By Brian Arnold
Those of us who have been paying attention over the past couple of years know that now is a great time to be involved with the HCL Notes and Domino platform. It has been many years since we have seen the level of investment in the platform that we are witnessing now. Despite that fact, most, if not all, developers and project managers who work in the HCL Notes and Domino field have experienced the wrenching moment when they are told that they will be migrating to another platform. The decision to migrate normally comes from high above in the organization with little to no consideration on what it will take. It’s normally mandated for a couple of reasons:
New management is hired who came from an alternate platform background. The new management comes in, guns a-blazing, wanting to have what they used at their previous organization, regardless of how it will affect the end users in their new home.
Management does not see a value in keeping a platform that has had little-to-no updates in the past decade (or more). Would you keep paying yearly maintenance fees on something that never changed? If your streaming video service never added new content would you keep paying?
The problems that surround these reasons for migration are lengthy and in many cases are never realized until well into the migration process:
The design of the Domino databases is much more complex than initially believed.
Rarely is there an “Off the Shelf” direct replacement for the applications that were built in Domino.
Mission critical Domino applications are in use that cannot afford any downtime for the users.
The existing developers have little to no knowledge of the new platform being forced onto them, which in turn either forces the organization to spend weeks of time and money to train the developers on the new platform or they end up hiring new developers who do have the required knowledge.
Once the migration and re-development begins it is quickly realized that the new platform cannot accomplish the same functionality that exists in Domino already. This forces the organization to purchase third party add-ons for the new platform, raising the cost and maintenance of the new design beyond what was originally envisioned.
Never ending meetings to discuss the migration, re-design, failed proof-of-concepts, training, demonstrations by vendors, budget and time extensions, etc., etc., etc.
If any (or all) of the above sound familiar to you and have been or are happening in your organization then it is definitely time to take another long hard look at what has been happening at HCL and specifically with Notes and Domino.
I personally have been on both sides of the proverbial “Stay or Go” migration conversation. In the early years it was much easier to convince the C-Level management that staying with Notes and Domino was the only choice since all of the mission critical applications were on the platform and a plethora of new features were constantly being released in the product offering. Unfortunately, in the latter years of its ownership by IBM, product innovation was less than stellar.
IBM made the decisions to limit new feature releases, all but cancelled any marketing initiatives, transformed the beloved Lotusphere conference to a more generic IBM event, and slowed the advancement of functionality in the base platform. This was interpreted in the industry that IBM was preparing to no longer support the product line. It seemed as though the writing was on the wall for Notes and Domino and that the platform would just fade away.
This made the rationalization for staying on the Notes and Domino platform very hard, if not impossible, to debate with the C-Level management. Why stick with the Notes and Domino platform if IBM is curbing development on it? The future seemed uncertain for long-term Domino clients and developers, myself being one of them with currently more than 25 years of experience working and developing in Notes & Domino.
Then we all saw the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel: HCL Technologies (HCL). HCL was contracted by IBM to continue with the minor releases of the products, including Notes & Domino, Connections, Sametime, Traveler, etc.). Many people interpreted that as IBM putting the final nail in the coffin, outsourcing all of the development and maintenance of the products to another company based in India.
However, HCL knew that the platform, and the existing clients, needed more modern advancements in the product lines, and they started work on Notes & Domino v10. Clients and Business Partners started immediately seeing new features being added to the product line. New Features! This had not happened for almost a decade (XPages were added in v8.5 in December 2008, improved and fully supported in v9 in March 2013, then nothing new).
HCL was fast becoming “a new hope.” IBM and HCL jointly announced that Notes & Domino v10 would be released in Q4-2018. It was the first new release in over five years, marking what many hoped to be a turning point in the product lines back to a more rapid release schedule. Modern functionality was being added to the native programming language, LotusScript, and built in mobile functionality was also being added to XPages. Business Partners were also allowed to beta test the new versions, so they could be prepared to answer questions and ensure that their offerings were still compatible with the new version that was being released.
The LotusScript programming language now included new Classes, Properties and Methods for modern development methodologies, such as:
Native HTTP calls (Get, Put, Post, etc.)
Native JSON handling
A new way to search – Domino Query Language (DQL)
XPages received its first real update within the base product since 2013. An entire set of new Mobile Controls were released to provide the framework for mobile applications built on XPages design. The Domino Designer client has also been updated with the latest Java Virtual Machine runtime and improvements to the Eclipse-based designer in general.
If you’re not accustomed to developing in the Domino Designer or if you have other web developers in your organization, they can now take advantage of the Domino AppDev Pack which extends Domino development into programming languages and frameworks such as JavaScript, Angular, React and Node.JS. No longer do you have to know all of the intricacies involved with the many proprietary design elements provided in the Domino Designer!
And then something amazing happened. A native mobile platform was introduced. Originally named IBM Domino Mobile Apps, it is now called HCL Nomad. Back in the day when Lotus originally released the Domino Addon for the Notes Server (circa 1997) they promised that you could “develop once and it would work everywhere”. That was not a reality back then, but the new HCL Nomad client is actually delivering on that original promise.
With little to no changes to your original existing Domino databases you can deliver them on Apple iPad and iPhone devices today! The HCL Nomad application is a mobile Notes client which can run your existing Domino databases on the devices. It supports local synchronization as well, so your users can take their most used Domino databases anywhere.
HCL has also added new Classes, Properties and Methods in Domino V11 to make GPS calls in your HCL Nomad enabled apps so you can provide mapping functionality natively in your Domino applications for use in HCL Nomad. In fact, if you have an iPad or iPhone you can download HCL Nomad and connect your devices to your existing Domino servers. I have tested connecting to Domino v8.5.3, v9 and v10 without any issues. Here is a direct link to the Apple AppStore page for HCL Nomad. HCL also has in the works equivalent versions for Android tablets and smartphones as well as a version for Chromebook devices.
As you most likely already know, development of a mobile version of a Domino database can be incredibly complex. But with HCL Nomad you can deliver on your organization’s mobile strategies as fast as you can deliver native Domino applications to your Notes client users. Just imagine the reaction that your C-Level management will have when you show them your existing Domino databases on your iPad with next to no changes! This, in and of itself, could be the savior that you are looking for, both to keep Notes & Domino in your organization and to keep your job security!
And if that wasn’t enough to influence your decision makers into keeping Domino in your organization, HCL is also making it financially smart to stay as well. HCL recently announced a new program called HCL Restart, the details of which will be available here on this very blog within the next couple of weeks. For now though, we can say that there will be some strong incentives for organizations that have moved away from Notes and Domino to return to the platform.
As you can see, HCL and the HCL Business Partner Community are working incredibly hard to keep your business and help you succeed with the Domino platform. And as a bonus, we at Teamstudio are still offering our Domino v10/11 and Mobile Readiness Check for one of your Domino databases. This offer will allow you to ensure that your mission critical Domino applications are ready to be used in the new versions of Domino as well as on the new HCL Nomad client! This offer is open until the end of January 2020 and is available to all users of Domino, regardless if you are one of our existing clients or not.
With all of the information provided above you should be more than ready to both impress your coworkers with rapid mobile development of your Domino applications as well as educate the people in your organization who are deciding if Domino is staying or going. I think it will be an easy conversation on staying with the HCL Domino platform!
To learn more about the free Domino v10/11 and Mobile Readiness Check offer, or if you have anything else you’d like to discuss with us, click below. We’re always happy to chat!