Is Your Company #DominoForever or Exiting Stage Left?

A good friend of mine sent me a link to this post from David Giller and I recognized much of what he posted (crowdsourced) happens in all industries and businesses.

But for those on the cusp of debating "should we stay, or should we go", read on.

"Too little, too late" is what I hear and see from people and my reply is, quite honestly, well, there is not too little now thanks to HCL.

Too late is a relative term in an Enterprise. If you decided today to change your course, it would be months, possibly years for some of your larger companies, before you even took a step forward with a new partner or vendor to architect where you are going.

There are also the costs involved in any big project, and this would be a big project. Ask yourself, or your executive, do you really want to spend money on swapping one mail system for another?

A rough estimate I use with customers asking is, at a minimum, the cost to migrate will exceed $1,000 per user/email address moved.

The number doubles if you are big enough and need both worlds maintained in parallel. 

The number triples if you also "must have" coexistence so your calendaring and scheduling can work together.

And I did not even get to your licensing and hardware purchases, that is if you are not going to a Cloud solution.

If you are going to a cloud solution, don't forget the costs and time involved to get your security, Directory, and single sign-on parts to work and upgrade your telecommunications because that bandwidth is going sky high next.

Okay, enough scary tactics, feel free to argue with me, I am all ears to anyone who says I am lying. Maybe my numbers are off, if anything, they are low. Seriously.

Back to Mr. Giller's post, here is my SCNDT (Sametime, Connections, Notes, Domino, Traveler) version of some of them. You need to recognize and fix these before you face the end of the road:

• No business teams are providing requests for new applications, if they ever did, and you find you are not being involved in the meetings about the future of business applications.
• When was the last time someone asked, and you got approval, for application enhancements?
• When was the last time you DID NOT SAY "give me a few days/hours I will come up with something". And instead explained to your boss how this would be a serious enterprise required application that should be on the next IT budget meeting. If your apps are not Enterprise need, your infrastructure is not either.
• Your admins left or were moved along and it is now up to the help desk or the developers, if any are still around, to maintain the environment. Would you let the pizza delivery person fix your Porsche?
• Rolling out SalesForce? ServiceNow? Not integrating them with Domino? You have lost a huge opportunity because you know what? Both of the former requires a small army to customize it so it is useful. You already had much of this at your fingertips. 
• Your company may say they want "best of breed" or the latest app in the Cloud, but you know your company and why that is probably not the safest most secure way to implement something that really could have been built on Domino.
• Someone complains about the high cost of maintaining the Domino Infrastructure.
• Ha, April Fool's, no one ever complains about the high cost of the Domino Infrastructure, except Microsoft and Google.
• Executives say they want O365 but really have no business reason for it. the Outlook they use at home is not the same as in business. Directories and lookups, calendars, public/private information, multiple depositories for files are just some of the "functions" they have yet to use or think about. 
• Look at the companies that tried to blame their problems on their email system and moved away from Domino only to die a miserable death soon afterward or fall into a serious free fall. Hello Comcast, BlockBuster, and Qantas Airlines to name some famous ones.
• If your executive that has backed SCNDT all this time is now shying away, or leaves, who you gonna call? I am available.
• Have you tried to provide ideas for how your infrastructure could be leveraged to management? They are grasping at straws and need a light, no matter how small, to help them.
• You hear about database bloat. Look, you are the admin or developer and you should be trying to retire a database a day, that is about 250 a year and no one will argue with you even if you say you removed 30, 50, or 100. Be proactive or face negative reactive management.
• There is a lack of vision by the management to understand how to leverage the SCNDT platforms to streamline and automate processes – instead of simply replicating the same backward manual way things have always been done….in Excel. And Excel, which is over 30 years old, is what runs many sales teams and finance departments. Just. Stop. It.
• Some Microsoft tech complains about having to cover your servers when you are on vacation, you do take a vacation I hope, and you don't try to educate them, you lose the best chance of getting them on your side. Remember, no one ever says they love Exchange.
• Training doesn't exist. I get it. But you know what? Leverage the hell out of your intranet. Wiki, blog posts, status updates, if you are not posting something, then the executives think it doesn't exist and what doesn't exist, doesn't get funded, and disappears. 
• 1 great admin can manage a few dozen servers and between 1-3,000 users or more if given the right tools, for support issues and has minimal complaints and usually exceptional uptime. Learn your craft, read more blogs, go to user group events....The opposite of having bad admins is a sure sign the end is nigh.
• Management thinks that Domino data is simply “ONE OF” the other systems that we have (resulting in siloed data being dispersed across multiple systems throughout the organization, making 360 degrees reporting practically impossible). This one I stole from Mr. Giller's post because it is still true.
• If your organization cannot articulate their current or future business processes and expectations in a way that makes sense to a normal person, you may have a problem.
• Middle management is more interested in their job and budget than benefiting the company. Small mind = no advancement.
• Not leveraging Domino policies, Panagenda's Marvel Client or any of the configurable options that make user's lives better. I have been told by clients that Notes "should look and act like other apps" so they do not enable all the preferences. My retort usually is something like "Tesla didn't build a car, they built a car everyone wants because they included options people want and need." Yes, this is public enemy number one of a reluctant IT staff to maintain Domino.

