Posted on 02/18/2005 8:59:07 PM PST by Next_Time_NJ
debian apt-get from a console seems to work well on my box...
Because many of their workstation apps, like Notes, are Windows-only. This $100 million is all about making their apps work with LInux.
The impression that's left is it's good for IBM's consulting business, but not for their own internal operations.
This article shows that untrue.
Microsoft also changed the API two years into the project, causing a massive amount of unneeded cost, and a lot of pain for us down the road.
A lot of people. The viability of switching platforms varies widely between organizations, and depends mainly on what software is being used. IBM obviously has tons of Windows-only software for which there is no easy alternative, making their switch difficult. Other organizations (all smaller than IBM) have found the switch relatively painless and quite cost-effective. It's easy if you just use Office-type apps and browser-independent web apps.
However, after this switch, anyone currently using a Windows/IBM solution will find it fairly easy to switch to Linux, as IBM has already had a chance to iron out the kinks in its own migration.
Why is IBM still running a dinosaur like Notes? WIKIs and other tools have replaced early attempts at groupware, and who needs a huge pile like Notes to read email?
Notes has a "portability" layer that enables you to get that crappy Notes look-and-feel on whatever platform you want. They should be able to port it to Linux faster than re-implementing any two Notes apps.
I don't know enough about Notes to tell you (except that it does a lot more than email), but it is their own application and apparently pervasive throughout the enterprise.
I won't even ask how you prepared them.
Notes for e-mail is a bit much, I agree with ya. The back-end processing on the mail servers for SMTP network compatibility is horrendous. Even the client template was too much for me to wrap my brain around, and I am a Notes developer.
But as far as RBDMS goes, even R3 had more functionality than Access (or even AS/400) ever will. WIKI requires connectivity, a stand-alone Notes DB doesn't. A distributed mail-in Notes DB on a server anywhere in the network can be open to all or locked down to a specific group at management's discretion. Notes-to-Notes e-mail is simply elegant; you can invite a user to a new database by giving him/her a button to press which installs everything needed. A Domino-enabled database can be accessed with a web browser, and you'll get the same functionality as if you were using a Notes client. It's just about everything IBM needs.
Notes replaced a lot of infrastructure that was running on VM, IMS, CICS, etc. (you talk about dinosaurs!), so for IBM it was cost-effective. I replaced a process at a vendor, which was using a "distributed" (parked on a file server) Excel spreadsheet and a lot of paper, pencils, erasers, etc., with a stand-alone Notes DB. Took about a week to develop and debug. I developed another DB which tracks all of the VHF/UHF frequencies programmed in all of my ham radios and scanners, and their offsets, CTCSS tones, callsigns, locations, etc. Sorts by band, radio, mode and callsign. Printed reports for each radio, showing exactly which channel has what attributes. I couldn't have done it with Access.
I like Notes (can you tell?) but I wouldn't want to use it for e-mail.
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