Notes/Domino future roadmap workshop

May 7 2012

Thanks so much for over 100 comments worth of valuable input on where we should be taking Notes/Domino in the future. We took this chart into the meeting as one of many inputs, coming from edbrill.com readers:


 Image:Notes/Domino future roadmap workshop

Other inputs included the design partners, feedback from events like Lotusphere, competitive analysis, SPRs/APARs/PMRs, strategy coming down from IBM software group at large, sales input, and many many many other input vectors. Triaging for a mass-market product is always one of the most fun, but most challenging, parts of product managing.

Obviously, I can't telegraph my future roadmap to the public market at this phase. So, talking about the outcomes of this meeting on the blog, or even at this phase with design partners, is pretty much impossible. We also roped off application development and mobility to mostly be separate topics for subsequent workshops, and thus focused on client, server, and SmartCloud Notes.

We had many very good discussions about what a rich client needs to be in the future, with the future being deployments in 2014-2017. We talked about the role of HTML5 vs. an installed client, we talked about iNotes and Connections/"social mail", we talked about mobility, we talked about Eclipse, we even talked about Outlook. On the server side, we talked through the capabilities that have been built for SmartCloud Notes and their applicability to the premises product, we talked about TCO (total cost of ownership), we talked about architectural limitations. We had a great business discussion about ways to improve our offerings in market, including branding, packaging, licensing, bundles, and all those other usual vectors. We had a good discussion about market segmentation and growth opportunities, and our sales and marketing teams provided input on what's working and what isn't.

Our drive to Notes/Domino "9", "10", etc. continues from here. The leadership team will come back together in August, and then present our anticipated plans initially at our Leadership Alliance meeting in October. I expect you'll see some of the decisions play out even sooner than that.

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Notes and Domino next  Add/View Comments [42]

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  1. 1  Alan Lepofsky http://www.alanlepofsky.net | 5/7/2012 11:33:13 AM

    Only 2% of "Add Social" - that must upset a few IBM execs ;-)

  1. 2  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 5/7/2012 11:36:02 AM

    @1 Notes is already social :-)

  1. 3  Andrew Pollack http://www.thenorth.com/apblog | 5/7/2012 11:38:24 AM

    It seems to me, I recall a very large number of posts calling for a serious focus on stability/bug-fix/consistency in the client. I don't see that listed in your chart.

  1. 4  Karl-Henry Martinsson http://www.texasswede.com | 5/7/2012 11:43:52 AM

    I also miss removing different 32K/64K limitations, not all of that is related to NSF improvements. There are limits thoughout the product that are 15-20 years old...

    I am also missing "complete/good and correct/bugfree documentations" in the chart, I saw several suggestions ín regard to that.

  1. 5  Daniel Reichelt http://daniel.reichelt.name | 5/7/2012 11:46:33 AM

    that are the great things!

    But did you also talked about quality improvments and about all the small but great ideas that are sleeping in all the thousands of SPRs/APARs/PMRs or postings on ideajam.net?

    A lot of small things, that makes all users and customers happy!

  1. 6  Andrew Pollack http://www.thenorth.com/apblog | 5/7/2012 11:46:52 AM

    True, Karl-Henry -- Documentation is also a key word that seems missing. Marketing is also one of the top words if you run the comments through a tag cloud generator.

  1. 7  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 5/7/2012 11:48:44 AM

    3/4/5 - we lumped these into the word "performance", which I realize wasn't explained in this chart. Otherwise, if we had not put such a label on them, it would be easy for us to have relegated it to "well, that's a level three support set of issues".

    But we did discuss a lot of those technical debt items, even if they weren't an explicit piece of the pie.

    @6 we did not use this meeting to focus on marketing execution. It was a roadmap discussion.

  1. 8  Richard Schwartz http://www.poweroftheschwartz.com | 5/7/2012 11:48:54 AM

    It looks like all the posts that asked for improvements in NSF got reduced to "Performance"?

  1. 9  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 5/7/2012 11:52:56 AM

    @8 Yes. Which doesn't mean they got ignored.

  1. 10  Karl-Henry Martinsson http://www.texasswede.com | 5/7/2012 12:05:05 PM

    Just for fun, I created a survey using (mainly) the categories above. { Link }

    I wonder what that would show.

  1. 11  Andrew Pollack http://www.thenorth.com/apblog | 5/7/2012 12:27:00 PM

    Karl-Henry - tough survey, because it doesn't make people prioritize. It's tempting to check most of the boxes.

  1. 12  Karl-Henry Martinsson http://www.texasswede.com | 5/7/2012 12:41:28 PM

    @Andrew: I agree. I wish there would been a way to limit to say 5 responses for the items one think are most critical. But if people answer responsible, and don't check everything, we may get at least an idea.

