Customer: Notes 8 has been released, what should I do now? Evaluate Portal
Category Notes8 WebSphere Portal
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Answer: Evaluate WebSphere Portal I know it sounds strange, but if you don't truly know what Portal is and what it can do, then you really don't know what Notes 8 is. Since you're probably not going to rush out and deploy Notes 8 immediately, now's the time to understand the Portal environment and it's capabilities. To me, it's similar to companies that deployed Notes as an email platform and never really looked at or discovered what they could do with it from a development perspective. Certainly there's value in Notes as strictly a mail platform, certainly around the security and virus aspects alone. Right or wrong, a lot of companies found themselves evaluating the licensing down the road and wondering why they were paying so much for strictly mail. I think a similar situation occurs with Notes 8. You can deploy the Notes 8 basic client, at which point, I think a decision is being made (consciously or otherwise), to relegate Notes to legacy status. However, blindly upgrading to the Notes 8 standard client isn't necessarily the right answer either. For one thing, when you install Domino 8, it's going to ask about your Portal server, as it wants to install templates on it. While I'm sure you'll be able to retrofit that later, I'm not sure I want to mess with that down the road. So, if you're going to take full advantage of the Notes 8 world, you're going to have sidebar items in the client and you're going to have composite applications that leverage the entire IT enterprise rather than silo'd Notes applications. And this is where you need to understand what Portal is, what the Lotus Component Designer is, and how these things play together. So, what's your next step for Notes 8? Understanding the entirety of the Notes 8 platform which means understanding Portal's role in it.
Bookmark :
Answer: Evaluate WebSphere Portal I know it sounds strange, but if you don't truly know what Portal is and what it can do, then you really don't know what Notes 8 is. Since you're probably not going to rush out and deploy Notes 8 immediately, now's the time to understand the Portal environment and it's capabilities. To me, it's similar to companies that deployed Notes as an email platform and never really looked at or discovered what they could do with it from a development perspective. Certainly there's value in Notes as strictly a mail platform, certainly around the security and virus aspects alone. Right or wrong, a lot of companies found themselves evaluating the licensing down the road and wondering why they were paying so much for strictly mail. I think a similar situation occurs with Notes 8. You can deploy the Notes 8 basic client, at which point, I think a decision is being made (consciously or otherwise), to relegate Notes to legacy status. However, blindly upgrading to the Notes 8 standard client isn't necessarily the right answer either. For one thing, when you install Domino 8, it's going to ask about your Portal server, as it wants to install templates on it. While I'm sure you'll be able to retrofit that later, I'm not sure I want to mess with that down the road. So, if you're going to take full advantage of the Notes 8 world, you're going to have sidebar items in the client and you're going to have composite applications that leverage the entire IT enterprise rather than silo'd Notes applications. And this is where you need to understand what Portal is, what the Lotus Component Designer is, and how these things play together. So, what's your next step for Notes 8? Understanding the entirety of the Notes 8 platform which means understanding Portal's role in it.
Comments
What I'm saying is that the Portal integration in Notes 8 is quite a quantum leap in capabilities and is quite likely one of THE reasons to upgrade to the standard client. Given that, it makes sense for customers to really understand what Portal brings to the table.
As for the install, I was pointing more towards the difference between Lotus and IBM system setups. Traditionally, you can muck around with a Lotus installation and go off track and recover. Going off track with Portal on the other hand is a whole different ballgame and can get quite complex.
So, during the Domino 8 install process, if you have the opportunity to install the Portal components, I'd think it would be better to do it then, rather than try to retrofit later. Of course, a 8.01 or 8.1 upgrade would probably also provide an opportunity to handle it.
In using the word "legacy" I probably triggered the wrong negative connotation. In going the Basic client route, I'm saying that even if the client is doing very sophisticated development and integration work in Notes today, that won't change, but it's limited in comparison to what they could be doing with the Standard client.
I suspect for many organizations, once that decision is made (basic vs standard), it won't be one that will be easily changed going forward. If I'm on the development/admin team at a company, it's up to me to make the case for the Standard client, and that case can't be effectively made without showing the power that composite apps will make available. And to do that well, you need to understand what Portal can do.
If IBM doesn't have it, IBM should consider a Portal development entitlement for Domino customers that would allow them to effectively research this. I'll ask Sue to look into it.
Posted by Lance At 12:28:36 PM On 08/20/2007 | - Website - |
Posted by Rob McDonagh At 10:36:38 AM On 08/20/2007 | - Website - |