The Future of the Lotus Notes Client.
By Sonic
The last couple of years have been interesting for anyone involved in Lotus Notes/Domino. During the last year we've emerged from poker faced IBM/Lotus reps and an accompanying complete media blackout on the future of Notes/Domino and into year where IBM is telling us of a grand unifying overall vision and trickle feeding how Lotus Notes/Domino fits into that vision.
The part that has been particularly intriguing to me is that IBM has been not only pronouncing that Notes/Domino isn't going anywhere soon, but recently they've started guaranteeing your investments in Notes Client applications are completely secure and you'll be able to run them unmodified for as long as you need to (a decade at least was the terms I heard thrown around informally in IBM roadshow question sessions). Given what an enormous beast the Notes Client has evolved into over the last decade (four dev languages anyone?), it was intriguing to me how they could possibly support such a creature on multiple platforms for the next decade.
Their solution, finally revealed in the IBM Workplace roadshow, is simple. IBM/Lotus are rewriting the entire Notes Client into a Java based plug-in for the IBM Workplace Rich Client. The following is the timeline/capabilities of this approach:
R7 = Technology Preview. You can view and use Notes Applications inside of Workplace just like any other part of Workplace. Whilst this gives you can idea of how things will work in R8, this actually works via a Workplace plug-in that talks to a locally installed and configured notes client. So you can't provision (IBM's new terminology for assign to or associate with users/groups/organisations) Notes Applications into the Rich Client seamlessly because it requires you to install the traditional Notes Client on the users workstation then set it up with ID's, connection documents etc.
R8 = Provisionable Notes Client Support. This means you can provision a Notes Client Application to a user/group/organisation and when they access it through the Workplace Rich Client it automatically downloads a plug-in on first use that is essentially the entire Notes Client rewritten into Java and the Eclipse framework.
Suddenly IBM's talk of the clients eventually merging and their ability to guarantee your investment in Notes Applications will be protected makes sense. This also explains their simultaneous reluctance to do a full port of the R7 Notes Client and associated applications to Mac OS and their previously confusing insistence that R8 will have great Mac OS support.
As a long time Notes/Domino Admin and Developer, I really like this vision and how Notes/Domino fits in and the smooth transition to Workplace it offers. However, I am pissed that it's taken IBM over two years to unveil this vision and in the mean time I (and many others in my position) were left wondering where the hell their career was going. Given this, it's been with somewhat bitter irony that I've sat through IBM Workplace sessions recently where they talk about processing at the speed of business / the internet, about keeping customers and business partners informed.
(Disclaimer: this is my personal interpretation of what I was told at recent IBM/Lotus roadshows, refined by drilling various IBM reps during and after sessions. Whilst all bitterness is my own, all mistakes are entirely due to IBM's ambiguous answers.)