</soapbox>

One Firm's Wild Ride to the Cloud

My IBM Connect presentation is now posted on Slideshare.

Thank you everyone for coming and your questions.

One Firm's Wild Ride to The Cloud from Keith Brooks

Mission Worries: Lotus Quickr to IBM Connections Cloud

Who knew so many people still had Lotus Quickr? See IBM I told you people love it still.

There are many things to think about during a migration of data, most of which you as the client will not think about, or even know about, until you have moved and find it out. Do you know why? Because not very many companies, people, or Business Partners have done these migrations like I have over 20+ years. 

These "Mission" posts are meant to help you in this process.

Last post I gave some basic information, now we can dig into some details.

The client uses a plain and out of the box Lotus Quickr so we did not have to worry about meta data or odd forms or whatever else dreamed up by some developers or over eager Admins. I know because I am their Admin.

We did worry about some things and here are some of those items:

• My name for the most part is tagged to all the files and folders NOW which is how IBM Connections and IBM Connections Cloud works since I am the one uploading the files.That is the down side, however, once you get into the folders and find the files, you can see all the document details and it shows all the past information. Not a bad thing, but not perfect. Client accepted this as a good monetary trade off.

• MACs lack of a Notes sidebar plugin. No comment. I am not a MAC user so I am not justified in arguing this point but the Windows Notes plugin is helpful....BUT not for the migration itself. Afterwards it acts like the Quickr Places sidebar app and drag and drop and such is fine plus you get Files, Activities and Status Updates in your sidebar to better leverage the rest of Connections.

• Training users. Actual training is minimal, updating the Notes clients on machines and then the plugin installs and configurations takes about an hour a person on average. If you leverage SmartUpgrade or my friends at Panagenda's Marvel Client you may just need the plugins updated and that is quick.

• Where is the ROI? Mobility! iPad access in front of a client meeting or potential client meeting is crucial and even better, IBM handles the backup of our data. 

• Which brings me to backups. IBM doesn't really backup the data, this is an issue to be addressed by me going forward, but IBM does synch data between their data centers and in IBM we trust, so again a trade off. Not to worry the Quickr server running on VM will just be sitting here if we need data prior to January 1, 2017. Just like the Domino.Doc VM server sits waiting for something we lost from the previous migration. For those keeping score, I have NEVER run that VM to find any files that went "missing". 

• Multiple Folder levels. It is this one item which has prevented the client from moving until now. Promised by IBM over a year ago, and it was delivered, just not the way the client wanted it to work(it also only now lets you edit and create folders from the plugins and mobile which also did not come out last year). We had patience in IBM and since I am an IBM Champion and part of various beta teams for IBM and advisory councils, I pushed for it all to get done, as did quite a few fellow Champions. So if this is what you have been waiting for, you have no reason not to move forward now. January is free for me, let me know when you need your migration done by and I am here for you.

