Tuesday, April 3, 2012

No-charge Lotus Notes Traveler Gives Me Exactly What I Want...But Is It Free For Everyone?

I've invested more time/money/resources installing Lotus Notes Traveler then need be, considering I am a loyal IBM i customer.

This is not to say Traveler isn't a great product. It is. In fact, it's probably IBM's best example of "doing more with less." Traveler is a small piece of software that packs a major punch to enable customers to do mobile by using smart devices to access mail.  Many companies are going mobile with iPad, Android, iPhone, etc., not just for mail, but for the simplicity/size of these devices and the ability to access web services.  Traveler can make mail access simple for these mobile users at companies using Linux and Windows servers on x86-64 hardware.  It may be a "free" offering for those companies with a significant investment in x86-64, Windows or Linux, but it's certainly not free for companies who run big iron (Power Systems and System z).

The problem lies in the fundamental understanding of how an IBM i (and predecessors System i, iSeries and AS/400) shop works. Many of these companies do not have Windows/Linux expertise in-house and are not comfortable running applications on anything other than IBM i (nor do they want to or should need to.)

I work for a stereotypical IBM i customer.  We have mostly IBM i-based applications.  We do so little Windows/Linux that we have no relevant expertise in-house.  

In order to install a Traveler server, I'd have to:

1. Hire a resource to install a Windows virtual machine. This resource will charge me probably 5-6 hours of labour in order to install the VM, download Windows updates and prepare it to be a fully functional Windows server on our domain. Of course, I don't have this resource on demand. I have to wait for the resource to become available. Tack on telephone time and email time with scheduling this resource.
2. Download the Lotus Domino server code to the Windows VM.
3. Download the Lotus Notes Traveler code to the Windows VM.
4. Install the Lotus Domino server.
5. Install the Lotus Notes Traveler server.
6. I'm sure there's a reboot somewhere in there...it's Windows.

Now, if I were able to have Traveler running on IBM i, the process becomes much simpler.

1. Create a Lotus Domino server. I don't have to download/install any server code because I already run Domino 8.5.1, 8.5.2 and 8.5.3 servers on my single IBM i partition so the code is pre-loaded. Creating the server is a single step and literally takes less than 2 minutes.
2. Download the Lotus Notes Traveler code to IBM i.
3. Install the Lotus Notes Traveler server on IBM i.

As a customer, I could save money because I wouldn't have to hire a consultant to do my Windows work.
And I'd have what I want faster.
And it's simpler.
And it's more effective.
And it's less messy without more Windows licensing.
And it's more powerful, stable, secure and scalable because it's running on IBM i on Power Systems!

IBM has four operating systems (IBM i, Power Linux, AIX and z/OS) across their two major IBM hardware platforms (Power Systems and System z). None of these operating systems and hardware support Lotus Notes Traveler, which certainly alienates midrange and mainframe customers. It's discouraging to invest in big iron and then NEED x86-64 to do mobile.  With mobile becoming a major part of all organizations, this is truly unacceptable. 





IBM customers running midrange or mainframe could be touting the power of Lotus Notes Traveler IF they were actually allowed to run it on their preferred systems.  In an age of social media promotion, customers can be flag waving, chest beating IBM supporters from their mobile devices if only given the opportunity.  

If you give an IBM i customer access to their Lotus Notes on an iPad, you instantly make their users more productive. You instantly make their investment in Lotus Notes more attractive to younger people.  You instantly take any preconceived notion of what Lotus Notes was 15 years ago and throw it to the wind. 

Notes is current. 
Notes is modern.  
Notes is on my mobile device. 

This next generation of users could be so positively vocal about how much they love Lotus Notes on their mobile devices.  IBM, please give your true bread and butter customers what they want: Lotus Notes Traveler on IBM i.

If you are interested in asking IBM to support Lotus Notes Traveler for IBM i on Power Systems, please go to this website and let your voice be heard:
http://spitcher.wufoo.com/forms/make-ibm-i-your-social-collaboration-platform/
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10 comments:

  1. Steve, I am quite confident you could setup the windows partition and you know how to download the rest, if not, I am here to help :-). But yes, I agree it should be on iSeries too.

