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No clear roadmap for Notes users?
Just got done reading this article in Computer world: Microsoft fires salvo at Notes users.
I had trouble making sense of it. The article interviews a Microsoft integrator in Austrailia named Rita Seroski. She says in the interview:
"Customers want a secure product roadmap so they are putting Lotus Notes development on hold; the forced migration to WebSphere has made organisations reconsider their platform because it is just as easy to move to Exchange as it is to make the forced leap to WebSphere,"Didn't IBM just give us a solid road map at Lotusphere '04? I remember seeing lots of exciting things in Domino 7 and 8. Including the ability to, when the time comes and if you want to surface Domino apps in Workplace. When did IBM say we are forced to migrate to WebSphere? I don't remember hearing that at all. Yeah, there is Workplace and as we move forward that will be big but I don't see that as any kind of forced migration path.
She also mentions:
"Moving to WebSphere means training developers in J2EE, but it is actually easier to move from Lotus to Visual Basic and .Net and if your company uses SQL Server or has deployed Active Directory you are ripe to make the change to a single Microsoft platform,"Hmmm... replumb everything with Active Directory, get new MS back end SQL servers, learn .NET and VB or learn Java. Ok, maybe I'm being harsh and AD is getting to be ubiquitous and VB isn't too far from LotusScript. I still don't see that you have to learn Java work in Notes/Domino!
Should you learn Java? Well, that is entirely different. I think anyone serious about writing apps for the web should learn it. And XML. And CSS and every other standard. I'd even say that .NET should be part of your bag of tricks as well.
So what about Workplace? This LDD article from November '03 talks about Workplace product announcement. Dr. Goyal talks about the future:
...collaborative computing built on:
A choice of clients from mobile devices to browsers to Notes to a new Eclipse-based rich client (read "Linux")
Portal-oriented UI that provides single sign-on ease of use with a high degree of security
Development that goes beyond hand coding to drag-and-drop "programming by assembly"
Line 1 you'll notice contains Notes continuing into the future as a client as well as a myriad of other devices including browsers and moblie devices. Did I miss something or is that not a clear roadmap?
This entry was posted on Thursday, February 19, 2004 at 3:31 PM.
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