Friday, October 31, 2008

Fudbuster Friday #12 - Lotus is Going J2EE

Sorry for a lack of postings this week, was traveling but watch out next week!

Yep, you saw it and heard it everywhere. Maybe even from various vendors.

But is it true? Yes
Is Domino itself going J2EE? Not likely.

We know the products coming out soon or announced either run with Websphere as an option or solely run on it or with it.
Lotus Quickr, Connections, Sametime all have it in one form or another.

But is it that different from everything running from a browser? Or a universal inbox which is NOT part of your email system?
Or is it like running your car with petrol, ethanol or electric? It still does the same work, just presumably more efficiently, with some changes to your engine and auto parts.

Where does this leave your admins? As an Admin, the last thing I want is to have yet another platform to manage on top of the others. But you either embrace change or distance yourself from it.

It's a great time for other vendors to attack.
What do you want do? What is your company prepared for? Does IBM have enough Websphere professionals in existence to help people?
And at what expense?

Does Websphere scare you because you think it is how it was 10 years ago? Or do you see it as a much needed piece of architecture to raise your entire offering beyond your competitors.

Let me know your thoughts because some out there are on both sides of the fence and we need to push them off it and take a stand.

And on that note I will close and remind all Americans to vote on Tuesday.

2 comments:

  1. Does my opinion count ? To be honest, I've never been a Domino admin so I can't compare being a Domino admin to being a WebSphere admin.

    I do have plenty of experience deploying and maintaining applications to WebSphere. I started using WAS v4. Nowadays, I frequently use WAS v6.1, and WOW! What a difference a couple of years make!!!

    One of the things that I like most is how easy it is to scale applications. Additionally, WAS v6.1 comes with SPNEGO support out of the box... This is good for all those Windows customers who want to achieve SSO with the desktop (i.e. you log in to your Windows desktop and that automatically logs you in into all the apps running on top of WAS.. Sweet!)

    Finally, they recently added the capability to capture metrics on your application so that you can monitor every little detail and tune the parameters according to the particular uses you are giving an application.

    In my experience, it's usually a 50/50.. Either the customer that I'm going to already has a WAS admin or they have a Domino admin (it used to be 10/90 back in 2003.. more Domino admins than WAS admins).

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  2. Luis,
    Thanks for the input which is exactly what I was hoping to hear.
    Someone who not only lives Websphere but can discuss the past and present so others can appreciate it as well.
    Thanks!

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