• Timing. Start testing as early as possible as you need a lot of testing scenarios. Keep in mind that uploading speeds are usually MUCH slower than downloading speeds. So that Terabyte of data will not get uploaded overnight, I don't care who you use or what they promise you.

• What if they hate using the Cloud? Said, no. one. ever...who knows what they are doing.

Are there more issues? Sure, every environment is different and I am happy to discuss them if you comment or tweet, call, skype or email me.

I forgot to mention this was a Windows server customer, and I could complete the migration no matter what operating system platform you are running Lotus Quickr.

Mission Accepted: Lotus Quickr to IBM Connections Cloud

My last Lotus Quickr customer is moving off of Quickr by December 31st.

I love Quickr, still do, but time marches on and maybe you found yourself looking at Quickr wondering:

• How do I secure this box? You have options, and hopefully have used them, but the server is trapped on an 8.5 server which is basically an unsafe server to run at t his point especially if it has access to/from the outside world.
• Accessing your data is getting harder as browsers advance but the code on the server does not recognize all the updates of course.
• Mobile needs, never really got a working Mobile client for Quickr
• Java, yeah well it was good while it lasted

The thing is, if you are solely using it internally it can just sit there for years on end, some of you out there know exactly what i am talking about too.

IBM does not provide a tool to migrate data from Quickr to Connections. IBM Global Services relies on a tool from a Business Partner and you can go that route. It is priced accordingly.

However, in this case my client is not that large and only has about 300GB of data in Quickr so we decided to move it using the tools available to us.

I did many tests before it was agreed to move to IBM Connections Cloud, the client already owns and uses Mail and Sametime there so the move to it would not involve new licensing. 

In fact, we saved money by not needing to renew our Lotus Quickr, now called IBM Connections licenses and support.

Once it was shown we had viable functionality, which basically meant many tiers of FOLDERS that could be created and edited via Notes, Plugins to Windows and MACs, we were ready to go. 

Sorry taxonomy and search people, but when you need many files quickly, search is not your friend especially if you have no idea what the file is called. This is a religious argument to have at the next LUG or IBM Connect event.

So if I didn't go with IBM, how did I do it? Same way I have done migrations for over 20 years, ask around and build and leverage what you have to work with and it should save the client about 40% of the Global services price. 

Your mileage may vary, but if you are in need of this, my January is free now so call, email, tweet, skype me to help move you to IBM Connections Cloud from Quickr.

Next post will be about the process involved, for those interested let me know so I can provide more details to help you.

Qantas Outsources their brains too?

By now most people have read or heard Qantas has decided to go to Outlook after being on Lotus Notes for 15 years or so....because their strategic partner, since April 2009, Fujitsu, said so.

This quote is interesting

"Subject to satisfactory piloting, we anticipate the migration to be substantially completed by the end of the year."

Qantas employees, fight this. Not because of Outlook or Notes but because of your job and the precarious nature of where this expense may send your company and thus your job.

Satisfactory piloting? Sounds like Mr. Hall is skeptical perhaps? After all this is the man who wanted to cut $100 million from his expenses. And the reason provided is

"This is part of the Qantas technology group's focus on leveraging technology to improve efficiencies for the business and enhancing communication effectiveness across our workforce,"

And this will do this how? Leveraging Outlook? It's a client side product. Exchange leveraging? I guess if one has the other pieces of the Microsoft puzzle it makes sense, but one could and should argue they would have been better served using LotusLive Notes or iNotes...but I don't think Fujitsu would do so. They would never allow IBM to get another foothold on their customer. Interesting to see if they go to Exchange in the Cloud or some hosted by Fujitsu version or wait for it...because Fujitsu probably wants to sell hardware as well. Sounds like the usual game and Qantas, or rather Mr. Hall bought into it big time.

I have said it before and will say it again. If you as the CIO/CEO/CTO want to leave Notes, pay for it out of your bonus because you are wasting your companies money. If you believe so strongly this move will not only save you money...but make you money then share in the wealth. but you can't because you know the truth and it's NOT about your company.

