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As one of the agencies in the state running Notes/Domino, I can say that ND is alive and well. For how much longer, I can’t say. As of the middle of this month, one agency of about 700 users will be cut over to Exchange. Yes, I said cut-over and not migrated because their mail is not being migrated. They have to start with a brand spanking new email account and refer back to their Notes mail database when needed.
This is all IBM’s fault. Here’s why.
Rumors have been circulating for the past year ever since I had a Domino migration project to AIX killed by OIT. That of course was 18 months AFTER I had previously made overtures to migrate to iSeries. The only reason for the overture and not the full symphony was the IBM Sales Rep killed the whole thing prior to my even presenting the iSeries idea.
I have personally made or tried to make the case to whomever would listen for a state-wide migration to Domino for all state agencies since these rumblings began. On numerous occasions, I contacted not only our IBM sales reps but also Mike Rhodin, and a number of IBM executives. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM HAVE DROPPED THE BALL ON THIS!
Depending on who you talk to, we have between 50 and 80,000 users within the state. It is my understanding that we, the state, have a Z Series mainframe that is not being utilized. While not a Z Series expert, although I’d like to be, it is also my understanding that those things scale rather well. Why didn’t anyone from IBM say “Hey, why don’t you guys use that and Domino?”
The amazing thing is, ANYTIME I demo the littlest thing in ND, I’m always greeted with “Gee, I didn’t know Notes could do that”. Haven’t we all?
Furthermore, I have already designed most of the migration plan. It is honestly just a matter of fine tuning for each respective area. But no one asked … no one from IBM. They didn’t even ask their own customer who was asking them to come down.
IBM should have sent a swarm of IBM-ers familiar with Domino down here and make their presence known. They did not nor did IBM take this opportunity seriously … and Microsoft did. In any event, I can’t say why it happened. I can only say, it happened.
I would like to note that the issue I have is with sales and marketing NOT the technical side of IBM. The technical side has been great. They continue to develop and improve the environment I love. The support is second to none. Sales and marketing have blatantly failed. Frankly, we feel, to say the least, abandoned.
I, however, will not go quietly nor without putting my best foot forward even though IBM sales and marketing has abandoned my colleagues and me. Here’s what I’ve done and am doing.
In the past year, we have implemented Sametime, migrated our servers to 7.0.x and rolled out numerous home-grown Domino apps. This will continue.
To that end, after years of hemming and hawing, tomorrow I finish my 6.5 App Dev cert. To compliment my Advanced Sys Admin cert, I’ll be obtaining the 6.5 Advanced App Dev cert by the end of the month. ND 7 & 8 certs will be done shortly thereafter. I have been encouraging my ND colleagues within state government to obtain these certs as well. I do this simply so we may improve our personal skill sets and to provide our users with more expert knowledge and better solutions.
We are planning to roll out Notes-Domino 8 across the board by the end of April. With 8, we are encouraging the use of the productivity apps. We also have an MSDE to DB2 migration project for the BES, Common Store for Domino, Quickr, Domino Document Manager and Domino-based BlackBerry apps all on the radar for the first half of this year. We’ve been attempting to get a WebSphere Portal server up since November however, there is a bug with the Portal installer included with Domino 8 that has yet to be worked out.
The nutshell of this all is that as long as my budgets continue to get approved, I will continue to push IBM software solutions. For as long as I can, I will continue to wave the yellow Lotus banner. Ultimately, when I convince the powers that be that ND is the way to go, it will not be because I had any help from IBM sales and marketing. It will be by my grit, determination, skill, and will that makes this happen. However, now, it is only by God’s Grace that the horrendous mistake that is Exchange will be avoided. I can’t blame Microsoft or even anyone else, I blame IBM Sales and Marketing for a job poorly done.
Feedback response number WEBB7AMRWG created by ~Isaac Xantoopuloden on 01/07/2008
From the Horse's Mouth
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. . From the Horse's Mouth (~Isaac Xantoopu... 7.Jan.08) 
