats, some 6 years in market.

I remember about a year and a half earlier, shortly after Lotus had acquired SoftSwitch, that Mike Zisman gave the Lotus sales force strong direction to stop trying to sell Notes as some sort of esoteric "groupware" product, and instead to begin selling it as email infrastructure (remember that in 1994, for the most part, customers' eyes would cross when you'd talk about groupware). It gave us a foot in the door to embed a platform based on a need for email...many customers learned the value of Notes after adopting it for email.

Following the IBM acquisition, and thanks to Mike's leadership, Lotus convinced IBM to enable us to substantially reduce the price for Notes so that we could, in fact, generate broad adoption, and that period, from 1995 through about 2000 was when the number of sold licenses exploded.

BUT...I don't think IBM ever really "got it" about Notes. I remember when Steve Mills came to Lotus to see eSuite (remember eSuite?), the only thing he was interested in knowing was when we were going to port Notes to run on the IBM Network Station...you can do the logic in your own head about why, at that time, that was such a ridiculous question, and belied a complete lack of understanding of the architecture or the value of Lotus Notes. Here we are in 2010, and the one thing, I think, that has remained consistent for the last 15 years, is IBM's overall lack of understanding of the value of Notes, and clear decision, made several times, that the strategic value for IBM Software Group lies in other things, not Notes...

A lot of work has been done to the internals of Domino and Notes and a lot more work needs to be done. I saw Declan looking for Nifty Fifty again and this is a major issue for IBM. We live in a twitter world where less is enough and #lazyweb is trending. We want good looking apps out of the box and performing well. Microsoft wins because they have great looking facade apps that need a lot of attention in the background but that is problem for another day or another department really.

Where IBM really lets us down is in fixing the small things. They will dogmatically stick to standards that suit them and not necessarily what is being used in the real world. I will challenge any of the respondents here to create a new Domino architecture using 8.5.1 and write down the good and bad. You will see many inconsistencies that should have been fixed but will never be fixed. Try and activate SSL user certs and you will be stuck in a quagmire of unfinished half thought out processes. Create some of those databases you never bother with and you will see interfaces that will make you cry!

IBM is now putting all efforts into Vulcan, imho Workplace v2, and very little into fixing the annoying (small) issues in Domino. Take Ed’s peculiar stance on POP3 and IMAP. Notwithstanding the fact that every device now does POP and IMAP Domino support for it is atrocious and Ed’s response is that POP and IMAP is largely irrelevant.

Customer are not leaving because IBM does not market, customers are leaving because they take note of what important industry commentators say about Lotus and IBM in general. And the comments are being made by people that see multiple vendors solutions on a daily basis and they are not impressed with the details. No customers, no bread on the table. Simpels.

IBM has amazing technology when you look at it holistically. When everything works it rocks! However, we use to stand on podiums telling customers that the product is simple to install, scalable with minimum outlay and easy to maintain. That is no longer the case, it is extraordinary complex, requires huge investment and is monumentally difficult to maintain over a lifecycle but it must be said that if done correctly it is awesome! However, it may not be "optimized" for real SMB customers anymore and hence this interesting discussion.

Another quick point. Microsoft is very big on give back. They donate a lot and take the hit in giving stuff away for pure goodwill. They send MVP's everywhere to speak at any event and pick up the bill. A point was made in the discussion to do more of this. That is of course a big part of the answer.

Just read John Bernardo's comment and spot on. I just wish we could convince customers that move away from Notes to donate databases that millions were spent on, to somewhere like OpenNTF. If (new) customers could experience the absolute amazing solutions that corporates have in Notes and just retire the Notes market would explode! Sigh!

@134 "it is extraordinary complex, requires huge investment and is monumentally difficult to maintain over a lifecycle”

Are you talking about Domino/Notes here? Really? For what it is capable of Domino is one of the simplest things to install and look after we have. The equivalent Microsoft stack (Sharepoint/SQL/Exchange) is much, much more complex and way more expensive.

