Lotus Approach or Approaching Lotus

As I twittered today, I was engaged by a client to discuss this Lotus NotesSuiteprogram, in their words.

Eventually I got to see the application and yes indeed, it is in Lotus Approach. A program which I have loved in the WAY distant past. On the bright side it is very customizable and still workable and the client is happy if I start bringing in reports and views from a different program, in this case Notes. While I would like to see them on Lotus Forms(they have many, many forms) the road to greatness will be a parallel course over the year.

We discussed that no matter what the front end may look like, the data is still good to go and can be ported easily. The forms, views and reporting, not so easy.

I imagine many similar businesses out there run on approach still, hopefully if you are one of them you will help me expand your program too as this client.

One problem was they do not have the design locked down or passworded so ANYONE could mess it up at any time. Scary! Suggested they correct that in the mean time.

This client came to me from Linkedin, and not even someone I know. So for those still on the outside of social networking and media, just remember your future clients are out there, but they can't find you if you don't make the effort to be known.

Disabled....but Completed

There I was minding my own business installing an 8.5 Notes client with designer and admin under Eclipse and saw this message. I don't feel disabled.



But it ended well

The Lotus Pinball Machine

You pull the mouse plunger and watch the tcp/ip ball of data roll around your network surface searching for ways to collaborate and thus score more points(money/revenue) for you and your team.
Make sure you hit the data with the appropriate reply settings(flippers) and try to knock down all the targets on the left side (Exchange, Sharepoint, Office, Outlook, SQL and especially BOB) and the right side (123, Improv, Organizer, cc:Mail and of course e-suite).

If you can get up the middle ramp your email can flow and connect to the internet mode in which a Lotus Mail Protector device which uses a magnet drags your data to the top left corner of the table where you can bounce off the SMTP bumpers and Anti-Virus pop-ups to see if indeed you can crash your server with one too many hops.

After it leaves this zone it may get sucked into the Agent/Mail Rules hole. Now the fun begins, you need to watch fast as you never know if it will pop out of the Trash hole, the Filed Folder hole or the OOO hole. Once found you can continue on your mission which is to reduce your total cost of ownership by hitting the right drop lane where the Symphony kicker is waiting to put the data back in play, while reducing your overhead and thus making you more money.

If you have made it this far, I ran out of time but please comment with some updates for this.
I hope you have a great new year and have enjoyed my postings.
See you in Lotusphere!

Fud Buster Firday #19 - 3 strikes you're out

Maybe in Baseball, but what about blogging?

DOH! This is my 3rd attempt to write something. The previous 2 may appear down the road, but they weren't what I wanted to say right now.

In bowling getting 3 strikes is a Turkey, go figure!
In tic tac toe, 3 in a row wins.
If at 1st you don't succeed try, try again.
Evidently 3 is the key.

IBM recently posted some updates to how they work with their Business Partner(BP) community. Most of the document is about IBM Global Services (IGS), something I am a veteran of in a previous capacity.

IBM needs it's BP and IGS to work together and provide customers with services and support. But IBM itself must also be there to play ball with everyone.

Consider this verse in the Ecclesiastes 4:12 of the Bible: "A three-ply cord is not easily broken." The problems happen when only 2 strands are working.

Sometimes we feel like IBM has let us down as BPs or as customers.
Maybe we as BPs let IBM or our customers down.
Other times IGS is at fault.

We need to work together especially in times like these to the best of our abilities. Do your share to become part of "The Power of The Community". Reach further, do something you never did before, IBM, IGS and your BPs are listening if you ask them for help.

If you don't need anyone's help, right now, then help us by blogging, commenting, evangelizing, promoting, attending, speaking or doing anything that will let others know you aren't out of it, but inside it all.

Your life is long and the road to the finish is full of opportunities so stick with it, try again, don't give in to the 3 strikes theory, you are worth much more than
that. A little imagination can go a long way. Homer never gives up and if he can make it happen, you sure can.

