Information Systems:Limitations to IBM/Lotus Notes

This article is highly opinionated. Frankly, it's hard to be objective about Notes.

Overview

At uniPHARM, Domino/Notes is used for email, calendaring, contacts, and rooms/resource management (reserving rooms for meetings).

The IBM (Lotus) Domino/Notes platform - to put it nicely - does not have a great reputation. While there are still companies that continue to use this software, I am willing to bet that the rate of new setups is near-zero (e.g. no new companies that are looking for an email platform are buying into this platform). This page is not a recommendation for migration off of the Domino platform, but rather a discussion of its limitations. (Over time, I strongly suspect they will become one and the same anyway.-norwizzle (talk) 16:40, 26 September 2017 (PDT))

Limitations

• Unnecessarily hosted on our single, critical business server

• What initially was a good idea (because we got more utility from a very expensive server by also using it to do email), is now perhaps no longer one.
• The Power8 server (and its predecessors) was acquired to run an ERP. It is built to run business logic, calculations, and database operations. It is less appropriate to buy a Power server to run a large Java app server (Domino)
• Related to the last point - Domino is a general application server. Email and calendar just so happens to be some of the applications it can run. It has its own directory/database structure, and it even has platform-specific development languages (e.g. LotusScript). Domino may be justifiable if we had invested in developing with it (it also would've been a huge mistake). But we just use it for email and calendar.
• Our system has 2TB of capacity, around 1.6-1.8 of it usable. There is not a lot of room to spare, and because of space-saving considerations, we have staff members with 300MB mail files. You can sign up for a free Gmail account and get 15GB. Even if you were to expand the mail file of all users to 5GB, at 50 users, that is 250GB, or 14% of precious system disk space allocated to mail files. That does not include the space that Domino itself takes up, or the performance hit the application takes on the system. Sure, ours is a powerful system that can handle Domino load - but why do we have to insist on continuing to do it this way when there are better options?

• Proprietary mail server structure necessitating a separate mail server software as a gateway for inbound/outbound external mail. Domino mail routing is proprietary, while 99% of other email uses the common protocols POP, IMAP and SMTP. I think Domino can also do SMTP and serve as a one-stop-shop for all uniPHARM email needs, except we have 350+ shareholder/staff mail accounts in MDaemon, and Domino charges per user. So with Domino, we will always need some other software to do email. Again, why?

• Proprietary directory structure also means that Domino groups (Customer Service, IT Group etc.) have to be translated, and a lot of times this leads to errors with replies e.g. someone sends to abc@outside.com and cc's IT Group. When the outside sender replies back, their mail client will not recognize IT Group and try to send back to something non-existent like IT%Group@unipharm.com and error out.

• Issues with function and usability, particularly with the desktop client (Notes), and Domino administration client. Countless issues.

• Large chunks of people's mail being deleted when they claim they did not actively do so.
• Random reports of mail not being delivered.
• Sending to the wrong contact when one was clearly selected.
• But when it comes to Lotus mail - it's always the user's fault right?

• Cost

• It almost works against the entire argument listing this as a limitation, because usually cost is considered when there is parity amongst all alternatives with respect to other criteria.
• Yet, we pay a hefty maintenance fee to IBM to support this software. Do you call Gmail or iCloud because your email doesn't work? No, because email always works.
• Also, CAL-based licensing means the support fee goes up with increased number of users.
• Again, the cost is justified if we get more out of the software. Are we using Verse collaboration? No. Are we using Sametime for video/messaging/presence? No.