In the 1984 movie This Is Spinal Tap, there’s a classic scene in which rock guitarist Nigel Tufnel demonstrates the controls on his amplifier, which are marked from 0 to 11, instead of the usual 0 to 10. “Does that mean it’s louder?” asks the interviewer? Tufnel replies, “Well, it’s one louder, isn’t it?”
There’s an argument that the latest update to HCL Notes & Domino, which happens to be version 11, is more than “one louder” than v10. Since HCL acquired the Notes/Domino platform from IBM in 2018, we’ve seen a startling leap forward in innovation of the platform. The last major release of Domino under IBM’s stewardship was v9 in March 2013, and it wasn’t until October 2018, more than 5 years later, that HCL got involved and we saw a major new release. Version 11, released in December, marks the second major release from HCL, and comes with the promise of new releases on a roughly annual basis.
So, if you haven’t looked that closely at the Notes and Domino platform in the last couple of years, you might be in for some surprises. If you moved away from Notes and you're considering coming back, or if you just haven’t upgraded since v9 (or earlier), here are our top five favorite things about the new version.
1. Domino Volt: RAD Reinvented
When Lotus Notes was first released back in the early 90s, probably the most revolutionary thing about the product was the ease with which simple business forms and workflow apps could be built. Back then we called it RAD - for Rapid Application Development, but now the more hip and happening term is “low-code”. The introduction of RAD meant that business users could suddenly build their own customized applications very quickly, which is part of the reason the Notes and Domino platform is still with us today; there are literally millions of Notes apps in use in all types of organizations around the globe.
The problem with the original Notes RAD approach is that, over the course of 30 years of development, more and more complexity has been added to the Notes development environment, Domino Designer. That’s good in a way, because experienced developers can build complex apps if needed (“pro-code”). But the original goal of allowing your typical power user to be able to knock up a quick app to track, say, expense approvals, got lost in the shuffle.
Domino Volt stays true to that original concept and reinvents it for the 21st century. It’s a simple forms-based app builder that means anyone can put together simple applications in almost no time.
2. HCL Nomad: A Lightweight Client for Domino Apps
Software, like humans, tends to put on weight with age. Thirty year old software can become quite portly; plump even, or in some cases morbidly obese. This is often the natural outcome of thirty years worth of new features and other “improvements” being added by an assortment of different developers with different skill levels. It’s just a fact of life. And so, the Notes client, much as we love it, probably would have trouble climbing a flight of stairs.
Enter HCL Nomad, as far as we can tell a brand new, built from the ground up, lightweight client that will run your existing Notes applications unchanged on iOS and Android mobile devices. And, coming soon we hear, Nomad will run in a desktop browser, allowing you to easily run your apps from a browser without the need to install the Notes client.
3. Cloud or On Premises - You Choose
The original Lotus Notes, of course, was architected in best 1990s style on a client-server model. And the server part, back in those days, would have been sitting in a server room on your company’s premises. These days, of course, it’s more common to outsource the job of looking after those servers to someone else, and Domino v11 makes that easy.
While it still supports the on-premises model, Domino v11 has Docker container support, which allows smaller and faster deployment and easier upgrades. You may not be familiar with DAOS (Domino Attachment Object Service), but it’s basically the thing that allows you to get file attachments out of the Notes database and store them somewhere else. Domino v11 adds Amazon Web Services S3 support, so you can offload your older attachments than haven’t been accessed for a while from the Domino server.
There are several other features that provide better integration with other systems, such as Directory Sync which will ease integration with Microsoft Active Directory based mail systems such as Outlook.
4. Simplified Licensing Model
With the launch of v11, HCL has introduced a new, simplified licensing model for Notes and Domino, which is based purely on the number of users. No more counting PVUs or obscure licensing formulas. Just count the number of users. And the cost to bring your Domino licenses up to date will most likely be lower than you expect. If you have let your license renewals lapse, there is now no penalty for resubscribing.
5. Same as It Ever Was - the Reasons You Bought Notes in the First Place
With all the great new stuff that’s been added to Notes and Domino v11, it’s worth remembering why you bought it in the first place. Security is baked into the Notes and Domino architecture and the platform has probably the most comprehensively configurable security model of any application platform ever. That’s a double-edged sword of course, because you have to know what you’re doing when you set things up. But there are many organizations in the financial, pharmaceutical and medical or military sectors that still use Notes and Domino today primarily because of the security model.
Backwards compatibility is something that has been carefully maintained throughout the 30-year history of the platform. You can take an app that was running on Notes R3 in 1993 and run it on v11 today. And that’s just one thing that contributes to an incredibly low overall total cost of ownership (TCO). Last year’s “Total Economic Impact of HCL Domino” study by Forrester Consulting reported an average return on investment of more than 300% over three years by using Domino as an application platform.
So to summarize, in v11 you have all the benefits of the product that made it the application platform of choice for many of the world’s largest (and smallest) enterprises the world over. And now, HCL has added new low-code tooling, a new lightweight, mobile friendly client for apps, a host of integration and cloud support features and significantly simplified the licensing model.
If you haven’t looked at Notes and Domino recently, now would be a great time to do that. Click below to start a conversation about Notes and Domino v11. We love to talk!