Is it Lotus Notes for the Office or for Email ?
Category Administration IBM/Lotus Management
Interesting, isn't it, that there is this "business" versus "consumer" side to appreciating Lotus Notes as corporate email ? Talking about IMAP seems to be a touchstone for exposing the consumer content in any email platform--especially for Lotus Notes. In the world in which I work, these facets of corporate and personal have softened from hard angles of either/or into the curves of sometimes and always. A large set of my clients want the security and stability of their corporate account, as well as the ability to simultaneously access their personal accounts. I'm already seeing that the always on-line, connected lifestyle of the Netbook, iPhone, and Blackberry users has blurred their private and public lives.
Email is being reset from being a single point-of-identity (e.g., frank123@yahoo.com) messaging system into centralized communication, social networking, and document management. Right ? Everybody sees these trends, but they are applied in such wild variety, that it is difficult to make comparisons. We might even get nostalgic for the days we could chart out our evaluations of Domino, Exchange, and Groupwise on a feature grid. Now, I have a Domino account with UltraLite, RSS, Twitnotes, iCal integration with some Google calendars, and Sametime. And, even though my account has also been IMAP enabled, I don't consider myself among the digerati of messaging gurus.
There are some business models which have no demand for email personalization. Three years ago, I had a conversation with an IBM VP, who was talking about how a segment of the Asia Pacific market was perfectly content with Lotus Notes 4.6. These customers were willing to continue paying support for a long-ago retired release of Lotus Notes. They had a business model which was completely isolated, and had no need for integration with the outside world. Only when they were told that IBM had unequivocally retired 4.6, were they willing to upgrade. That is not my world.
I'm being called to forward mail into other mail platforms that can enjoy simpler IMAP consolidation. My users are global, and represent many different business needs. I'm pretty confident that Lotus Domino is the strongest possible core on which to wrap the varied needs of the business models I experience. But, I don't get to tell them to tough it out on the weak sides of Lotus Notes. A growing number of my users need a good IMAP client, and it's either going to be their own Notes, or it's going to be something else. If your users don't need this capability, then you might be lucky (in my view), or you might want to pause and listen to the clients a little bit harder. It's been my own history, that clients will smile and work around messaging limitations without providing a solitary complaint.
Even more than trying to address a single feature set, I should be thinking about what's around the corner. Today, I need better IMAP. A few years back, I listened to Ray Ozzie explain how his teenage children reserved email for those people they didn't want to talk to. Real communication was being done by IM, and email was passe? Doesn't that seem quaint, today ? IM has now merged into every major messaging system. Tomorrow, we'll have even more complicated messaging systems. Here's the three areas, I mentioned earlier, and how I expect them to move:
Still, getting decent IMAP would be a nice start. For today.
Technorati Tags: Lotus Notes, Quickr, IMAP
Interesting, isn't it, that there is this "business" versus "consumer" side to appreciating Lotus Notes as corporate email ? Talking about IMAP seems to be a touchstone for exposing the consumer content in any email platform--especially for Lotus Notes. In the world in which I work, these facets of corporate and personal have softened from hard angles of either/or into the curves of sometimes and always. A large set of my clients want the security and stability of their corporate account, as well as the ability to simultaneously access their personal accounts. I'm already seeing that the always on-line, connected lifestyle of the Netbook, iPhone, and Blackberry users has blurred their private and public lives.
Email is being reset from being a single point-of-identity (e.g., frank123@yahoo.com) messaging system into centralized communication, social networking, and document management. Right ? Everybody sees these trends, but they are applied in such wild variety, that it is difficult to make comparisons. We might even get nostalgic for the days we could chart out our evaluations of Domino, Exchange, and Groupwise on a feature grid. Now, I have a Domino account with UltraLite, RSS, Twitnotes, iCal integration with some Google calendars, and Sametime. And, even though my account has also been IMAP enabled, I don't consider myself among the digerati of messaging gurus.
There are some business models which have no demand for email personalization. Three years ago, I had a conversation with an IBM VP, who was talking about how a segment of the Asia Pacific market was perfectly content with Lotus Notes 4.6. These customers were willing to continue paying support for a long-ago retired release of Lotus Notes. They had a business model which was completely isolated, and had no need for integration with the outside world. Only when they were told that IBM had unequivocally retired 4.6, were they willing to upgrade. That is not my world.
I'm being called to forward mail into other mail platforms that can enjoy simpler IMAP consolidation. My users are global, and represent many different business needs. I'm pretty confident that Lotus Domino is the strongest possible core on which to wrap the varied needs of the business models I experience. But, I don't get to tell them to tough it out on the weak sides of Lotus Notes. A growing number of my users need a good IMAP client, and it's either going to be their own Notes, or it's going to be something else. If your users don't need this capability, then you might be lucky (in my view), or you might want to pause and listen to the clients a little bit harder. It's been my own history, that clients will smile and work around messaging limitations without providing a solitary complaint.
Even more than trying to address a single feature set, I should be thinking about what's around the corner. Today, I need better IMAP. A few years back, I listened to Ray Ozzie explain how his teenage children reserved email for those people they didn't want to talk to. Real communication was being done by IM, and email was passe? Doesn't that seem quaint, today ? IM has now merged into every major messaging system. Tomorrow, we'll have even more complicated messaging systems. Here's the three areas, I mentioned earlier, and how I expect them to move:
- Centralization which is bound to integration. This can be on the scale of reading a few mail accounts with a single client (using IMAP or POP3), overlapping shared iCal entries, or it can be an infrastructure skyscraper like IBM's Unified Communication, UC2, with VOIP and a Sametime Public Gateway. Vendors are pushing out extensive platforms, like Google Gears with Google Voice, or Cisco's Unified Commination System (UCS). They are scrambling to own unified messaging and IMAP is in this mix (with SIP and a fistful of other protocols). If these massive technologies are insisting on one-more-unique-messaging-client interface that excludes everyone else, then the consumer orientation of my users will never adopt them.
- Social Networking is here. No surprise for the need to a part of it, but it needs to be used: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or MySpace. Where's the crossover ? I am always frustrated by jumping back and forth between these Messaging Plantations. Lotus Connections is promising, but the public side of social networking is already part of messaging behavior--even if the architecture of corporate email hasn't caught up.
- Document management. Seventy percent or more of my e-mail storage is holding attachments. This is expensive on two levels: (1) our storage is run by a premium SAN vendor, which is being used to hold duplicate data that is being copied, forwarded and replied back to. (2) It is also numbingly inefficient as a work process. Corporate email might be the worlds most expensive technology for providing a poor-mans document management system. Alfresco, Sharepoint, and Quickr/Symphony are beginning to work into document management with messaging and collaboration, but there is a lot more work to be done.
Still, getting decent IMAP would be a nice start. For today.
Technorati Tags: Lotus Notes, Quickr, IMAP
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Comments
I wonder if we should just build our own IMAP tool into the application and be done with it. I would be happy to talk with you/others to see what we can do to help.
Eric Mack
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Posted by Eric Mack At 12:27:26 PM On 03/23/2009 | - Website - |