As I said last week, the goal of this series is to discuss about the concepts of Notes and the strategy behind the product. I'll be clear about one point: Notes 8.5 is kind of a revolution for the Notes community. No, I'm not sponsored by IBM and I'm the first one to criticize when I feel that a decision is inappropriate. Read further and you'll understand what I mean.

My point is this: for the first time in 10 years or so, IBM decided to invest significantly in Notes. I'm not talking about just marketing announcements, like the ones for Notes 6 and 7, featuring the infamous DDM as the key new feature (disclosure: I created a competitor to DDM).

No, this time it's a real move forward, with the clear aim of adapting Notes to new technologies. This comes a few years too late for some partners and clients who are now moving away from Notes or already did, but most Lotus IT professionals will appreciate the change.

Unlike Notes 5.0 and 8.0 releases, the 8.5 version is a mature, ready to use product. A couple of patches are already out but nothing really serious. The product is quite well tested and stable.

I hadn't used iNotes for a while. Experiencing it again with 8.5 was a very pleasant experience. I'm missing a scalability test but during my tests through a bad line, the GUI was fast, neat and professional. Just what I'd expect from a light client and far superior to all other Web mail systems I've played with (Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook, etc...). No, don't comment about the old Notes Webmail interface, that's something we'd all like to forget.

Last but certainly not least: XPages and the new Notes Designer! Wowwwwww. I'm impressed. For the ones not familiar with the Designer revamp, you can now create applications mixing different languages (Formulas, Functions, LotusScript, JavaScript, Ajax, Java) using a single interface. This allows creating dynamic Web-enabled applications with a real independence between the "presentation" layer and the underlying data (which can be from different sources). This is just tremendous!

There is one drawback in XPages 8.5. Accessing the application from a Notes client or a browser requires you to code separately for each client. A real pity, isn't it? This was kind of a cold shower after discovering such a great new enhancement. However, I got confirmation during Lotusphere that this limitation will disappear soon.