So no matter if your family, friends and colleagues tell you otherwise(3 again), do what you want to do and make it happen in 2009. You have a little time now to plan, think and get setup make use of it before it's too late.

Fud Buster Friday #10 - I Love Microsoft

Really? You do? Like I love Jelly Belly's and their Candy Corn?

Well maybe you don't. After all many readers are Lotus lovers, but the gang from Redmond who read this, do YOU love Mirosoft?

When I was with Lotus we all Loved Lotus. Sure we may not have liked individual people or management some times but we loved Lotus.

I don't see this from the client base. When I ask people about how much they love Microsoft, I never get that feeling. I get, "I/we hate Lotus." I prefer Microsoft", I use it(Outlooki) at home" but never do I get a real love going.

YET, many BPs and Sales people claim their client(soon to be ex-client) LOVE Microsoft.

I love Visio, really, I do. Now do I love Microsoft for buying them out and adding it to the Office suite? Actually, in some ways I do.

Now on a Lotus side, I do like most of the product line, Love Notes & Domino and Sametime and in general do have a fondness for Lotus that is beyond explanation. It's just software.

And so it is with Microsoft, yet somehow instead of creating a ground swell of Love for their product they instead have an audience which feels captured at times.

If customers don't like Microsoft, why do they keep buying from them?
When I dislike a restaurant or car dealer or online shop or credit card company I won't use them again.

Perhaps some of these customers were in this same place 5 or 7 years ago and Lotus had sent them packing...now these same customers need to go packing from Microsoft but to where?

They can not go back to Lotus, even though it might be the right choice, after all they still have Domino applications running their business or operations, because they feel it would be a poor decision because it would lose them face or faith from their employees.

It takes brains and brass to say "We made a mistake", or even to say we are going to move forward with Lotus Notes because it truly does provide the best benefits to our company.

Or will these customers go to Google, The Cloud or some other direction.

Time will tell, but just don't tell your manager the Client Loves Microsoft because they know it's not true and you need to stop hiding behind your own FUD.

Fud Buster Friday #8 - The Ex-Lotii Knows

Ex-Lotus people who end up at Microsoft always have great insights about what's wrong with Lotus? Or IBM killed Notes! Or Websphere will replace Domino!

I could accept their premises, if not for the fact when these rats abandoned ship R7 wasn't even out yet.

Now some would argue what about me, I left Lotus in 2001 and what do I know or why do I care. I care because clients should know what they are getting into. True sharing and collaboration can exist, no matter what solution the client wants, IF the client wants to make it happen.

Back to the questions above.

Nothing is wrong with Lotus and as far as I know, IBM sales people do not go around saying Microsoft has problems because they lost their head and the body is flailing in the wind grasping at dead branches. Yes, IBM has reduced head count for Lotus at times and detoured down a Workplace path but the last 6 months to a year has seen a renewed interest in everything Lotus, not just from the company but from the Press, advertisements and general sentiment. So unless you have been under a rock for the last year Lotus is anything but dead.

IBM killed Lotus Notes. No, Workplace did hurt the company but as discussed previously the recent 3 years growth is unprecedented in a flat market. If anything IBM encourages Lotus to move forward by not only working with Apple, RIM and Nokia but providing advances in development and technology into the core products. And IBM spent the money to have the R8 UI improved to a point where Outlook users prefer it.

Websphere will replace Domino? This one is possibly true(again what would I know as an outsider), but more than likely is they will coexist in a way which will only make the 2 products even stronger. IBM gets closer to this reality with every release and the robustness of the 2 together will make a very formidable opponent to Microsoft.

So the next time you hear a Microsoft sales rep or ex-Lotus person lay down some silly ideas about Lotus, remind them that even great baseball hitters only hit the ball 1/3 of the time. But if you don't take a chance with some pitches out of your comfort zone you may miss an easy home run too.

Fud Buster Friday #7 - Old Data is Pointless

Someone posted a question on my Lotus Software Professionals Linkedin group, join it here, it's the largest Lotus group on Linkedin with around 1,400 members.

