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Salesforce.com is planning tools that will convert applications and data in Notes to run on its hosted platform Force.com (article). I’m a marketing person, and even I don’t believe that one. I’ve worked with a lot of “conversion tools” over the years. They work fine for the easy stuff … the stuff you can do easily without conversion tools. But the hard stuff is still … hard.

They are also partnering with Google so that these converted customers can use Gmail, Calendar and Google Docs along with Salesforce.com. According to Salesforce.com chairman Marc Benioff, CIOs are turning to the combo of Google on email and collaboration, and Salesforce.com for applications. Really? Gmail as a corporate email standard? I’m still a marketing person, and I don’t believe this one either.

So CIOs are opting to toss Notes and their MS Office applications to go with Salesforce.com and Google email and applications. Still a marketing person, and I still don’t believe it.

Posted by Scott Johnsen At 03:51:10 PM Location Beverly, MA USA | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

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Google ranks number 1 as the most reputable company in America, according to the Harris Interactive Reputation QuotientTM (RQ) survey for 2007. Interestingly, technology companies had a very strong showing second only to consumer package goods companies. This was based on six areas that influence consumer behavior.

• Social Responsibility
• Emotional Appeal
• Financial Performance
• Products and Services
• Vision and Leadership
• Workplace Environment

It is interesting to me that compliance doesn’t seem to have a much of an influence on consumer behavior. At least not directly related to any of the six areas listed above. I supposed part of that is because compliance, or lack thereof, is mostly hidden from view by the outside world. At least until an Enron accounting fraud, Exxon overreporting of oil reserves or Fannie Mae underreporting of profits becomes public knowledge.

Either way, it is nice to see that IBM managed a respectable tie for 22nd! View Selected Results

Posted by Scott Johnsen At 10:15:43 AM Location Beverly, MA USA | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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Firefox 3 went live on Firefox Download Day, though the time of release and being in the UK meant I downloaded it the day after (Washington Post article). Never mind, I've now had a quick look around and it looks nice enough, but one thing both bothers me and makes me chuckle about the Firefox steam train. Is it really the greatest thing since sliced bread?

As an Opera user I get frustrated about the trumpeting of Firefox as Opera deserves to have as big a noise made about it and a larger market share as a result, but any gain in Opera share is likely to be at the expense of Firefox rather than the devil that is IE, so the winner is M$. On the other hand, I like the nice smug feeling when I use mouse gestures, speed dial and so on, without having to hunt for plug-ins and subsequent slow down in my browsing experience. Feel free to find comparisons with the Win/Mac/Linux and also Lotus/M$ collaboration battles.

I've had Firefox installed since 0.9, but it’s never been my browser of choice. I'm certainly not an IE fan, though I do confess to having had IE4 as my main browser for a time 10 years ago, but that was because Netscape 4 was slower than a sloth addicted to opiates. My main browser has been Opera since v5 and I am currently on v9.5. With v5 I had all sorts of compatibility problems and had to resort to IE for secure sites, but now I come across very few sites that I prefer to browse in Firefox or IE and speed has always been Opera's strong point. (There is a newer test here with some interesting additional points in the comments)

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Posted by Grant Norman At 11:34:48 AM Location Huntingdon, UK | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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Last week I attended ILUG in Dublin. The event was absolutely fantastic -- bigger and better than ever before with more sessions, more speakers and many more attendees. In fact, IMO (forget the 'Humble' bit cause I've been to more than a few shows in my time!) this was the best European event since the last Lotusphere Europe in Berlin. Anyone remember when that was? 2001?? Maximum credit should go to the organizers; people like Paul Mooney, Rob Novak, Warren Elsmore, Bill Buchan…

This year I was invited to deliver a session (twice, in fact) entitled “Build or Bust: Controlling your Designs from Development to Production”. (You can download presentation slides here)

The first session was particularly well attended with over 100 people. And I thought I had prepared carefully….
(1) I had saved a copy of my presentation slides to a memory stick (just in case the laptop blew up);
(2) I had printed copies of the slides for delegates (but I had only printed 30 sets);
(3) I had practiced the session (of course!); and
(4) I arrived in the room in plenty of time for setup.

Unfortunately the projector switched itself off every 5 minutes for 2 or 3 minutes and the microphone switched itself off every 10 minutes for a couple of minutes.

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Posted by Simon Peek At 04:49:16 PM Location Huntingdon, UK | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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Since the launch of the 8.5 beta we've had lots of customers asking us where we stand regarding Designer in Eclipse, and whether their investment in our tools is safe. Its a tough one to answer as I can't give an official corporate response, but there are 3 key facts to consider.

1 - Notes & Domino is our business.
2 - We have been doing this for 12+ years and have no plans on retiring.
3 - We have always been in the position to provide 'added value'.

