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LIFE AFTER WEBSPHERE
Notes professionals remain optimistic
By Dan Simmons
I recently took a small, informal poll of Lotus Business Partners, Notes consulting firms, and a few in-house IT managers. I asked for input on the topics of the economy and WebSphere's encroachment on Lotus Notes turf. The results are actually quite positive as Notes professionals see new projects and a recovering economy heading their way, while they work to add WebSphere to their skill sets. Here are the responses, rounded slightly for simplicity's sake, along with some interesting comments I received.
Do you have more or less Lotus-related projects than this time last year?
The responses broke down as follows:
- 63% said they have more projects;
- 27% said they have fewer projects;
- 1% said they're hovering at the same level.
Has WebSphere technology had an impact on your Notes projects?
The responses broke down as follows:
- 25% answered yes;
- 55% said WebSphere isn't impacting them;
- 10% said it had a little impact;
- 10% said it hasn't had an impact yet.
Henry Berman, VP of Denver-based Process Stream Technologies, writes that in his recent correspondence with Lotus on their strategic direction, Lotus said it will concentrate on three main areas: knowledge management, messaging, and e-learning. As a result, the role of the Business Partner will evolve to include more installation, implementation, and customization of Lotus' out-of-the-box solutions such as Lotus Discovery Server, Lotus QuickPlace, Lotus Workflow, and Domino.Doc, along with more traditional development of custom Domino solutions.
Additionally, with IBM continuing to focus on WebSphere as an enterprise application platform, selling Domino-based, enterprise-wide solutions will become more complex and difficult. This creates a fundamental change in the way an application development firm like Process Stream will do business. Berman says that based on IBM's strategic shift in the positioning of the Domino product family by IBM, Process Stream has decided to add WebSphere-related services to its offering mix and uses both WebSphere and Domino as platforms for enterprise applications.
Berman suspects that current Lotus customers now more closely evaluate Enterprise Java Application platforms rather than simply continuing to invest in their Lotus infrastructure. He suggests that as a result, established Lotus customers will shop solutions from other vendors, such as BEA Systems (at http://www.beasys.com) and Sun Microsystems (at http://www.sun.com), in the Enterprise Java Application space in addition to IBM. This is predicted to result in a more competitive environment for both Lotus and IBM and a more challenging landscape for IBM and Lotus Business Partners.
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