I really can't see where you are coming from on this.

After reading all the comments, I don't think there's anything left that remains to be be said.

Now I'm waiting on IBM/Lotus's response to the above and follow-up actions in the coming days /weeks / months.

Thanks for the clarification, Jim. I was around at that time. :-) Shortly after Mike and Jeff suggested to cut the price of Notes, I challenged the head of IBM software sales one morning in Paris to buy a piece of IBM software, anything BUT Lotus Organizer. He acknowledged that this was an impossible challenge.

But if Lotus has sold 2..3 million copies by the time IBM bought the company, and now, 15 years later, they have sold 50 times that much, I think they did understand the value of their acquisition. In a way, Ray's vision did not really blossom until after he left the company.

And I am really curious to see if and how he can save Msft from being the next 80s IBM. And yes, I was around at that time as well.

@133: Jim, you're exactly right, and those are key points to remember...every one of 'em.

Notes Client -

1. Get rid of it and give us a widgety thing to allow existing Notes apps to work inside it in the browser without mods

2. Fix the search, see google

3. Add reporting tools

Dom Designer

1. Keep it simple (see posts re XPages)

2. Fix existing long standing issues

Marketing

1. Get the message to CIO's, decision makers and Top Manangement - ad's in airports (Accenture-Tiger Woods??), on boarding passes, long legged lovelies, whatever it takes

2. Maybe drop the Lotus Brand and relaunch it with a sexy new name/brand?

@83 Gary Devendorf

"Thankfully most Notes apps can be migrated very easily to SharePoint. (Very few people know this)!"

I've worked on two migrations and I agree Notes developers are the best skilled to migrate thier databases. However, how can you easily migrate them. The first company I was at has failed to migrate 1 application in 18 months. Now MS tell them why don't you wait for SharePoint 2010. Gee...I wonder why...perhaps so they don't have to migrate them again from 2007.

Also, answer me how you migrate what Lotus Notes developers would call the basics i.e.

Authors fields

Readers fields

Controlled access sections

Hide when formulas

Input translation

Input validation

Multi-value fields

Refresh keywords fields e.g. when a lists choices are dependant on another lists choices

Soft deletions

Scheduled Agents

ECL's

Agent Execution Rights

Names and Address book picker

Profile documents

Just to clarify, I'm talking about out of the box SharePoint before you give me a list of tools/software that I need to buy on top.

Great post by the way Jonvon. Sorry for my rant but I just get sick of hearing how easy it is to move to SharePoint or even comparsions between the two.

Just check these blogs before thinking of migration.

{ Link }

{ Link }

In no particular order (they are in roughly chronological order, maybe...), here are some blog posts continuing the conversation. I'm sure I'm missing some but these are the ones I saw that I thought were interesting or in some way made me happy (the first two are pure trackbacks). I've been really busy this week and I am pretty sure I didn't read everything. If I missed any feel free to link to them with a comment, with my apologies.

The support from the community this week has been incredible. Thanks again to everyone.

Ben Poole: jonvon says goodbye

{ Link }

Paul Mooney: Best post I have read in a long long time

{ Link }

Ed Brill: I’ve never been a developer

{ Link }

Gabriella Davis: Lotus Software - The View Of An Optimist Who Thinks Like A Pragmatist

{ Link }

Volker Weber: What an interesting week

{ Link }

Mark Myers (aka Stickfight): Jonvon's Post

{ Link }

Darren Duke: Are we all in the Yellow Vortex now? Spiraling to our own demise?

{ Link }

John Head: The Notes / Lotus Bubble: Why "community" and "change" invoke such wide emotional responses

{ Link }

Stuart McIntyre and Darren Duke: This Week in Lotus 004 - You’re being blindsided by Sharepoint (podcast)

{ Link }

Joel Oleson: Give me your tired, your poor and huddled masses yearning to breathe free... With open arms we welcome Notes Admins and Developers to SharePoint (a Sharepoint blogger!)