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  2. If you want to use some of the free entitlements you will have to do it anyway.Very IBM specific that its customers try to convince the vendor that their product isn't dead.

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  3. How about simply getting a cheap pre-built VM from Connectria and firing up Domino on it? You get all OS updates, bandwidth, support inclusive. Makes perfect sense for Traveler
    http://www.Connectria.com

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  4. @IdoNotes: Connectria sounds great for cloud enthusiasts, Chris. We're not there yet for many reasons. We want all of our business apps internally on our IBM i server where we can manage them.

    @Henning: Lotus Notes and IBM i are far from dead. IBM is well aware of that.

    @Keith: I'm sure if I spent time to learn it, with help and time spent we could do it. But Windows administration isn't an area where we feel we should invest because it's not our primary business server. Many shops feel this way, not just me. IBM i on Power Systems is what runs our business. We choose that because of it's many strengths vs the alternatives, our existing investment in training/hardware/software.

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  5. No Lotus Notes and IBM i probably are not dead as IBM hardly ever declares a product dead. I assume IBM is very well aware how many active System i are around. They also have their passport advantage numbers. System i might even be the platform where IBM has the most detailed statistics of all Domino platforms. It even is not a System i problem. Platform support for Solaris or AIX is not much better.
    I don't doubt that IBM is aware of it. You are making a lot of noise. This can be a good thing but I very well remember how well IBM managed HPUX support. At one time there just wasn't a major release update anymore (while the former release being supported for a certain period of time). Again I wish that everything goes well for you and your company and that you get all the missing components on System i (and Sametime and Connections).

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  6. I'm not saying you're wrong. IBM should indeed support Traveler native on the i, but right now they are not. I was told a few years ago that IBM see no value in it. Until that changes you are up the creek.

    However, you can avoid Windows servers altogether and use a Linux VM to run it. I've got a fair few customers running Traveler on OpenSUSE 11 with $0 required for licensing (and no Domino PVU's if you are on Express or CEO). Not perfect but until IBM remove their head from a really, really, small brown hole then you've got to do something.

    I think there has to be a technical reason for IBM's reluctance and my guess is Derby. Hopefully the ability to move the Traveler state to DB2 may at least make it easier.....

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  7. @Darren: Until they do, I will not be using Traveler in a production environment. Same goes for Connections. I know many other customers in that boat. Doing nothing and being loud about it is the biggest "something" we can do.

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  8. Steven: I'm curious how many users you'll need to support on Traveler. As you state in your post, Traveler is a nice little piece of software that does so much so well. You may resist a cloud deployment, but your mobile devices live there, so the data will need to go there sooner or later. I deployed Traveler on a Windows 2008 64-bit server at a major hosting company in 2 hours. Most of the two hours spent on that first install was figuring out why my Android devices could find the download (I was in the beta program and copied it to the wrong directory, so my bad not IBM's).

    Traveler's had bugs and has a couple UI issues, but it's sooo efficient and fast...mobile devices usually get mail before my laptop/desktops do.

    Finally, I'm surprised you don't have Windows Server experience by now (my tongue is firmly planted in my cheek here)...did you not have an FSIOP in one of your older boxes?

    Get a little Windows server in the cloud for a couple hundred bucks a month (no long-term commitment), play with it and find out just how easy it is. Plus, the readily available documents make it hard for you to shoot yourself in the foot (e.g. leave gaping security holes in your implementation. As Flip Wilson used to say: "You owe yourself a try-on!"

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  9. And, BTW, I have no idea why that was just published with "(Greenville Rotary)" tacked on the end, but I am a member... :-)

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  10. We deployed with policy too. With policies, you can wipe the data remotely.

    Started using it from beta onwards. Til now RIM went down more than my Lotus Traveler server. So, that is a BIG achievement for Lotus Traveler server.

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