I just thought I would share this with you; A few weeks ago I was doing a consulting gig in NY. The client had a Microsoft partner build a proof of concept workflow application with Sharepoint. The application fell severely short and the vendor response was that they needed to spend huge money to build such a complex application.
Ha-ha, little did they know there was a Notes enthusiast in the house. My friend at the client company convinced the CIO to take a look at Notes for this application. I was able to build the application in two days! While I was doing the summary presentation the CIO said something to the effect of "yeah, but that's Notes. I want it as a web app and everyone knows that Notes is a terrible web platform". I wasn't really prepared for that one, since I had been told that a Notes client applciation would be fine. Thinking on my feet I pointed my browser to ideajam.net to show them that Notes is a perfectly capable web platform. They were completely blown away by ideajam. They loved the UI and the whole concept of what the product does. Sadly, they are still drinking the Microsoft Kool-aid and want to take one more look at Sharepoint. I told them that Notes plays well in the AD/LDAP world and that they shouldn't think of this as an either-or choice.
They are still considering Notes as an application server and possibly to replace Exchange for messaging. I would love to be blogging about this but my current employer has a strict conflict of interest policy which prevents me from doing that. Anyway, I thought you would enjoy the excellent feedback on your product.
I also just heard that even thought Sharepoint didn't deliver what they expected it to that the customer did decide to go with Sharepoint, however they are also going to use Domino and Notes for some other projects.
Comment posted by Duffbert11/17/2008 07:00:27 PM
Homepage: http://www.duffbert.com
Sounds like the world I'll be inhabiting. :)
Comment posted by Bill Malchisky11/17/2008 11:54:53 PM
Homepage: http://www.EffectiveSoftware.com
I'll pass this along to a few of my clients. I have one walking this line right now. Amazing...Thanks for posting it.
Comment posted by Dave Armstrong11/18/2008 04:16:01 AM
SharePoint has its flaws, to be sure. But stories like this are usually not really about SharePoint - they are about .NET consultants who wrap SharePoint around custom code and try to pass it off as SharePoint. SP is a much-abused technology platform, and it is hard to find a good SP implementation exactly because of all these consultants who hack together lousy systems.
The truth is, after spending a year doing SharePoint, and adding it to my 15 years of Notes experience, I get my best results with a mix. I use Notes for workflow and application processing, SharePoint for navigation and web UI, InfoPath to match the capabilities of a Notes form, and Web Services to send InfoPath data to Notes apps.
The whole "Notes vs. SharePoint" attitude is old, tiring, and short-sighted.
Comment posted by Ed Brill11/23/2008 08:13:49 AM
Homepage: http://www.edbrill.com
@Dave, but it's what Microsoft wants Notes customers to consider, since for whatever reason, IT buyers love to have a simple binary commodity choice. It makes it easy for a decision-maker, especially a finance person, to think "I used to spend money on X and now I will on Y".
@Bruce, this is why I have an IdeaJam screen shot in every presentation I give these days. It shows the realm of what is possible, from a Domino, Xpages, and social networking perspective.