They had their executives inundated by these quotes from a Microsoft vendor or employee.One would think they would use more modern data but evidently Microsoft can't afford to buy the reports since 2006.

1) Microsoft’s worldwide market share for integrated collaboration environments was 52.6% (+16.8%), while IBM’s was 39.1% (+10.7%). – IDC, July 2006
2) Microsoft's user base grew by slightly more than 17%, while … IBM’s product set has only grown by 11%, leading to a loss of share. IBM’s aggregate share … is projected to be 26%; Microsoft’s share is projected to be 62%. – Gartner, 2006
3) Microsoft continues to gain market momentum and is selling twice as many messaging server seats as IBM. – Forrester, August 2006

I am sure there is more, and I have covered some of this previously here in FudBuster #1.

Let's see the IDC report. If I am looking at the same one while it showed Microsoft leading, it also showed Lotus had a 13% gain in market share in 2006. Unprecedented if the product was truly dying or being put out to pasture don't you think?

IDC issued a report in July 2007 that illustrates Notes/Domino increased its share of the integrated collaborative environments market in 2006 to 40 percent , up from 39 percent in 2005. Outlook/Exchange’s share of the $2.4 billion market slipped to 51 percent from 53 percent over that same period.

As pointed out here IBM is seeing a huge up swell in all things Lotus and has seen the 13 of 14 quarters growth which is really unexpected in a what is considered a flat growth area. More can be found here

Numbers lie, statistics lie even more, but right now Lotus 9(Rnext) and 10(Rnext+) are being worked on and Lotus committed to Disney for the next 5 years of Lotusphere so there is no end in sight, contrary to what Microsoft tells anyone.

SnTT: Which Lotus R8 client are you running and how would you know?

I posted on Twitter looking for some help with a Notes.ini question.
Many of you, I have no doubt, either figured I was being lazy and didn't RTFM or perhaps you knew and didn't tell me.
Really I do search the admin guide 1st, IBM 2nd, Twitter 3rd, forums 4th.

Well, I have news for you, go RTFM and find it. I'll give you days. You won't.

The Question was:
If I am setting up notes.ini's for a client to roll out, how do I specify the client version?

Now we know that in 8.0.2 a new command called UseBasicNotes=1 allows you to select which to run.

Great, but what if you are on 8 or 8.0.1?

My good friends at Waresource who have excellent manuals, training pieces and various freebies trainers like me like to give out or use for personal things produced this document.

If you search the document for InstallMode you will find a nice line which states Installmode=1 is Standard client
InstallMode=0 is Basic

Now, why isn't this in the admin help or client help guides, anyplace?

And try to find technotes on it? nope.
Thanks to Genosis from twitter who pointed me to this document. Which cryptically pointed to installmode=1.

When you Google "installmode=1 lotus"(without quotes obviously) you do not get many answers, actually only 11.

Now I resolved a developer's question internally, my client's install problem and learned someting new. So I guess this is my SnTT, whch I thought I never would do.

Domino 8.0.2 AIX Upgrade, 10 minutes

In my previous AIX Upgrade post although it was a great guideline to follow, I see it needs some clarifications.

In doing my 802 Lotus Domino upgrade on my AIX server, a dual partition server I might add, I followed my notes. But I was vague on some parts.

Last Minute EDIT:
Forgot to mention, type bootinfo -y at a shell prompt to see if you are a 64 bit server or not.

The Domino files for 802, now known as C1K3AEN for the 32 bit version and C1K3BEN for 64 bit, MUST be in the /opt/lotus directory if you want it to install properly. I know some unix guy out there will say, no it doesn't, but as a non-unix geek, I go with what works, so put it in the correct place.

The rest does work as detailed previously.

10 minutes to update it, sweet!
OK, if you are not already up to date on AIX levels it may take you more preparation time.