You will be very hard pressed to provide any cost benefit for making a change like this. While it may appear wise financially(somehow?) in the short term, the long term shows quite clearly that you will lose. But of course, the average tenure of an executive in your position is 5.3 years so you will be fine before the next huge bill comes back to the company. Especially if you start this process in year 2 of your tenure.

By the way, if you own Qantas shares get ready to sell them. If past histories tell us anything it's that companies that leave Lotus Notes to Exchange(or some other system) go into free fall for at least a year. Think about it, if you were blowing a few million for nothing, when will you get that back? And your internal IT systems wreck havoc with employees and various applications have to get rebuilt. Right, Fujitsu support staff knows Exchange but not Domino, so support costs will go down? Excuse me while I can't stop laughing. An increase in servers and staff and what will almost definitely be a hybrid environment for years to come. Fujitsu, or Mr. Hall, let us help you, contact me so we can show you the error of your ways.

A mess that anyone with some intelligence would look at and question. Instead try asking how else could we extend our systems. Hint, those millions you are spending could have gone VERY far, especially to staff that probably deserves it more.

The End Game of Migration

We get a call from a 3rd party, rarely the client, asking us to manage a companies Lotus infrastructure for 3-6 months. Should be the client, we are trying to figure out how to market to the SMB and unknown Lotus customers, thus my post the other day about SEO.

My usual reply is why/when are they going to Exchange/Sharepoint? Prescient I know.

Usually they are small shops that use only mail, but sometimes I recognize the company and KNOW they have applications too. So what's going on?

Sharepoint? .Net? Gmail?

Our job is to smooth the integration between Domino and whatever the client is going to be using in the future. Ideally we never go on site for this, after all if you are leaving this excellent mail system for another one, we are just caretakers now. If we were on site, we would fix your environment, then you would look bad for leaving it.

(There is really no need for us to be on site more than once a week for meetings for reasons I will detail in some other post.)

Integration? "No, we don't want integration, we are dropping Lotus" each client says. Really I inquire. have you thought about....and any number of routes take place after I listen to them explain why they are doing it.

The truth is, unless they really ONLY use it for email(and even in these cases sometimes), Domino is going to be hanging around for a while.

Why is this? A few reasons:

1) Fear - What if Exchange/Sharepoint/Gmail is, OMG, worse! Or the users revolt or a million other ideas that pop into people's heads.

2) Complexity - What's so complex about email? Well Calendar and Scheduling can be troublesome and in some companies the Lotus resource database is the best thing out there for scheduling conference rooms, training etc.

3) Applications - Naturally they say they will rewrite the apps. In 15+ years of this I have heard way more stories of companies spending millions to go to a different platform only to find nothing worked as well or robustly as their Domino apps. Don't believe me and in the middle of it now or thinking about it? Email me, I can connect you with some large companies that do nearly all development on Domino.

4) Time - Sure you could cut over everyone in a weekend, even a day. But you big companies will never do that of course. So the process drags on for a long time, years in fact based on various reports. Small companies can do it quicker, but they fear upheaval so it also take a little bit of time.

5) Time #2 - Here is where the integration kicks in. If you do not cut over everyone at once, you add some expenses to the mix. The Connector between Exchange and Domino must get put in or you have some fidelity issues, of course you can work around it for free using Domino. However, most Microsoft Business Partners will tell you to install(with yet more licenses and CALs and hardware) the connector to integrate the directories between AD and Domino.

6) BES - Blackberry users cause you to also have a 2nd BES in place, one for Domino and one for Exchange. Sure once everyone moves off the old one you can repurpose it, but in the mean time it means more money, hardware, licenses, support.

7) Fax - Lotus Fax Server or some other specific version for Domino would require new hardware, licenses and services/support to now have 2 routes, one for each system.

8) More reasons and some of you out there can add to this in various ways.

So the next time you or your boss or client says they need short term help for the migration, think again and realize a partner that has done it and can manage it for you properly may just make your life easier.

