
HCL buys Notes from IBM - gadders
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/12/07/hcl_18bn_ibm_software/
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michaelcampbell
While Notes was justifiably hated, I had two somewhat good experiences with
it.

1\. The recurrence model for meetings and the like was way more featureful
than anything I've seen since.

2\. The CEO of my company at the time dictated that the Notes devs/admins
change the email interface such that in order to click "reply-all", you had to
navigate to a separate screen. This all but eliminated all stupid company wide
email storms, and should be in _every_ email client.

For that we paid a heavy price in CPU and Memory use, as is Notes wont.

~~~
azinman2
Meanwhile I’ve had so many frustrating experiences of group conversations
amongst a few people where reply all doesn’t get pressed, and then the
conversation bifurcates. I’ve always thought reply all should be default.

~~~
kbenson
It seems like the simple solution is to detect when there is more than one
address that a reply could go to, and if so, on clicking reply have a sub-meny
that asks whether you want to reply to all or one person (and maybe list
recipients with the Sender at the top).

You still get a single click to reply for single senders, but any ambiguity
needs to be dealt with, but usually only with a quick additional click.

I routinely experience this where I want to reply all in my work Gmail, but
the default is reply to sender, and I end up having to re-send the email a few
seconds later so everyone sees it (if I'm lucky and notice. Otherwise other
people just never see what I intended them too).

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nradov
Domino had a NoSQL document database with reliable multi-master replication
before they were cool. It could have been a great platform for cloud
applications but IBM never saw the potential and let it languish.

~~~
codingdave
That is an accurate, succinct summary of the story, but IBM also made it non-
viable as a SaaS back-end because the license was paid per CPU core. There was
literally no way to both scale an app and keep the cost competitive with other
platforms.

~~~
nradov
Sure that was one reason. I think the lack of support for multi-tenant
applications was just as serious an obstacle for SaaS.

~~~
slantyyz
I worked on a team that built a SAAS around 1998 on Notes/Domino. IIRC, we had
a Notes database template and created replicas of it for every tenant.

I believe we accomplished all of this using some crazy LotusScript. We pushed
really hard to get our product out before Lotus could release Instant Team
Room.

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Joe8Bit
My recent experience is that there are still a _lot_ more Notes deployments in
the wild than I'd thought.

It could make a kind of perverted sense for HCL to own a product a huge amount
of consulting/outsourcing money is being spent on. Either to ease the decline
and capture more of that marketshare (e.g. 'we own it so you should hire us to
get rid of it for you') or to try and reinvigorate that product and recapture
some of those captured $$$s (e.g. 'it's already deployed for you and instead
of paying us big bucks to remove it, pay us medium bucks to add Feature A you
really need').

~~~
gadders
"We will get rid of it for you and migrate you onto our managed Exchange
service for only $xxx,xxx/month."

~~~
dmix
The enterprise software world scares me.

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kevinSuttle
Very few people know this, even inside of IBM:

Notes is literally an Eclipse plugin.

There. Now you can really hate it and feel totally justified.

~~~
pooppaint
Maybe it is now? Notes predates eclipse by quite a few years.

~~~
Zigurd
Notes used to be a native-ish desktop app. The UI had a native Windows
implementation but Notes had a distinctive Notes UI look and feel. It wasn't
that great, and pretty horrid on a Macintosh. The architecture was well-
separated in that every Notes node was a UI layer and a Notes server, and
would have supported truly native UIs. The Eclipsification of the Notes UI was
not an improvement, and bloated the heck out of it.

Notes had an app development platform and runtime for forms, workflow and
things like that. Adding Eclipse muddled that aspect of the architecture, too.

~~~
gadders
I was at Lotusphere the year Notes 4 was announced and we gave it a standing
ovation.

If you'd ever worked with Notes 3 you would know why.

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kumarvvr
The sale is a lot more than just Notes. Includes a lot of IBM software. Seems
to be more of a customer base acquisition than software acq.

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ksec
Finally, this gives every one an excuses to move off Notes as it is no longer
with IBM. My previous company use Notes since Lotus Notes era and email was a
bloody mess for something that should have been very simple.

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tejinderss
Who in their right mind will buy Notes ?

~~~
protomyth
Well, given the installed base and utter pain in the butt to move off the
platform, a company can make a good living supporting it for a long while.

~~~
mrweasel
True, but one has to wonder if the business cases to just keep milking the
existing user base, or if there will be any attempt at selling new
installations.

New license seems like a hard sell, unless HCL invest heavily in both Notes
and Domino.

~~~
protomyth
It's probably a really hard sell unless they really can make a case for easier
development and maintenance for internal applications over web technologies. I
too don't see that happening without some investment. I really think its a
"serve existing customers" play with some contract fulfillment potential for
specced app projects.

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peter_retief
I quite liked notes, nice idea, did a few courses changed companies never
looked at it again Damn it ja, open source the thing to get some relevance

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nsxwolf
Notes 4 launched my software development career, so I will be forever grateful
to it.

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AcerbicZero
A mediocre outsourcing company buys software from another mediocre outsourcing
company? How exciting.

~~~
glogla
Mediocre software.

~~~
oldgradstudent
I see you've never had the chance to experience the glory that is lotus notes.

You'd wish it was mediocre.

~~~
rrrx3
Yes, calling Lotus Notes mediocre is a compliment of the highest order.

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gadders
I know it's normally frowned upon, but I changed the headline from "HCL picks
up Notes, spanks total of $1.8bn at Honest John's IBM software sale"

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protomyth
The Register often has fanciful headlines, so I would bet your not alone on
rephrasing it.

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davb
They cover stories I don't often see elsewhere (especially UK-centric tech
news) and go into great detail, but I hate the writing style. I know it has a
popular following but I feel it gets in the way of otherwise fantastic
content. Can anyone recommend any alternative sites with similar breadth and
depth but a more professional style of writing?

~~~
robocat
They are extremely professional and their technical content is excellent.

I suspect that those stuck in the IT trenches want some light-hearted relief?

It is peculiarly British (albeit with an office in Australia too), which
doesn't suit everyone - you may get ribbed if you post a comment that is US
centric.

The writing style and the headlines often comes across as childish, but some
of the seemingly childish stuff is associated with gags that have been running
for years, or reflecting current events in the UK, or just good old British
humour!

I am a colonial - so my opinions matter didly squat.

~~~
davb
I’m Scottish, so I do get the context and humour. I just feel it often gets in
the way of the stories and the great journalism going on at the Reg. Sometimes
the pun-filled headlines feel like a brain teaser to be deciphered or a page
from Private Eye - great if you’re after some light comedy, not so great if
you want to skim the industry headlines for the stories that really matter to
you.