2 job postings, big $$$, Lotus/Exchange and IBM Content Manager

Haven't done this in a while, but you know what they say, help a brother or sister out and you will see it returned. And if nothing else I posted something this week before Friday's Fudbuster #4.
Tell them Keith sent you :-)

Job #1) (I have much more detsails on this one, email me if interested)
Looking to hire a Systems Architect with Exchange 2007 and Lotus Notes background for the San Ramon area in Northern California . This position is permanent, paying at least $125K.

The client, a global leader of infrastructure software for the enterprise, is changing the fundamental way information is processed allowing organizations to both monetize the value of their information and protect the associated risks. Founded in 1996 with a vision that the ability to process unstructured information would become a strategic must-have, The client has grown into one of the most valuable software companies in the world with a market capitalization of $4 billion. Recognized as the market share leader in enterprise search and e-mail archiving, The client has a global customer base of 17,000, with more than 400 partners and 300 OEMs across all software sectors.

Scott Tomtania, MBA, CSP
Phone: 925.831.8551
Toll Free:800.285.5627
Cell Phone: 925.818.0218
Fax: 925.831.0265
Email: stomtania@theplusgroup.com

Job #2)
IBM Content Manager
Location: TX
Duration: 4 months
Rate: Need All Inclusive and With expenses

Required:
Looking for Developers with IBM Content Manager experience, prefer 1+ years of experience. Project would be Developing an IBM Content Manager based ECM Solution.

Lucky Saini
AgreeYa Solutions
(916) 351-2574 Direct
(916) 294-0504 Fax
lucky.saini@agreeya.com

Lotus Collaboration Game?! on Linkedin!

IBM has a submlimnal ad which looks like this on the Linkedin pages.

It will takle you over to this page where bless their heart they want people to register on the IBM.com site. BUT they also include a link for those who don't want to register. That's cool!
Unfortunately it lied. The next screen asks you to fill in all this information, now granted most of us already have an IBM ID.
Follow the path and it's different from the other things we have seen lately. Aimed at Connections, Quickr, Sametime and Domino so a nice one, could do without the British guy(cardiff perhaps?) narrating though.

Lotus Quickr HF19 and read the instructions, for help

Like many of us we appreciate it when our administrative life is made easier by the vendor. Lotus has put out a recent update to Quickr and it has an automated installer. Excellent, right?
Well, let's just say my server failed 2 of the 3 prerequisites.

Currently the Lotus Quickr hotfix installer will only run on Win32 based systems, for other systems, please refer to IBM’s Fix Central website.

Prerequisites:
Win32 based system, Check!
Java 1.5 or above must be installed on the Domino Quickr server. Thought it was updtaed, oops!
The Domino program directory (eg: c:\Program Files\IBM\Domino) must be in the System PATH variable. One would think this is done by defualt these days when you install Domino, evidently this is not the case. OOPS!

So, got the file, try to run it and nothing.

EDITED 8/20/2008: I resolved this error below. It was in the qpconfig.xml file. I had messed up some syntax. DOH!

PS forgot to ask, if anyone knows what this is referring to:
08/17/2008 08:47:22 PM Start IConfig::ReadLtpaConfig( )
08/17/2008 08:47:22 PM End IConfig::ReadLtpaConfig( )
08/17/2008 08:47:26 PM JVM: Java Virtual Machine initialized.
08/17/2008 08:47:26 PM Agent error: [Fatal Error] :1495:2: The markup in the document preceding the root element must be well-formed.
08/17/2008 08:47:26 PM org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: The markup in the document preceding the root element must be well-formed.
08/17/2008 08:47:28 PM Event Monitor started

This is the startup on the server after I changed the OS name to match the DNS name.
went from fred1 to efred the rest stayed the same.
A Quickr qptool update maybe is needed?
Read file, maybe path is wrong, edited path looks ok.
Java isn't up to date. Normally one of the first things I do when building a server is get all the updates on OS, Java, Domino, addons, etc. Guess this one slipped through.

Now to go finish the conector updates too.