Open Season on Domino.Doc to Quickr Conversions

In the last 48 hours I have written documents/SOW for 4 migrations so if you have Domino.Doc and fear it, let me know and we will take care of it for you, it can be done faster than you can imagine.

As one of the few Business Partners entrusted with the code to handle these conversions I wanted to provide a few items to help you plan for the migration to Quickr.

1) In order for the tool to work, you MUST be using Domino.Doc/LDDM versions 6.5.1 or 7.0, it doesn't matter what Domino version. So if you are NOT using these versions, we will first have to upgarde you to them.

2) The Quickr server must be running 8.2 on top of Domino 8.5 and we need the Notes 8.5 client to manage the task as well running the desktop enabler.

For more, you can read the Redbook, Self Assessment and Strategy Guide for Migrating from Domino Document Manager

The MOST Common question asked?
1) What version of Domino.Doc am I running?
Not as easy as Quickr to find out. But if you open your main file cabinet/library of Domino.Doc in a browser and click on the Lotus/LDDM/Domino.Doc logo in the upper left corner you will get a pop up telling you which version and what date it came out.

Of course you could also go straight to the url which would look like this:
http://servername.com/domdoc/yourdocLibraryLib.nsf/SysAdmin/AboutBox?OpenDocument

2) What version of Quickr am I running?
This is much easier. You can either look at your server console when http starts or view the page source of any Quickr website and in the first few lines you will see this:

<-- Copyright (c) IBM Corporation 1987, 2008. All Rights Reserved. -->
<-- IBM LOTUS QUICKR VERSION: 810007.004 | Built On Domino: Build V801_02072008-->
<-- IBM LOTUS QUICKR VERSION: 810007.004 | Release: 8,1,0,7 | Build: QRD8.1.0.7-004c -->

And this server has not been updated yet to 8.2 as one can plainly see.

Domino.Doc could make you money

Domino Document Manager, or Domino.Doc as some of us call it still is on it's retirement tour. Like Springsteen or the Rolling Stones, eventually the great ones have to admit to getting old.

Which is why we are so happy to see all the Doc clients.
We haven't been this busy on Doc in probably 3 years. And it's great!
If you aren't or don't have the knowledge on it but have the clients, let us know we can work with you or your customer.

We are working with some of our clients to help migrate them to Lotus Quickr from Domino.doc. Others Filenet looks like a better fit, but either way it's a lot of projects.

How do you get such a project approved you ask in this economy? Well let's see, at the risk of helping competitors(IBM, Microsoft and other BPs) here are some ideas:

1) It's not about cost, although that does figure into it. Yes, your data is going from Server A to Server B and some costs are involved there so how do you justify it?
Look at it this way instead:
You are bringing the clients to a more modern software which connects or interconnects with the latest versions of browsers, MS Office and operating systems. Why is this a benefit? Because your cost base can be spread out now to almost any individual or group or vendor instead of a small group which is limited in their hardware and software updates, which also causes other organizational problems. Maybe not a cost savings, but a better budget line item. And you can push that onto suppliers, vendors or even customers depending on the situation. Or add it into the costs of those expensive Vista laptops you are buying.

2) Maybe the problem was you had the solution sitting on such old hardware by now that every attachment would take a minute or two just to attach it. If you think about it this way, the average business line employee makes $60,000(random #). If an updated version was installed on a new server and could save 100 clients, 15 minutes a day, how much would that save your company?
100 people x 15minutes x 5days x 52weeks = 390,000 minutes or 6,500 hours a year.
A dollar figure to that is $187,500 in wasted time costs that could be recouped or reused that right now are an absolute loss. 3 whole man/woman salaries and time. OUCH!

3) Support and Maintenance may be an issue. It costs more to support older software and hardware than newer systems. Like an old car which reaches a point of diminishing returns. Fixing this, repairing that, corruption, broken enablers, you get the idea.

4) There is also shipping costs to consider(savings to you by having a more open system), saving network bandwidth by using more recent software with better compression and network awareness and even possibly electrical costs.