    I should build something like that in Domino, just don't have the time right now, as I currently am creating a few new Notes applications they need here at work...

  1. 13  Richard Schwartz http://www.poweroftheschwartz.com | 5/7/2012 12:42:26 PM

    @9 That's good to know, Ed. Thanks.

  1. 14  Thomas Leriche  | 5/7/2012 12:50:16 PM

    The top 4 items on the chart make up 55% of the suggestions. If you got all 4 of these correct in the next release it would go a long way to satisfying the needs of the user base.

    Looking back on the Xerox/Parc successes of the past I think IBM needs to put a highly skilled group of people in a room for 6 months with absolutely no agenda (other than to futurize Lotus Notes). Just let them play with ideas and mess around to see what they come up with. To use a really old saying, "let them think outside of the box."

    I know R&D is a regular and everyday occurrence, but I'm talking tactically focused R&D on Lotus Notes/Domino.

  1. 15  Mike Woolsey  | 5/7/2012 1:09:54 PM

    Well, I'd like to modernize the UI so it's simple to create graphs & charts ... like ... that. :>D

    "Modernize the UI" is such a huge chunk, and it could mean so much. It'd be great to see it done though.

    I still see both client & server as hugely important for integrating the less-integrable or less user-friendly systems -- and supplying good, fast, clean developer interfaces for it all.

  1. 16  Erik Brooks  | 5/7/2012 2:51:09 PM

    @Ed - Gonna beat the horse because I don't think it's dead yet, but if you guys lumped NSF improvements under "Performance" can you please make separate categories for "NSF" and "client performance"?

    E.g. Work you guys do to make the Notes client run faster doesn't need much to do with NSF (i.e. often times delays are more Eclipse and Notes-plugin-related).

    And many requested NSF enhancements, e.g. APIs, have nothing to do with performance.

    To be *really* crystal-clear here: NSF is very fast on the server with modern hardware. What is needed is new API/indexing enhancements. There's many well-thought-out ideas pertaining to this online and in the various forums.

    Heck, according to my count NSF was THE number-one most-mentioned feature request on your blog, and yet it's not mentioned in the graph at all. It should at least be up there as "NSF/Performance".

  1. 17  Mike McP  | 5/7/2012 3:14:17 PM

    Thanks for listening. Anxious to get my hands on "Notes 9: Performance Edition" ;)

    @14, I like it, but the idea of a lean/passionate team that's able to move quickly without friction is difficult to build in an organization the size of IBM. It's just the nature of the beast.

  1. 18  Henning Heinz  | 5/7/2012 3:20:51 PM

    This is for the next next release (2014-2017). Long enough in the future so that most responsible persons will have been promoted to greener pastures by then.

    And surprise, surprise. Most of these topics have been on the agenda for years (stuff like Modernize UI, Light Client, Marketing, Templates, Enhance Mac, Integrate AD, Enhance Printing, Performance, Improve Designer / Admin are evergreens). XPages, mobile, Panagenda and social weren't existing or not as big as today.

    Talk is cheap. The next release is 8.5.4/Social Edition coming in 2012. The new Web UI stuff looks indeed promising.

  1. 19  Andrew Pollack http://www.thenorth.com/apblog | 5/7/2012 4:11:29 PM

    Until the perception of the client at the desktop among end users is no longer of something huge, cumbersome, confusing, slow, and unpredictable -- anything else that gets done is entirely moot.

  1. 20  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 5/7/2012 4:18:19 PM

    @18 I've been here a long time :-)

  1. 21  Matteo Bisi http://www.msbiro.net | 5/7/2012 5:18:40 PM

    My vote is for a lighter client or new light client

  1. 22  David Racicot  | 5/7/2012 6:34:49 PM

    Marketing, marketing, marketing. I didn't post on last one because I (like a lot of people probably) have given up asking for Mrketing. And I don't mean some obscure marketing. I mean the kind that has been mentioned 100s of times previously. Direct marketing against MS stuff. Old school stuff. TCO. etc. So Notes 9, plus a lot of marketing.

  1. 23  Aravind Gopinath  | 5/7/2012 11:13:05 PM

    @22 I am with you. It has already had a dent in the market segment for Notes/Domino from its competitors (esp MS Sharepoint) so it will take much more time to bounce back. So aggressive marketing is also the key along with rest of the features discussed.

  1. 24  Nathan T. Freeman http://ntf.gbs.com | 5/7/2012 11:45:35 PM

    There is no category for gold-plated rocket unicorns. Your chart is invalid.