The Mojave Experiment....FudBuster #2

I got side tracked this week and wanted to look into this.
The Mojave experiment as Microsoft called it was an interesting idea.
For those not in the know,
100 people off the street, so to speak, were shown a "new" Microsoft OS after some questions about how they viewed Vista. Of course what they saw was Vista.
And low and behold, eye candy makes them decide to go with Vista.

Because in Microsoft's world, it's all about Eye Candy.Even if it takes sometime to produce it.

In the real world, well at least the business world, it's about business, expenses, revenue, ROI, and a million other things, but because software looks good? Nope.
It should integrate well with other software, yes.
It should run on multiple solutions, from Macs to Linux to windows to PDA's, phones, sunglasses(hey a guy can dream), blackberries and evidently nowadays on your refrigerator, dish washer and other appliances. Oh and a coffee table, thank you Microsoft.
Fahrenheit 451's author, Ray Bradbury would be either ecstatic to hear this or ashamed.
So you should go buy and use Vista because it looks good.
I use Vista. And aside from a few VPN clients rarely have problems. Ok recent times were Microsoft updates to Vista, so maybe I have some issues on occassion.

But really no worse than my XP machines after updates break all my mailto options and other security settings.

So where am I going with this? Easy, the UI sucks label on Lotus has to stop.
If you are in a company still using R5,6 or even 7, go yell at your IT staff or CIO who is paying Lotus big money to get updates and they shoulsd install them and use it.
I can show you in 5 minutes of a web conference everything you are missing!

Can your Outlook allow windows to float on their own?
Can your Outlook you so desire stop opening a ton of windows just because you are trying to do a simple task?
Why doesn't your Outlook do name lookups properly? My biggest gripe with Outlook 2003 at least.
Wouldn't you liek to not have a full AD directory all the time?

I can show you in a side by side demonstration that if nothing was branded you could not tell them apart, Mr. CEO.

BUT if you have a mixed environment of Lotus and Exchange shame on you! Spending twice the amount of money to get what you already pay for from Lotus, just because of a UI? Butthat's another post, past and future for another day.

OpenID, it took people 15+years?

The premise of having an ID file which allowed one access to a Lotus Notes and Domino application has been a mainstay from Release 1.
Of course over time the encryption key got better, went through a few government regulation changes but the ID is still with us and going strong.

Now the new age Web 2.0 people have decided they don't like logging in to 10 different sites, there should be a better single sign on way.

SSO is important, funny how the "legacy" SSO is just not good enough though, or perhaps LDAP is not as useful as once thought.

Do you physically need an ID file? Well Lenovo and IBM thought so with their biometric readers and obviously Lotus did. SecurID or some other digital ID format as well.

So once again the world has finally caught up to Lotus. So far ahead of everyone else, really they were and still are in some cases if you were in the Lotusphere side room where the new projects were shown.

Universal ID, for the US is basically your social security number but no one would use that on the internet.

I have an openID, came via Yahoo or some other site recently.

Really this is about one giant LDAP but in a more granular approach I think. I wish my Directory mentor would discuss this, Dr. Goodman you out there?

Symphony to the Rescue, thanks again to Microsoft

Sad to admit it, but I do not usually use Symphony for all my work. I have slowly been moving newer work to it, but older docs/clients limited me in this.

Today while editing a spreadsheet, it crashed while saving. Never a funny thing.
Luckily Office 2007 has a built in autosave function, which I use extensively for years since it was introduced, wonder why?

Great it had my spreadsheet with my changes, went to save it again, as a 97-03 doc so 95% of the world could read it and BAM! Same problem.

Can't even screenshot it because it automatically sends Excel to a tailspin of closing.

Now to be fair, something wanted to get installed last night when I shut down my laptop. Probably from Microsoft but who knows, it took hours. Perhaps it was Vista SP1 or some other item.

In any event, nothing works as it should today, except Symphony is humming along fine as is my Notes client and Twirhl, the Twitter client I use.

And my spreadsheet, opened in Symphony, edited and saved as xls and all is well.

