Lotus Notes - Yuck!

Mikey

Mikey

Mikey

Soldato
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Well I'm into my new job for about 8 weeks now and loving it, however one MAJOR grip is that they've got Lotus Notes. What a pile of poo!! Thankfully I don't admin it and I don't want to... Time to pursuade the people with money and sway that we need Exchange :)
 
Good luck. Notes is about 1,000,000 times cheaper than Exchange ;) But yeah I agree, it's worth a shot as Notes looks like it hasn't been updated in about 20 years...
 
Mmm doesn't bod well then, we've got 10,000+ users... but I know we also have very good discounts with Microsoft from what my team leader said.

Fingers crossed then. We made a £1bn profit after tax last year and we still have a crap mail system :(
 
There is no way in hell they'll move to exchange. What version of Notes are they using 7.0.2 is a real breath of fresh air compared to 6.5.3

The thing with Notes is that its a real collaboration tool for users holding databases and mailfiles together which Exchange can't really do without the addition of Sharepoint for example.

Administering it isn't so bad as long as the load balancaing and clustering is working effectively although you do see some odd quirks especially with clients.

But, I stand by what I said earlier, especially with that many users they are definately not going to move. It would be a logisitcal nightmare now i'm afraid. :(
 
Think it's 6.5.x problem is I've come from Exchange etc. I'd happily see Notes squashed ;) We've got a sharepoint server, we'll we did until it failed on a reboot on me today :rolleyes:

Yeah they keep going on about the databases etc. Yet we've got SQL and Oracle instances coming out of our ears... Proper databases with dedicated DBA teams etc.

There is a Notes migration wizard in exchange, haven't used it. only done exchange to exchange... What would be nice at SSE is two exchange clusters and 4 x NLB front end servers.. Exchange just is so much better. I wanted to install Outlook with the notes connector, but got frowned at :(
 
Tell me about it. I've gone the other way from Notes to Exchange and love exchange but equally can see a place for Notes although I would advise against any reasonably new company from going Notes even if cost is an issue.

There is also DAMO but the notes > outlook connector is only compatible with Outlook 2003 at the moment :rolleyes:

Company I worked for had Oracle, and SQL upgrading to SQL 2005, DBA teams, etc but these were actually integrated into Notes :eek: and Notrix :eek: which really hurt, especially if something died.

Users get familiar with notes and its 'one application for all' approach.

Oh and the Notes migration wizard rarely works which also comes as no surprise. :(

EDIT: Interestingly, the Oracle licence was a ludicrous amount of money, probably verging on the cost of an exchange licence. The thing is, it's not so much the money as the willingness to change. They won't want to as it would mean unbelievable upheaval.
 
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Well fingers crossed. Other problem we have is that we have plenty of ex IBM people... :rolleyes:

We've got about 1500 servers, 10 HP EVAs a few XP arrays and so on. Huge IBM mainframe, lot's of Sun kit etc etc. So in the grand scheme of things Exchange is cheap. Thankfully some of the new architects are Exchange people. We've got a Notes admin team, I'm part of the Microsoft team and everyone on my team has dealt with Exchange...

In reality if we moved from Notes to Exchange Microsoft would be directly involved.
 
Due to various IBM mainframe kit I learn't today that we pay nothing for Notes. That sucks :(
 
Yeah im not really a fan of notes either but since its developed here its unlikey to be changed :p
 
I assume you work at Hursley Park? I have heard the MS may try and get exchange in for nothing at our place in a bid to get us away from Notes. Got 3 years to run on the notes contract. I've said to SSE, dump notes for mail as it's crap, but keep it for the critical databases etc. in it until they can be moved to SQL/Oracle
 
Mikey said:
I assume you work at Hursley Park? I have heard the MS may try and get exchange in for nothing at our place in a bid to get us away from Notes. Got 3 years to run on the notes contract. I've said to SSE, dump notes for mail as it's crap, but keep it for the critical databases etc. in it until they can be moved to SQL/Oracle
Click to expand...

Indeed, it's not "that" crap but some of the features annoy the hell out of me (replication, non intuitive ui) :p
 
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