Just Enough Governance for Notes Blog :: Notes New Threat

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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.

Comments

1 - I am a marketing person and Notes developer. I have tried the Google Docs and Salesforce and they have a long away to go. We write complex Notes applications and it is not possible to have an automatic way of converting it to their platform. I have talked to a few users that have used Salesforce.com and they all have said that for simple things it is okay, but for more complex things it is no different then have a development team create it from scratch. None of this is covered in the basic package and it is all at extra cost.

Posted by Richard Moy At 05:01:55 PM On 06/24/2008 | - Website - |

2 - Another interesting take on the Salesforce.com announcement can be found at { Link }

Do you think they believe their own marketing sh... stuff?

Posted by Scott Johnsen At 05:22:56 PM On 06/24/2008 | - Website - |

3 - Thanks for the shout Emoticon

Posted by Ian White At 05:38:39 PM On 06/24/2008 | - Website - |

4 - As any hunter will tell you, it is very hard to kill something if it is constant moving and adjusting to its environment. Domino and Notes is a moving target that is constantly be changed and improved on to meet the market needs. I do not agree in having a bloated client like Notes 8 standard, but IBM has constantly improved the capabilities of Domino and Notes to adjust to the changing market and will be around for a long time not just in large enterprises but in small and medium businesses.

Posted by Richard Moy At 05:43:08 PM On 06/24/2008 | - Website - |

5 - @4 - Do you really think that Notes/Domino will be around for a long time based on what IBM has done/is doing to it? What exact innovations has IBM brought about in Notes/Domino lately?

Posted by Anon At 07:58:47 PM On 06/24/2008 | - Website - |

6 - @5,

I am surprise you said that. Though I am very critical about some of the directions that IBM is heading, they have added a number of capabilities and improvement that we feel is very important for our company and clients including:

1) Increased server performance
2) The ability to consume and provide web services
3) Composite applications both the IBM way and the Taishan Works way
4) Bandwidth usage reduction
5) Ubuntu support (coming)
6) Symphony integration (coming)

There are others, but they are less important to us including the Eclipse client which the latest 8.02 is suppose to be better, Web Portal integration.

Yes, there are a number of things that I believe IBM should be doing including improving the look of the Basic client which I believe is very important and fixing bugs that have existed for years, but it is still the most versatile development environment around.

Posted by Richard Moy At 10:45:14 PM On 06/24/2008 | - Website - |

7 - @6 -

I realize that IBM has added capabilities to Notes/Domino. But, my question was/is, what "innovation" has been added to the platform?

Posted by Anon At 06:28:35 PM On 06/25/2008 | - Website - |

8 - I just read Ed Brill's post on Unify { Link } If Salesforce.com has the same success that Unify has had, they might as hang it up right now. And I have no reason to believe their results will be any different.

Posted by Scott Johnsen At 07:28:41 AM On 06/26/2008 | - Website - |