Like so many others, I was glad to read yesterday’s article by Ed Brill about the IBM whitepaper on Domino as a RAD platform. This had come to my attention shortly before Christmas and although the timing was unfortunate in some ways, nevertheless it did provide Ed with the great opportunity to highlight it at the beginning of January and start well what I hope will be a good year. For too long Domino has seemed the neglected sibling of Websphere Portal when application development is mentioned. And following the release Q3 last year of LotusLive Notes, which takes Notes mail to the cloud while (currently) having no provision for other Domino applications, the silence on Domino for application development was even more profound.
That isn’t to say I have been greatly concerned about IBM’s interest in Domino for application development. Even though XPages did not originate in Domino (as a result of which there are benefits and disadvantages), IBM’s investment in XPages has been considerable. There has been a strong presence of IBMers in the community contributing blog posts, sample applications and advice over the last two years. No one could suggest that this effort on XPages was just for mail. In my opinion XPages has revolutionised Domino development, making Domino finally a mature web development platform and providing innovative techniques for navigating and editing data quickly and easily. It can truly give an exceptional web experience in Domino quickly. I appreciate there is a steep learning curve and that XPages still requires some improvement (XPiNC performance in particular), but in my experience it dramatically reduces the amount of time it takes me to develop a web application in Domino. That makes it a benefit for me, a benefit for my customers, and a benefit for IBM.
To see IBM producing a whitepaper on the subject is good news. Whether this comes as a result of concerns raised in the yellowverse particularly over the last year, I do not know. It may be purely coincidental. But it is long overdue and welcome for that reason. Could I suggest that a copy be circulated as compulsory reading for all IBM sales reps?
Nonetheless, despite this good news, I hope that Domino is seen as more than just a tool for RAD. As the case study and Brian Benz’s session at Lotusphere on Deloitte Recap show, Domino allows rapid development, but doesn’t preclude it from enterprise-strength, business-critical applications of high quality.
Equally welcome is the increased responsibility Ed has for Lotus Domino. His evangelism about Domino is legendary and hopefully heralds a good year ahead where IBM continues to work with the community to increase the prominence of Domino. Like many others I would like to offer my congratulations and best wishes to Ed and everyone involved in Lotus Domino for the year ahead.
Thanks, Paul!
“Could I suggest that a copy be circulated as compulsory reading for all IBM sales reps?”
More importantly, it needs to get in front of customers, esp. executives setting strategy. I’m not sure the sales reps will be universally motivated to help do that.
It’s well past overdue to combine the responsibilities of the development products with the user facing products in the Lotus brand under one executive. It shows a real lack of insight by IBM to have delayed/ignored/been oblivious to this decision for so long.
I will probably fall off my chair if I see published material by IBM that includes references to app’s as well as mail/calendaring in the same campaign/brochure. I’ve seen some token words and a 6 page pdf, but this is not a strategy nor a plan. I would like to see some co-herent action as a follow up. I’ll believe it when I see it.
I’m just looking forward to the “Phat-Numbers” IBM will try and spin at LS11 to continue to delude the community at large, that Domino is not getting soundly whipped in the market place.
Sales Reps, historically can’t distinguish their elbow from their a_seholes when it comes to understanding the technology they pimp, as they tend to go for the “one shot, one kill approach”, like big game hunters, with Websphere, (aka Web-severe), rather than engage pre-sales and earn their dosh to sell a designed solution. I have seen horror stories here in Sydney where customers are getting Quickr recommended as the solution for corporate intranet needs. A sure fire way to lose a long term client as they battle a poor choice of technology, and lose their cash trying to make a square peg fit a round hole.
It’s not all their fault, they have a catalogue of some umpteen thousand products, and to know when Notes/Domino is the right fit is not always apparent, (but it would be most of the time..hehe).
So, by all means distribute the doco to the sales reps. But the sales reps need to have access to a technical pre-sales guy who can articulate the most appropriate solution for them to sell.
@3 they have been under one executive, a level up from me. That made sense in the past but we’re going with a different approach now.
@All Getting the document in front of prospective customers would be ideal. Whether or not sales reps are motivated to do so is a moot point. But to have a document that they CAN show to customers is at the very least a step in the right direction.
There may also be some occasions where this whitepaper has some impact with existing customers considering moving away from Domino, if only as proof that Domino is not a legacy platform. Realistically that can only be done by BPs and the yellowverse. So as a BP I can see this being a useful whitepaper in our arsenal with new and existing customers (although I will stress that I work in technical rather than sales).