{ Link }

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that someone in the Sharepoint community picked up this post. I have mixed feelings reading Joel's post, but then I had mixed feelings writing my own. As it happens Joel's blog has been highly recommended by people in the Microsoft community for those wishing to know more about Sharepoint. I'll be reading him for sure.

Senthil has written an excellent post on this:

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Well said, but

NOTES is not DEAD,

'cause we,

you, I , all readers and contributors are NOT DEAD

otherwise this story wouldn't have got such an incredible worldwide attention from everyone and by the best of the best.

and as VoWe might say: "REPEAT after me:" NOTES is not DEAD.

We breathe and live passionately (LOTUS) Notes,

not just even "groupware".

Each of us can remember, share and tell about some of our most successfull moments in buisness carreer

when we were able to spark a flame from a glimpse in the eye of just ONE single user/manager which suddenly understood:

What (the hell) NOTES is about.

Can you see that one customer/user in front of your face in that PARTICULAR moment, when YOU had ignited that glimpse?

It was the moment where you saw shining eyes (take a look at benjamin zander's famous story SHINING EYES - WWW.TED.COM)

of a future NOTESian when he/she for the first time ever starts thinking "could we do this? ... and can we do that? and ...."

That was the beginning of that what we call a development platform today.

You know how hard it was and is, how long it might take to ignite that flame in just one single person?

You sow the seed and what it became will be clearly visible if you understand this question:

Do you also know

how passionate and thankful these people are?

They still and will remember that YOU where the guy who brought the idea of NOTES/groupware to them.

We all,

you and I, are the core and the heart of NOTES,

better LOTUS Notes, which it still is, not DOMINO nor ...!

If we were and are part of a WAVE (late 90ies),

than we would move with that WAVE.

Waves have ups and downs,

but it's more.

The VOICES you just read here tell everyone that this is not just about a complaining "developer community".

This is more (of cause we want, NO! we are more than just crazy developers, admins, tech veterans ...).

This "tiny blog entry" might the nucleus/focal/cloud point of a vivid, strong powerful community which faces up to their challenges and more.

As that it shows all of us that this reaction, maybe outcry is a turning point of a such a great thing as a MOVEMENT,

and that's the difference to a simple WAVE cause as a part of a wave you can't change the direction.

It's a MOVEMENT 'cause even if Notes will NOT have that success it had before

we still can and will recognize each other as NOTESian by hearing the old, familiar "NOTES language",

old NOTES TERMS like ACL, Views, Docs, Rights, Roles, Replication, ...

and not to forget the BIG, but for some users until now still not understandable difference between FOLDERS and VIEWS (inbox & sent).

Most of us would still use

the fundamental techniques,

the way of solving problems,

spreading ideas and maybe

the way of thinking we learned from and within NOTES, this community and hopefully tiny, but resistant, tough movement,

because NOTES was also about TO BE DIFFERENT, cause we are different.

Yes, in the early NOTES days (3.x/4.x) it was a wave,

but today it's a bit of a MOVEMENT, not only the simple business/developer/admin/... community.

If I'm right with MOVEMENT than each of us is responsible how NOTES is seen by all others and the future direction it might take.

And YES, this is of cause about missed opportunities,

but never forget how hard it was to sell just one single copy in 1995 as a groupware license?

How much effort it might have took in these early days?

So, spreading the groupware idea by selling it as an "email & calendar" solution was a successfull turn in the 90ies to establish the infrastructure, sowing the seed.

The evolution to a developing platform was the right strategic way (maybe with temporarily wrong tools/parts/directions).

But to be honest:

Who will tell us, that the future of NOTES as such a complex thing (Black Box for most decision makers) depends on MARKETING EFFORTS and DIRECTIONS?

What we read here is about a decision for a migration to another platform, nothing more.

It's still not a success story for the new platform 'cause the aftermath might have been made in years from now.

