:) If only IBM could work out what they were/are doing with notes/domino... Some aspects of it were well ahead of it's time. (Shame about the interface from 4 - 7)
I think that ship has well and truly sailed though.. (Notes 8.5 even has a pretty nice interface - on a beefy enough box anyway)
it's slowly getting there. But I think it's too late.
Area's where IBM/Lotus dropped the ball:
- It looked too old for too long - pretty much anyone my age will find it (at least < v8) pretty archaic. I think the focus for so long was on keeping the interface the same (so as not to have to re-train any users) - it missed the fact that anyone new to the corporate world is going to be horrified at how old/slow/crap most of Notes 7 looks -- (and don't get me started on the Workspace)
- Desktop Email clients are probably in a slow death circle (note the fact that I've had a web based email account for about half of my life now - 12 years). I love the 8.5 Sametime integration - but for an email interface - I prefer my gmail account.
- The sales pitch was always pretty confused. Email. Groupware. Databases. There is definite value in some of the Notes/Domino offering - but getting a sales rep to explain it to you is a fair bit of a challenge
- Lack of end user marketing / interest. How many organizations in the world today could could announce "We're deploying Lotus Notes" and have people excited? Not many I'm guessing -- at least - most people I've talked to have only ever heard the horror stories For most people -- their opinion of the notes interface equals something like: http://homepage.mac.com/bradster/iarchitect/lotus.htm or http://lotusnotessucks.4t.com/
I think IBM are basically doing the right things with it now.. but I basically see it slowly dying..