Here's hoping you have an easier time with Office 2007 and Vista in your travels, if not, look into Symphony, your hair and wall will appreciate it.

http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/home.jspa or find it in your R8 client.

IBM to buy RIM

Blackberries will be renamed Blueberries.
In their own way, RIM has gone down a path where they may want to think about it.

About 4 years ago while interviewing with Microsoft about competitive positioning(don't sweat it, I think they just wanted free consulting), I posited that SUN would release Java as Open Source within 2-3 years. Got it.
I suggested they buy SUN(stock was not even $5 then) to ensure:
1) Java dies, rather than go open source(they thought C# would work for people)
2) Provide Windows servers with a fully integrated hardware platform and built in distribution
3) It was cheap, pocket change even for Bill and he could kill it if he wanted
4) Or it could help Microsoft get into Linux on their own terms

Also suggested IBM would buy Novell as they were already following a path of past IBM M&A when the money provided to a partner eventually was returned in stock and then finally in a new IBM division. This one hasn't made it yet, but Novell hangs on with Linux, I still see this as a great opportunity for IBM and Novell.

Back to RIM. Lotus worked with RIM very early on(remember the mushroom shaped blackberry) and we were thinking it would kill server revenue to RIM, instead it made email stronger as RIM made it clear they really did not want to be a contender for email messaging system of the world. I think in this case they made a wise choice.

However the last few years has seen growth for RIM, but at the same time, competition from places unexpected, Apple and Google. Can RIM beat them, possibly, but I do not think by themselves. Would it help RIM to have a "native" email system? Most definitely and in many cases if you understand the architecture of a BES you will see what appears to be the logic of architecture like a Domino server. Not 100% mind you, but as RIM had to scale they took a familiar approach(to me at least).

Now RIM provides Lotus Connections clients, similar to the 2 different IM versions for Sametime. A great partnership is in place, and a merger of Lotus with RIM would be catastrophic to Microsoft in many ways...unless Microsoft too has an iPhone killer in their plans.

My guess is they don't as Bill has left the building and with him went any original thoughts of how to corner a market.

If I was the Product Manager at RIM working with Lotus, I would be expecting to hear such thoughts, I wonder if this is the case.

Are you Lotusly Linkedin? Social Networking speaking of course

Those of you that have followed me for the last year or so know I have a group on Linkedin for Lotus Software Professionals.

Having been on Linkedin since it's beta pretty much, you would think I had millions of people connected to me, or I should.

But no, I have a relatively small number, 2,770 direct Connections that link me to 10,011,500+ professionals

But what is interesting is wether you are another BP or just an IT person who likes Lotus, the need or interest of people to belong to a community is impressive. Note to self, must clear the recruiters out better.

Why have the group? It's a passive way to interact with people. Find new roles, new business oportunities, friends in funny places and indulge some other habits, like advertising partnerships. Some people do ask me about advertising which I am open to, if there is a proper fit or benefit to everyone, not just for me, although single malted Scotch is always welcome.

While I try to be helpful in other ways, like answering questions or people's postings for jobs, some of those have become better friends because it's not always about Lotus.

OK, my linkedin update is ALWAYS about Lotus.

But you should try it, some of you will nto want to share your links, unless your links are all CXO's, and some of mine are(would like to shield those few who need to be shielded), what are you afraid of? That you might help someone else?
That is not in the true spirit of Lotus or collaboration is it? after all, why did you join linkedin in the first place if you did not want to share your links?

If you think you are opne to it, and haven't yet, you can join my group here if you have not already. It has over 1,000 members as of this morning. Many of which are Lotus friends or blog readers or twitter followers or ex comrades in arms from my Lotus days.

My goal in the next 6 months is to double our companies revenue...at Microsoft's expense. And averages say 1-2% of the people in my list need my help at least I have a list to work with now. What have you done to prospect lately?

The CEO/CIO thinks free is a great idea and it is too!