In a few years the controllers want to see the results, mainly reduced costs to justify the decision.

Hey,

this is mainly an expression about growing competition in a no longer growing, more and more satisfied market.

I'm a former controller and analyst, who has spent a few years during the golden era of Lotus Notes in that area.

I was somehow an internal reseller (PM) of NOTES and gave the developing orders to the busines partners.

To speak their somehow strange language I also made my PCLP 4 - ...

I don't have ibm stocks or other business interests.

I left this business years ago ... but I still look back and remember great moments like Lotusphere 1999

seeing a national hero entering the stage of dolphin/swan at 9 am when suddenly everybody around me stood up to honor someone with standing ovations even before he had said a single word!

An unbelieveable strange moment, at least for a german, and than he began without any attitude: I'm Jim Lovell, mission commander apollo 13

That was followed by a norwegian female researcher talking about networks which she named "virtuality of teams", the beginning of social networks.

And not to forget to mention LANCE Secretans: "Higher Ground".

But I also still remember great (business) success stories in my projects and inside this community as well,

like reading Damien Katz story (years ago) about his challenge "rewriting the FORMULA engine" (under a high pressure)

So I still carry this idea with me even if my last Notes Code Snippet might be 5 or 6 years old.

It's just only up to you to (re)sell the idea and chances, what development platform you can have even for small businesses.

And it's not only about blaming IBM for missed opportunities, cause they don't wanna loose customers and revenues.

Take care about what you are telling to everyone, cause you can't imagine what impact your (misunderstood) words might have.

If the decision will be made nobody will call you back to clarify how you really meant this complain about NOTES.

The only thing they'll remember in that moment is that YOU told them about problem(s) with notes, this crazy, hard understandable black box that we don't really need like SAP.

Many decisions in this area are not logical, comprehensible. Sometimes silly rumors or just your last complain can decide the direction of that decision.

It's up to you

@17

Nathan makes bold statements there. i'm not sure. quickr built on websphere, because it was possible.

if possibility exists ibm will build connections with domino. but possibility no existence, and so ibm builded in java.

if nathan community thinks, yes possible, then nathan and community can builded connections for domino?

sorry, my english very bad.. :(

Check this how SharePoint sucks

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A bit late I know but I just came over this post today. After reading this post I feel a bit sad, knowing that you are right and I plead guilty for ignoring IBMs facts on Notes future for a long while. On the other hand, Notes is just feeding my family and me and this will last for while.

Concerning, that Notes as we know it, will come to an end, I find it difficult to find a new direction. There is so much going on in the market that it's really a problem for me what to focus on. And I am not sure if Sharepoint will be the right answer for me.

But you also stated that we are quick learners and with no doubt there will be some way in the future, even if it's a bit uncertain at the moment.

Hi Jonvon - just found this post now as I've been very much out of the Lotus scene for two, three years now. It was so well written and echoed so many aches in my own heart over the years. I remember, a decade ago, there was a challenge in Lotus Consulting to find the ideal line to answer someone asking "What is Lotus Notes", and my response eventually became: "A rapid app dev environment", which just wasn't received well by anyone at IBM, however our grateful clients seem to almost always get it. We are immensely busy right now in Cape Town with tons of new app development on Notes and especially the web and these are just really people that realise the cost effectiveness of using the platform. It will be a great pity if IBM abandons it (eventually) for this purpose as the cost to migrate all these (or maintain them as legacy, unsupported) may just turn out to be astronomical. In the meantime, I am stressing with ALL my consultants to cross-skill, not necessarily in something "equal" (= NOT equal) like Sharepoint but rather something that builds on the phenomenal insights that come with working with such an all encompassing platform, e.g. our one consultant is studying IT forensics, another is certifying in Oracle, business analysis is a strong interest (good Notes dev people just make the BEST BA's) and, yes, WS portal is of course on the table also.

