Microsoft

Lotus Notes to Sharepoint Blog

I have been reading as much as I can about Sharepoint and why it just is no comparison to Lotus Domino Application Development. There is a blog out there that is pointing all this out and I think the person posting is at the end of his or her rope and posted this recently:

“My time is either spent doing a lot more configuration(in Sharepoint) than coding, or I am fighting the platform with code to try to bend it to my will. I like using technology to solve problems, not fighting technology to create basic business process applications.”

This is about all that needs to be said. Sharepoint is not a drop in solution for anything Lotus has to offer. They are just not the same in any way shape or form.

So if you are thinking about moving to Sharepoint from Lotus, or for any reason. Know there are much better solutions out there than Sharepoint I assure you.

LINK :: NOTES MIGRATION BLOG

Moving from Lotus to Exchange is costly and a step backwards

You don’t need to tell me anything about how much a move from Lotus Domino/Note to Microsoft Exchange/Outlook is going to cost these days. It’s going to be expensive. Even with a light investment in Lotus and only  few production DBs, an average company is not prepared for the cost involved. I pointed out in  a previous post that it’s idiotic and stupid to move from the IBM i or any installed technology to a different solution ( LINK ).

No some comments have surfaced on Network World that are interesting and true.

We stopped the move to Exchange

“I work for a 15k+ organization, and we stopped our migration to Exchange, in part because of the costs to migrate, but also because we found out we could save money moving to Domino 8.5. Our application developers are excited about Domino as a development platform again, and that alone will prove to be a huge ROI.”

Read the Article that sparked the comments.

I know of a company in Denver that I worked for at one time that has about 3,000 - 4,000 users who in my words . . .

Lotus did not fail them, they failed Lotus.

What does that mean David?

Let me tell you!

Lotus is not just mail. Lotus is many many things. Of which 20% is mail. The rest is Web Serving, Mail Archiving, Database Server, and Application Server all wrapped up into one. Many companies get Lotus installed and get t working then fail to use all it;s pieces. Sadly if you would have spent the time and money to develop some applications in Lotus Notes and deploy them your company would benefit from them. I even suggested a few years back that IBM give away 80 hours of consulting time to help the new company deploy an application so they could see the value. That 80 hours would have gone a long way in consulting dollars later on.

See if you just focus on the Mail bit you are missing the point. Microsoft is good at making sure you only focus on the mail and oh you want to do something with your applications? We can move those to Sharepoint. Well I am telling you it’s not that easy. Moving applications from Domino to Sharepoint is like expecting a VW Bug to out perform a Ferrari just because it has round rubber things and run on gas.

They are not the same. Lotus does all of these things well, and you can have them all on the same server if your smart bout it. In Microsoft world you can’t have your Exchange Server on the same servers as your Chat Server along with your Sharepoint Server. If you did you would be the oldest man in IT from lack of sleep and general frustration.

There are also the CIOs and IT Managers who read the propaganda Microsoft is sending them that says “Everyone is moving to Exchange” and they think, crap I don’t want to be left out….so they start moving to Microsoft, no matter what the cost, but the biggest question is what about the investment you already have in your current solution? How does the CEO allow that to get thrown out the window? You spent  and continue to spend to keep Lotus Notes, and yet a 4 to 8 times increase in cost is worth it for the benefit of increasing energy consumption, increase cooling needs and increase the number of servers you are going to have to deploy vs. keeping a few Lotus Domino Servers to manage large numbers of users and applications. Plus Lotus is not nearly as expensive as Microsoft’s solution. Plus how much is a .NET Developer license again? Lotus, last I checked, does not charge for the developer license. It’s apart of the client.

If you are thinking of moving off Lotus Domino/Notes to Exchange/Outlook/Sharepoint/Communications, ask yourself….is this the best way for use to spend money right now and would this money not be better spend hiring a Lotus Designer/Developer to increase our productivity and also increase the ROI we could be getting out of Lotus products?