5) PLUS you get to have Filenet or Lotus Quickr for free in a swap out. Now that's a really great deal you can't just walk away from. You leave an old product for a new one with no licensing fees.

In the end a migration is probably in your better interest sooner rather than later and we can assist you with however much help you need to accomplish the task before you.

Real Life Client Migration Case Study - In Progress #1

Again, thanks to some discussions I have recently with various Yellowbleeders decided to post about a client of ours.
No name or anything and even if they read this they will never know it's them, sadly many are similar.

After some projects, and general IT work with the company, our sales guy follows up with them on some ideas from past discussions only to be hit with the now infamous line "We're moving to Exchange....can you help us?"

Sales guy says sure, but you guys are losers.(he didn't say that but we all think it)
In this economy money is going to come from some funny places and at least in this case it will be a long process and some upgrades on the Lotus side will get done.

So we hear this from the lead IT manager, not the CTO mind you or the VP of IT who he is running interference for or from our admin contacts.

We agree to have a conference call to discuss pitfalls, issues, thoughts time frame, etc. We did the call and came off that call wondering what really goes through people's minds.

They are doing this because they want to use Sharepoint and were told it would not interact with Notes. Well, sure not as well as Exchange but that isn't really the point as was pointed out to them that they both can have a nice coexistence.

See the graphic on top, that was the manager. They have a dispersed infrastructure which they want to bring to a central data center and consolidate 8-10 servers down to 4.

Sure, we let them continue and point out problems along the way. BES? Yes? Ok so you need a BES server too in the mix(they want to test the Exchange Push Email, our MS certified Partner asked them to heavily rethink that idea in favor of BES due to among other ideas security and performance/server costs. Maybe a Microsoft Connector for Lotus Notes Server too.
Client: We need a SQL server too? For what?!
Me: Didn't Microsoft tell you anything before promising it all? You can't expect your whole architecture to work without all the pieces of the puzzle?

And by the way, the licenses and CAL's which are promised to you for free in Year 1, guess when the bill comes in for them? Yes that's right year 2.

And they hadn't thought about what to do with their applications on Domino? Consolidate it now? Don't you think if you wanted to do that you could have previously? Why the rush now?

Everyone has broadband. I love this line, so US centric.
I reminded them that more than half of their IT data center's were outside the US, some in paces with barely a 64k line in place. Suggested they test some point to point applications like even their email files and see how they enjoy it now because when they load in Exchange it will only be worse. Again my Microsoft BP stated that to the client as well. He does my job so well sometimes it's amazing he plays for the dark side team.

This is an ongoing project/discussion and more will come out but for now, this is a good place to start. Questions or want more info, leave me comments and I can fill in some blanks.

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.

Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2007? Not so fast!

More happy news from Microsoft for those holdouts on 5.5.
Do they mean there are that many organizations still on it that they have to include it in this update?

Lotus didn't even bother saying R5 could upgrade to R8 presumably because so many clients were already on 6 or 7. Of course it could and does upgrade from R5, with some slight tweaking to your SMTP configurations and other similar pieces in some cases. And of course you can upgrade from a previous version to the R8 version in many ways, and it does not require setting up an interim network either!

What is interesting is the terminology.
Migration is now solely referred to when coming from an external mail system to Exchange.
Transitioning is from an older version to a newer one of Exchange.

Here is the link:

Upgrading to Exchange 2007
Applies to: Exchange Server 2007, Exchange Server 2007 SP1 Topic Last Modified: 2007-08-07

Important:
When transitioning to Exchange 2007, you cannot perform an in-place server upgrade on an existing Exchange server. Instead, you must install a new Exchange 2007 server into the existing organization, and then move data to the new Exchange 2007 server.

Important:
You cannot upgrade an existing Exchange Server version 5.5 organization to Exchange 2007. You must first migrate from the Exchange Server 5.5 organization to either an Exchange 2003 organization or an Exchange 2000 organization, and then you can transition the Exchange 2003 or Exchange 2000 organization to Exchange 2007.