The previous post was created to show a theory.
Namely that some people would say it's a bait and switch.
Or Microsoft people would claim they do this too, some would say they offer to give everything for free, but I won't go there.
Or Business people would say how can you do it for free.

Never said I would pay for your licenses, after all I am not IBM, nor would I cover your hardware.
Just that I would migrate your users off Exchange to Domino.
And I could do it in one day/night too.
Rolling out Notes to your employees is up to you, I will give them all webmail access immediately, plus their own blogs and a wiki for them to discuss the pros and cons of your decision.

Still not enough? How about automatic push email, Lotus Notes Traveler, with no other server required. Again ALL from one Lotus Domino box.

Want more? I have over 100 applications I can include and you can use at no cost to you for your internal employees to use, depending on YOUR needs.

EDITED after original Posting to include:

Plus a free Operating System, Lotus Foundations!

And finally, a 100% free Office Suite courtesy of Lotus Symphony for every user. So you can stop paying extra licenses to Microsoft for that as well.

END OF EDITS

I could go on, but, right I forgot, you love Exchange, Office, Windows and it is so useful you wouldn't dream of changing it for anything.


Thank you for the graphic from here.

If companies don't believe something for free is worth anything, why do they consistently take Microsoft up on their offers of Free Exchange or Sharepoint or ahem, Vista.

The next time your CXO or a new one, comes in and saying you must get to Exchange, ask him this question:

How much of your bonus is tied to the company making money? Because you are about to disrupt the company in ways you can not imagine.

The graphic above takes what sits on one server in Domino and shows just how many pieces you need from Microsoft to recreate it.

You don't need more servers, you need less.
You don't require more silos, you want fewer.
Everyone wants to collaborate, the shortest distance between 2 points is a straight line, or in this case....
1 Lotus Domino Server.

Free migration to Domino from Exchange

Well, let's step back a minute and then read the last 2 lines of this post.
Why not? You probably have a cadre of staff sitting around anyway, why not put them to good use.
What? They are busy?
But Exchange is a quiet and perfectly upright piece of software, what could they possibly be doing all day long?
You have a help desk, you have an ID management group, you even have a security group, and probably a hardware group too....all assigned to manage your Exchange infrastructure, or I should say AD.
So why not get them to help build a Domino server and at least see the other side.

What if you really did not need to have so many silos of servers?

What if you really couold do this collaboration thing, but from within 1 server, not needing 3,5,7 or 9?

What if you really wanted to reduce your harwdare, OS, licensing, electric, real estae costs?

Nah, you'll never do it, big business is in it for the salary, no one wants to actually reinvent their company.

Or do they?

By the way, I will honor the free migration to Domino, for one server or one group of people up to 100 users.
After that you pay the rest of the migration.

Ever lose your passwords to your Domino Server?

Over the last 3 days I have been rebuilding a client's Lotus Domino environment because a few things have occurred.
1) Admin ID expired
2) Certificate ID (cert.id) is without a password to be found
3) Other Admin ID is expiring in 10 days
4) No backup exists for anything

Previously (I believe in R5 or earlier) one could merge the IDs, copy and paste some public key strings and be okay.(I simplified this to protect the non-up-to-date installations).

Tried the old way, this was an R7 server, so no luck. Spoke to my partner in crime, support guru extraordinaire, and she was also stumped.
But she found a technote which covers this. (EDIT from January 2020, IBM sold to HCL everything and killed the support sites.
However, I was able to find the technote on the internet archive so here are the links to them:
http://web.archive.org/web/20161022212642/http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=463&uid=swg21087566

http://web.archive.org/web/20180917121352/https://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21087149 end of edit)

I called Lotus Support and they verified it's the only way, and works on R7, forgot to ask about R8.

Scary as the option is, the alternative was worse.

Happy to report all is well and Certificate Authority (CA) is running now as well.

Then today I get a call someone corrupted their R5 server.id and cert.id and all backups were bad.
Sadly they are SOL and will be reinstalling the server as new.
Just when you think you heard it all....