Well this is good news:

LINK :: More firms switching from Microsoft’s Outlook to Lotus

Biased CIOs spend more money and don’t solve problems, they create them

What happens when an IBM AS/400, iSeries, System i, i5/OS, POWER System, Lotus Domino/Notes) IT shop doing fine, keeping the company running and is stable, has happy employees, happy users and then out of no where a new CIO or IT Manager is hired who:

1. Does not understand IBMs offering from both the IBM Systems side and the Lotus side?
2. Is biased towards another major technology company for no other reason or with out any logic or facts.

Bias is defined as; a particular tendency or inclination, esp. one that prevents unprejudiced consideration of a question; prejudice.

Now that we have established what bias is we can move on with the problem.

So there you are a loyal and hard working IBM i Admin, you and the Lotus Admin work hard to keep the company running. The companies main application for work is housed on the IBM i and everyone uses mail that comes out of Lotus Notes, plus Lotus has a feature no other application server has out there, rapid visual development, and there is always the one Lotus Developer, building applications for end users so they they can store information, access different types of data and make use of the Lotus and IBM i applications, and extend them to the company.

Everything is humming along, working well. Cost are in check, and with even more consolidation to the IBM i you could save more money.

The one summers day, or any season for that matter, a new CIO or IT Manager is hired into your company. Right after he says hello to everyone, his next comment is “We are going to replace all that IBM technology with Microsoft (or SUN).”

Continued »

Windows Vista’s Security Rendered Completely Useless by New Exploit

Mark Dowd of IBM Internet Security Systems (ISS) and Alexander Sotirov, of VMware Inc. have discovered a technique that can be used to bypass all memory protection safeguards that Microsoft built into Windows Vista. These new methods have been used to get around Vista’s Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), Data Execution Prevention (DEP) and other protections by loading malicious content through an active web browser. The researchers were able to load whatever content they wanted into any location they wished on a user’s machine using a variety of scripting languages, such as Java, ActiveX and even .NET objects. This feat was achieved by taking advantage of the way that Internet Explorer (and other browsers) handle active scripting in the Operating System.

Neowin.net :: Windows Vista’s Security Rendered Completely Useless by New Exploit

Microsoft looks to ‘Mojave’ to revive Vista’s image

Link to Article

After months of searching for ways to defend its oft-maligned Windows operating system, Microsoft may just have found its best weapon: Vista’s skeptics.

Spurred by an e-mail from someone deep in the marketing ranks, Microsoft last week traveled to San Francisco, rounding up Windows XP users who had negative impressions of Vista. The subjects were put on video, asked about their Vista impressions, and then shown a “new” operating system, code-named Mojave. More than 90 percent gave positive feedback on what they saw. Then they were told that “Mojave” was actually Windows Vista.

Offtopic : Is Windows Vista the new Windows ME?

I was talking to a few people in a store and then around the office and started to wonder to myself is Windows Vista the new Windows ME?

If you think about it the cycle would be right.

(1)Windows95(Decent)
(2)Windows98(Little Better)
(3)WindowsME(Crap)
(1)Windows2000(oh not bad)
(2)WindowsXP(Little Better)
(3)Windows Vista(CRAP)
(1)Windows7(Who knows?)

It’s just a thought from someone who would not care if Microsoft fell of the face of the earth right now. The are a company I think we could all live without and are truly un-American when they tell the congress and such that they can’t get any HB1 visa in the country when thousands of developers and IT people are out of work in the US. Why not hire the US Citizens in the US, oh I know why, I could cost to much to hire Americans to do the job, when you could get some no talent outsider to come in and work twice as hard for half the pay as a contractor. Now it all makes sense.

So back to my topic, is Windows Vista the new WindowsME, sure seems that way. I know when ME came out there were people begging to just get Window 98 on the PC, and then Microsoft came out with Windows98SE to get them to shut up and stop calling ME bad. I don’t think we will every see a WindowsXPSE? There is also rumor that Windows7 is right around the corner too. Why do you all as consumers continue to put up with crap? Why is that acceptable from Microsoft, but if FORD or Chevy make crap you choose not to use it and by Honda or Toyota? Microsoft is crap, it’s time to got to Linux or Apple.