  1. 25  Giuseppe Grasso http://www.dominopoint.it | 5/8/2012 2:22:55 AM

    what's that 6% Panagenda?

  1. 26  Alexey Katyushyn  | 5/8/2012 2:32:11 AM

    There were performance problems with a client when the Release 8.5 (Eclipse), and corporate computers had 512MB of RAM. Too late now to put the performance of a client in one of the main objectives.

    Performance Notes 9 is much better than the version 8.5.x?.

    It is spoken by all the developers with any release :)

    Who better to focus on new functionality and innovation.

  1. 27  Dirk Meyer  | 5/8/2012 3:56:42 AM

    I guess the gold-plated rocket unicorns are included in "4% Mobile", because of the rocket... ;-)

  1. 28  axel  | 5/8/2012 4:59:50 AM

    Create a "Nestor Kirchner" version.

    Forget about technical debt items.

    Keep the original ideas of Notes as an easy to program groupware platform. Rip and replace existing tech stack with something new like couch db or other nosql db, selection of java/jee frameworks, etc.

    Somewhere over the rainbow, there may be a good chance to find your soja boom.

    saludos solidarios

    Axel

  1. 29  Jan Van Puyvelde  | 5/8/2012 5:35:12 AM

    @25: that slice means: "buy the client management product" from the company with that name.

  1. 30  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 5/8/2012 6:31:39 AM

    @25/29 - Panagenda was mentioned a few times in the previous post. We used that as an opportunity to discuss desktop client deployment and management, for which there many things we could do and there are tools available from many vendors.

  1. 31  Jan Van Puyvelde  | 5/8/2012 7:13:11 AM

    Thanks for the clarification.

    Anyway, I can only hope there are enough companies whose opinion about (both) the collaboration client and application development differ from the ones I've heard for the last (many) years. Because otherwise, you're doomed; those opinions will not be changed by actual improvements.

  1. 32  Karl-Henry Martinsson http://www.texasswede.com | 5/8/2012 11:15:16 AM

    I posted the results of my little survey here: { Link }

    There are still responses coming in, so I will update the blog post later.

  1. 33  Leon Matthys http://ca.linkedin.com/in/leonmatthys | 5/9/2012 10:58:11 AM

    Incredible.. Marketing the product came in so low?

  1. 34  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 5/9/2012 2:02:39 PM

    @22/23/33 see @7.

  1. 35  Jeroen Jacobs  | 5/11/2012 2:50:50 AM

    Maybe a bit of topic fur the next Domino release, but I wonder if IBM would ever implement something like the Paxos Algorithm for replication, which could keep replica's in sync automatically. It's a totally different paradigm compared to the current scheduled replication of Notes, but still, it would give Domino an extra competitive edge. Google seem to use it for replication in their AppEngine datastore.

  1. 36  David Racicot  | 5/11/2012 1:10:38 PM

    @34. How about a topic that focuses on Marketing then :).

  1. 37  Pete Wilson  | 5/11/2012 10:47:55 PM

    A lightweight client... bring back cc:mail :-)

    Pete

  1. 38  Ed Brill  | 5/13/2012 9:09:30 AM

    @36 because I am not directly responsible for marketing. My team sets business and technical direction and while I have overall profit responsibility, I don't get to directly influence or direct marketing activities. It would be a fun exercise but I can't directly act on it.

  1. 39  Dale  | 5/14/2012 5:27:06 PM

    Any chance we could have "Traveller for Windows"? (and Linux and Mac)

    It is like this: I would have to sacrifice a first-born child to get the dark lord of mordor to open a port and/or install a reverse proxy.

    But I already have an authorised proxy for mail in the form of a Traveller gateway. I can access my mail and calendar through my iPad. It is fast and light and sufficient. There is no difference in security if I should access it through (e.g.) Thunderbird using a (theoretical) IBM created Lotus Traveller extension for Thunderbird that communicates via ActiveSync and pretends to be a compatible device.

    In fact I can already get Traveller on Windows by using the (very slow) Android emulator and I'd bet the same can be done with dev tools on macos.

    The only downside is the iNotes developers might feel left out! :-D

  1. 40  wgun https://lotusid.wordpress.com/ | 5/15/2012 1:50:54 AM

    Make it 2 license scenario, for free and paid with support.

  1. 41  Patrick Kwinten  | 5/16/2012 1:42:17 AM

    From the graph above I would say if you KILL the current client and deliver it to the browser you can save about a quarter of your time.

    I believe you will never get a quick running client. Did we ever had one? (must be a long time ago since I cannot remember)

    We, 2012 XPages developers, have no problem delivering Web apps.