An update on yesterday’s migration bounty story: IBM’s press release clarifies some details: the bounty is $20/seat, with a max of $20K. It applies only to customers who move to Domino hosted on Linux, Domino Web Access on Linux desktops, or the Notes plugin for the Workplace Managed Client. Like I said yesterday, that’s a tough sell, especially when you consider the management environment of Linux desktops vs Windows desktops.
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Paul: from my perspective, the Domino migration isn’t quite the hard sell that it appears to be, and there may be some pieces of the Domino infrastructure of which you might not know about. For instance, even though the server (Domino) is installed on a Linux server, the client can be Windows, Macintosh or Linux. Here’s the client breakdown:
Windows supports the (1) stand-alone Notes client for messaging/IM/collaboration; (2) also supports the Domino Web Access interface (DWA) for IE and Firefox; (3) IMAP4/SMTP (for some of the phone/PDA handhelds); and Domino Access for Microsoft Outlook (DAMO) which is a conduit that connects an Outlook 2003 client to a Domino server. All of this comes standard (no extra pricing for something like IM integration or DAMO, etc.).
Macintosh has an (1) OSX Notes client for messaging/IM/collaboration; (2) DWA; (3) IMAP4/SMTP.
Linux is interesting, because the messaging is provided through a browser (DWA on Firefox), but includes a piece of Lotus technology called Domino Off-line Services (DOLS, something supported on all platforms) which enables the Linux workstation to install the code to be able to replicate the messaging and calendaring documents onto the Linux workstation. This means with just a browser the Linux client can still work disconnected, just as with a stand-alone application. It’s a truly zero-cost mail client install that won awards at LinuxWorld.
A lot of our customers use Blackberries (they use everything else, as well) and the Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) can be significantly less expensive with Domino because (1) you connect one BES to multiple Domino servers; (2) the BES can be remotely hosted by an ASP (which removes a b-i-g headache, because we all know that where the Blackberry users sit in the organizational food chain); and (3) the Blackberry design studio integrates with Domino Web Services to push out Domino apps instantly (they don’t get off-line use, though).
Here are some other, somewhat unrelated items:
Domino supports clustering across different operating systems, hardware configurations, and Domino release versions. This makes it very easy to provide fail-over, load-balancing, and even upgrading of the platform.
Domino integrates with Active Directory, so that a Windows admin can register a new user account and the AD container is automatically matched with a Domino certificate and a Notes account, ID, and mail file are created in one stroke.
Administration on Domino is amazing. You get a live console window by which to see everything that’s happening on the server (of course, there are the bazillion log files and such, as well). There are new autonomic features which identify usage trends, best practice polices, and automatic fault-recovery with pattern analysis.
I’ve been involved with several Domino migrations which were justified primarily on cost (working on one for a university, right now) with little concern that it’s still considered the premiere collaboration platform (http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1909858,00.asp).
Sorry, that prior post was not meant to be “anonymous.”
Jack Dausman
LeadershipByNumbers.com