Why choose HCL Domino/Notes and not any other mail platform?

Because of the global attention i received for this blog, i decided to change it a little bit. I totally agree with all the negative and mostly positive feedback. Everyone who knows me: “this is me”. This is how i speak up and tell the world what i think about it. But if someone is offended by it, i will apologize and change the blog by soften the words a little bit.

It’s no secret that i really, really, really dislike Microsoft Exchange/Outlook/O365. And even more, the aggressive way they “STEAL” customers away from other platforms makes me more aware of the danger then ever before. I personally cannot believe that this is allowed. They promise a migration from A to Z, but got stuck after the mail-migration and leave you ( the customer) behind with half a migration. Everyone knows that Domino also includes hosting applications on the best NO-SQL platform ever, and these are mostly customized per customer. There is no way Microsoft can migrate the application data into a standard Microsoft solution. So, once a customer moved away from Domino mail, they always got stuck with 2 separated platforms: Exchange/O365/Outlook for mail/agenda, and Domino/Notes for all the applications. Now the customer needs to pay and maintain 2 platforms instead of 1.

I have been using Domino and Notes for 24 years now. From day 1 i knew, this was the way to go. The simplicity in use, overall security, database technology, the best replication method ever, and of course the-way-to-work……. this was for me the best thing i had ever seen. In all those years this feeling hasn’t changed. It has been proven that my feeling wasn’t wrong. Unfortunately, this doesn’t apply for the user experience. IBM build a client designed by technicians/nerds for technicians/nerds. They never thought of looking to what the end-user needed or even wished for. It always seems like they didn’t care. They never changed the look and feel or using modern technology in doing that.

HCL took over Domino and Notes. The first thing was to get rid of the backlog since 2007. They did an amazing job and still do. And now for the first time since……ever…..the client will change into something new(er). Using the latest technology and with an excellent UX-team, we all expect a future changing client. A client without the need to install or upgrade it ever again.
HCL Nomad Web, see my article: https://www.angioni.nl/2020/03/08/hcl-nomad-web-the-new-client-for-hcl-domino/

Most heard complains about Notes/Domino:
– Old look and feel Lotus Notes Client
– Upgrade Notes client is horrible expensive
– notes.id ??? That’s old.
– No integration with other products
– Development tools are old
– Development platform is old ( eclipse version )

Now, what are the really good things about Domino?

– replication rocks. Sync data between several Domino servers. Domino replicates only changes without the use of transactional logging. It uses it’s own unique way to sync data on field-level with the possibility to also use the security model while replicating.
– almost no downtime. I used to work in an environment with almost 50,000 users. Our servers run in a clustered environment with 100% service uptime. We could perform an tripple-bases upgrade scenario ( upgrade half the cluster, and afterwards the other half ).
– no need for AD authentication and “can” run on itself, but SAML or SPNEGO is also possible. So when AD is down, you still can use the autonomous Domino authentication using your ID file.
– Still develop for on premise code-stream, where Microsoft announced to stop Exchange on premise and only develop for Cloud. There are a lot of customers who CANNOT move to the Cloud. So i think that we have to migrate them from Exchange to Domino. Problem solved !!

Why you should choose Domino?

• Can run on several platforms, like Linux ( the one i prefer ).
• Is robust and can host several thousands of users on a 2 server cluster in active-active configuration.
• Every server can run SMTP, MAIL, LDAP, POP3, IMAP, HTTP(s), APPS, etc… no need for extra servers.
• Storage and design reside in the same database. No need to install extra servers for storage or design.
• Cluster-awareness takes place on Client-side. So no need to add a cluster-layer on Server-side ( extra resources ).
  • Cluster is self-healing and can repair itself
• Is reliable and can run months, maybe years, without restarting it.
• Is the first no-sql platform EVER.
• The security layer is several layers deep. Therefore it’s highly recommended in environments where security is PRIO-1.
  • Server access
    • Network access
      IP Whitelisting on domino level or OS Firewall rules can restrict access.
    • User authentication
    • Domino server access list
  • Database access in ACL and Roles
  • View access
  • Document access
  • Field access
  • Web security for client access only ( or not)
  • Data encryption by distributed keys
• Communication between servers and clients is compressed and highly encrypted.
• Databases can be encrypted using it’s server object. So only the server itself can read the database and serve the data to the clients. If you copy a database from the server onto another server by file-system-copy, the other server cannot access/read that database.
• DAOS enabled: de-double attachments. Only store 1 version, off-database, and only store a reference-link to the DAOS object. DAOS can be enabled on ALL databases, mail or application.

I have to stop now, because i can continue to write 100 pages with all the good stuff why i like and work with HCL Domino. But …… for now this is enough.

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