Notes/Domino 6 and 7 Forum : no need to win Email war

I 've been reading all posts carefully and I think the whole situation for Notes/Domino marketing is quite complicated.

Here my thoughts:
-put Notes into schools:
Nope I would not do that... have you ever talked to people who only use Notes as email client? They usually cry and wish they could use their preferred email client like Outlook or whatever.
We all know, Notes is not the best email client. But does it have to be?

I don't think so... Email is just a part, an important part, in the Domino landscape, but it is not the basepart.

-accidentally drop into Notes development:
Sure! Many of us have been doing other stuff before, thinking: Notes? what a childish thing, not even relational capabilities etc etc. And then? We caught the running train.. and we learned.. and we learned... that not everything has to be relational, and that Domino in fact has features which are, and will be for a long time, outstanding. Security, Richtext, RAD, Webintegration.
Just think for a minute about the most basic feature, the "forward" feature. In which other application landscape could a user forward information found in a database to another user in such a simple way?
The answer is: nowhere... and people LOVE this simple feature...

So I think... to show students which do not use much more than Email would not understand the concept of Notes to its full extent, they would rant about it. It is the developers who should really be told/educated what it is really about. I took me several years to find and appreciate the beauty of certain core features of Notes.

-go more the web way:
Nope... I don't think so... you can have web apps with other technologies as well as fast as you do with Notes. In fact I do think that Notes is not THE candiate for just pure Webdevelopment.

I see the real strength in the Notes client, even if many many users, developers rant about the client. BUT the client is exactly the piece of software which handles all those beautifull features which make Notes an outstanding product, never paralleled.

Conclusion:

I believe that Domino is a very strong product, but one has to understand really well what it is about. And again.. it took me several years to fully understand how everything ties together and why it is such a strong product.

I think it would be wrong to battle on the email client war... the war would be lost.

I think it is important to educate decision making people to show them what the real benefits of Notes is. This is why I understand the official position of IBM to not really move Notes to the consumer level. The advantage of Notes is not for the consumer, it is in those applications which you use every day!

Michael
Lotus Notes Consultant, since 1993

Notes/Domino 6 and 7 Forum

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