On another note, the story about your mom is incredibly sad and I send you a huge hug from over here. Being a new mom I just can not imagine how anyone can abandon such a great and lovable person as yourself and not want to treasure it every day.

Great article. I had to finally abandon the Notes Platform last year, for of all things Google. It's been different, not so much rapid development of small db's with specific functions but to be honest I haven't really missed it too much. Then again the largest client I have uses Apple products and are tied to that software and not MSFT. I do deal with clients that can only hear Exchange and Sharepoint. To them it's the magic bullet that will fix everything.

There was so much potential in the notes architecture but IBM seemed to miss it. One of the biggest issues was trying to purchase it.

I tend to agree that removing the Lotus Client from the discussion opens up customers to new ideas on how Domino can benefit their organization.

With the many new hardware devices coming on market, people want their data whenever, wherever. On the iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Laptop, or Home PC. And it must be secure.

Sounds like iNotes for email! I met with a customer recently who much preferred the iNotes experience on an iPad over Lotus Notes 8.x on his 5k Sony laptop.

Notes App store :

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I abandoned Notes about 5 years ago. I'm full blown MSFT .NET and SharePoint now and life is good. I tried SO hard to tell the Notes community that it was a dying profession back then, but all of the die hards continued to give me flack and useless drivel about how strong Notes was... bla bla bla. So many careers down the tubes...it's a shame. For those lucky enough to reinvent themselves in a respectable and supported platform, whatever that might be for you, be thankful! I know I have been. I've got tons of opportunities, and the wave hasn't even started on SharePoint 2010! All aboard!

Yes, very well written and it has a lot of truth to it.

@152: Jason, you clearly have a much higher tolerance for selling your soul than John and I.

@154: My soul is owned by my God, not IBM.

Jason, thanks for the comments. I think Dave was joking. :-)

I agree that IBM does VERY little to promote Notes and Domino. Frankly we have built a CMS that will do everything Portal can for a fration of the cost but it is obvious that is where they are spending the marketing effort.

On a bright note: our business has never been stronger. I am in fact looking to hire on another developer. Our offices are located really close to you Jon in Broomfield.

Sorry to ressurect this thread...

I've just been asked to 'Evaluate' Sharepoint for our organisation. After 15 years of Domino development the message has struck home; this was the last company I had a chance to really use my Domino experience at (I've been here 5 years. So what am I doing? Jumping of course, you would be a fool not to!!! I think IBM giving away Designer show's how much revenue they see in the product. Good luck to all of us!

The bottom line is ..

--> M$ is an illegal Monopoly (just read the Sherman Anti Trust Act)

--> You cannot compete against an illegal monopoly (just ask KMart how they're doing against WalMart)

--> GW Bush and his corrupt cronies shut down the anti trust division of the Justice Dept; its probably not a priority for the Obama Justice Dept to revive it (least not before reelection time; would piss off too many corporate donors)

--> IS Mgrs Don't care that M$ is an illegal monopoly; they just want to keep their jobs

--> the ONLY people that will/should/can care that M$ is an illegal Monopoly are their competitors; not JUST IBM, but Oracle, SAP, Adobe etc ..

--> SO .. the ONLY way for Notes to survive .. is via the courtroom: As long as M$ can get away with killing their competition with BS sales tactics ("Replace Notes apps with FREE Sharepoint etc") they're gonna keep on doing it ...

--> IF IBM lawyers don't stop them .. Notes will go the way to Netware. Case closed.

I dont understand.. why everybody is pessimist against notes. Notes has great features.. but it is sad that it is not being marketed properly. With 9+ yrs. of experience in Notes, i would say the tool has improved much. If someone says it is only for mailing, i would say that guy has not understood the tool correctly.

I said good-bye to Lotus Notes when IBM bought it. It was clear to me that IBM wanted to control the competition, and that's exactly what they did.

On the other hand, I see no reason why someone can't build an HTML/Java/MySQL based platform that duplicates Domino feature by feature - and blow the doors off anything IBM.