If you have a Domino/Notes footprint that is embedded within your business units and business processes and is taxing your support organization, you may have met resistance from the business and been asked to help the organization migrate away from the Lotus Notes platform. The Lotus Notes platform was long used by technology and businesses and a multipurpose solution that, over the years, became embedded within core business applications and processes.
For organizations that are struggling to understand their options for the Domino platform, the depth of business process usage is typically the biggest operational obstacle. Migrating off the Domino platform is a difficult option for most organizations due to business process and application complexity. In addition, migrating clients have to resolve the challenges with more than one replaceable solution.
The most common tactic is for the organization to better understand their Domino migration options and adopt an application rationalization strategy for the Domino applications entrenched within the business. Options include retiring, replatforming, migrating, or staying with your Domino platform.
Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:
This blueprint will help you assess the fit, purpose, and price of Domino options; develop strategies for overcoming potential challenges; and determine the future of Domino for your organization.
Use this tool to input the outcomes of your various application assessments.
“HCL announced that they have somewhere in the region of 15,000 Domino customers worldwide, and also claimed that that number is growing. They also said that 42% of their customers are already on v11 of Domino, and that in the year or so since that version was released, it’s been downloaded 78,000 times. All of which suggests that the Domino platform is, in fact, alive and well.”
– Nigel Cheshire in Team Studio
You have a Domino/Notes footprint embedded within your business units and business processes. This is taxing your support organization; you are meeting resistance from the business, and you are now asked to help the organization migrate away from the Lotus Notes platform. The Lotus Notes platform was long used by technology and businesses as a multipurpose solution that, over the years, became embedded within core business applications and processes.
For organizations that are struggling to understand their options for the Domino platform, the depth of business process usage is typically the biggest operational obstacle. Migrating off the Domino platform is a difficult option for most organizations due to business process and application complexity. In addition, migrating clients have to resolve the challenges with more than one replaceable solution.
The most common tactic is for the organization to better understand their Domino migration options and adopt an application rationalization strategy for the Domino applications entrenched within the business. Options include retiring, replatforming, migrating, or staying with your Domino platform.
Is “Lotus” Domino still alive?
The number of member engagements with customers regarding the Domino platform has, as you might imagine, dwindled in the past couple of years. While many members have exited the platform, there are still many members and organizations that have entered a long exit program, but with how embedded Domino is in business processes, the migration has slowed and been met with resistance. Some organizations had replatformed the applications but found that the replacement target state was inadequate and introduced friction because the new solution was not a low-code/business-user-driven environment. This resulted in returning the Domino platform to production and working through a strategy to maintain the environment.
Believe it or not, Domino and Notes are still options to consider when determining a migration strategy. With HCL still committed to the platform, there are options organizations should seek to better understand rather than assuming SharePoint will solve all. In our research, we consider:
With multiple options to consider, take the time to clearly understand the application rationalization process within your decision making.
“There is a lot of bias toward Domino; decisions are being made by individuals who know very little about Domino and more importantly, they do not know how it impacts business environment.”
– Rob Salerno, Founder & CTO, Rivet Technology Partners
by Darin Stahl
Key/Value | Column | ||
---|---|---|---|
Use case: Heavily accessed, rarely updated, large amounts of data |
Use case: High availability, multiple data centers |
||
Document | Graph | ||
Use case: Rapid development, Web and programmer friendly |
Use case: Best at dealing with complexity and relationships/networks |
Store the application data in a long-term repository with the means to locate and read it for regulatory and compliance purposes.
Migrate to a new version of the application, facilitating the process of moving software applications from one computing environment to another.
Replatforming is an option for transitioning an existing Domino application to a new modern platform (i.e. cloud) to leverage the benefits of a modern deployment model.
Review the current Domino platform roadmap and understand HCL’s support model. Keep the application within the Domino platform.
Retire the application, storing the application data in a long-term repository.