Work it out from that :¬)

Specifically on whether our tools work in the 8.5 beta or not - our tools are never supported until the gold release versions of Notes/Domino. Run them at your own risk in 8.5

Posted by Grant Norman At 10:28:13 AM Location Huntingdon, UK | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

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I was having a particularly restless night trying to sleep last night. I was trying to figure out why I was having such a hard time sleeping and nothing immediately came to mind. My wife suggested that the 98 degree daytime temperature with a sausage and pepperoni pizza chaser probably had a lot to do with it. But I contend it had more to do with a couple of issues at work. At this point, I’ll spare you the details.

This got me thinking about what keeps our customers up at night? I can imagine many of the Notes developers and admins we work with can count on the old standby “too much to do with too few resources”. But at least the deadlines are unrealistic! I would also imagine that some suffer from the challenge of having responsibility without the authority. At least from our experience, that seems to be very popular, especially among larger customers.

I can also imagine that Notes developers worry about getting that testy little bit of critical LotusScript to work properly. Similarly, Notes administrators probably have concerns about known security holes in applications that cannot get plugged by any apparent means.

What about you? What keeps you up at night? Fear of failing an audit? Fear of never getting caught up? Fear of getting caught up? There must be something. I’d love to hear from you.

Posted by Scott Johnsen At 01:53:04 PM Location Beverly, MA USA | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

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Well, I'm at the airport waiting for my flight home, and reflecting on a quiet Deutche Notes User Group (DNUG) conference. I say quiet, but it was a thoughtful quiet rather than a morose one. Everyone seemed to be digesting the news and previews of the upcoming Notes releases. Of course 8.0.2 was interesting, but it was the demonstration of the 8.5 eclipse-based designer client that got people thinking. There was a short spell of concern when the presenter demonstrating it seemed to suggest that there would be no support for LotusScript editing in the eclipse based designer as the developers did not have time to include one! This statement was clarified soon after however - what she meant was that, unlike the other script editing, they did not have time to switch the LotusScript editing to the native eclipse editor, so 8.5 will call on the existing designer client editor packaged to run in the eclipse environment.

What seemed to get everyone thinking though was that the capabilities of an eclipse based Notes client, hinted at in the 8.0x client, are now becoming readily apparent in the 8.5 world. However, this also highlights the increased complexity of application development in that environment, and this in turn means that the more easy-going Notes development practices of the past will no longer cut it in the future. Creating scalable, maintainable and robust applications in the future is going to require much more developer discipline. It seems Notes is finally entering the real-world as far as controlled application development goes!

Exciting times.

Posted by Matthew Fyleman At 02:44:46 PM Location Bremen, Germany | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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Telephone rings – Hello, Bing’s Bakery. How can I help you?

Caller: I’d like to order a cake for a going-away party.

Bing’s Bakery: What would you like on the cake?

Caller: “Best Wishes Suzanne.” Underneath that, “We will miss you!”



I guess it never hurts to double check those requirements.

Posted by Scott Johnsen At 12:44:14 PM Location Beverly, MA USA | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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And while you may be comfortable with SOX, HIPAA, OFCCP and GLBA, new compliance requirements are coming at you full speed ahead including PCI DSS, e-discovery and FFIEC. Compliance with existing requirements along with new mandates are forcing companies to constantly define new compliance processes and update existing ones. Furthermore, policies and technologies have to be mapped to these new requirements in order to avoid steep PCI fines and the escalating costs associated with e-discovery.

So how do you keep up with all this alphabet soup? How do you know which policies will need to be modified and which technologies can help? How do you manage keeping everyone trained on the latest compliance processes? What strategies do you implement? What frameworks are in place to help you through your compliance challenges? And according to CIO-Midmarket, this challenge seems to be greatest for midsize companies, but most of us have to deal with these challenges in one form or another. It’s enough to make my head spin!

Glossary
SOX – Sarbanes-Oxley Act
HIPAA – Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
OFCCP – Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs
GLBA – Graamm-LeachBliley Act
PCI DSS– Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard
FFIEC – Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council

Posted by Scott Johnsen At 11:44:54 AM Location Beverly, MA USA | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

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We were having this discussion the other day and one of the guys said 1 in 25 databases has corrupt design elements in them. I have seen them, but not in any database that has been regularly updated. Case in point--a customer sent us a database that was causing problems for one of our tools. Our investigation found that there was a piece of code laying around that was modified by a Mac designer client--no, not something new, but left over from 10 or 12 years ago. And we all know that Notes is famous for leaving stuff laying around. For example, put in a Hide-When formula, but don't check the box to use the formula.

I don't know if this is a good thing or not, but stuff gets left around. But my contention is that corrupt design elements used to be a problem, but the problem is less prevalent today, in fact, so rare that it is not found in modern databases. I do see more interest in the subject as people are looking to upgrade to ND8, which is a good thing. But by this point, most people have already been through at least one migration, fixing any corrupt design elements that had been left around.

But what is your experience? Do you still find corrupt design elements?

Posted by John Kingsley At 04:17:49 PM Location Beverly, MA USA | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)