The most common approach is to build the required functionality in whatever new application/solution is selected, then archive the old data in PDFs and documents.
Typically this involves archiving the data and leveraging Microsoft SharePoint and the new collaborative solutions, likely in conjunction with other software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions.
Be aware of the costs associated with archiving. The more you archive, the more it will cost you.
Migrate to a new version of the application
An application migration is the managed process of migrating or moving applications (software) from one infrastructure environment to another.
This can include migrating applications from one data center to another data center, from a data center to a cloud provider, or from a company’s on-premises system to a cloud provider’s infrastructure.
Transition an existing Domino application to a new modern platform
This type of arrangement is typically part of an application migration or transformation. In this model, client can “replatform” the application into an off-premises hosted provider platform. This would yield many benefits of cloud but in a different scaling capacity as experienced with commodity workloads (e.g. Windows, Linux) and the associated application.
Two challenges are particularly significant when migrating or replatforming Domino applications:
There is a difference between a migration and a replatform application strategy. Determine which solution aligns to the application requirements.
Stay with HCL, understanding its future commitment to the platform.
Following the announced acquisition of IBM Domino and up until around December 2019, HCL had published no future roadmap for the platform. The public-facing information/website at the time stated that HCL acquired “the product family and key lab services to deliver professional services.” Again, there was no mention or emphasis on upcoming new features for the platform. The product offering on their website at the time stated that HCL would leverage its services expertise to advise clients and push applications into four buckets:
That public-facing messaging changed with release 11.0, which had references to IBM rebranded to HCL for the Notes and Domino product – along with fixes already inflight. More information can be found on HCL’s FAQ page.
“SWING Software delivers content transformation and archiving software to over 1,000 organizations worldwide. Our solutions uniquely combine key collaborative platforms and standard document formats, making document production, publishing, and archiving processes more efficient.”*
Lotus Notes Data Migration and Archiving: Preserve historical data outside of Notes and Domino
Lotus Note Migration: Replacing Lotus Notes. Boost your migration by detaching historical data from Lotus Notes and Domino.
Croatia
“Providing leading solutions, resources, and expertise to help your organization transform its collaborative environment.”*
Notes Domino Migration Solutions: Rivit’s industry-leading solutions and hardened migration practice will help you eliminate Notes Domino once and for all.
Rivive Me: Migrate Notes Domino applications to an enterprise web application
Canada
* rivit.ca
“More than 300 organizations across 40+ countries trust skybow to build no-code/no-compromise business applications & processes, and skybow’s community of customers, partners, and experts grows every day.”*
SkyBow Studio: The low-code platform fully integrated into Microsoft 365
Switzerland
“CIMtrek is a global software company headquartered in the UK. Our mission is to develop user-friendly, cost-effective technology solutions and services to help companies modernize their HCL Domino/Notes® application landscape and support their legacy COBOL applications.”*
CIMtrek SharePoint Migrator: Reduce the time and cost of migrating your IBM® Lotus Notes® applications to Office 365, SharePoint online, and SharePoint on premises.
United Kingdom
“4WS.Platform is a rapid application development tool used to quickly create multi-channel applications including web and mobile applications.”*
4WS.Platform is available in two editions: Community and Enterprise.
The Platform Enterprise Edition, allows access with an optional support pack.
4WS.Platform’s technical support provides support services to the users through support contracts and agreements.
The platform is a subscription support services for companies using the product which will allow customers to benefit from the knowledge of 4WS.Platform’s technical experts.
Italy
Application rationalization is the perfect exercise to fully understand your business-developed applications, their importance to business process, and the potential underlying financial impact.
Use this Application Rationalization Tool to input the outcomes of your various application assessments
Follow the instructions to generate recommended dispositions and populate an application portfolio roadmap.
Watch out for misleading scores that result from poorly designed criteria weightings.
Manage your application portfolio to minimize risk and maximize value.
Empower the business to implement their own applications with a trusted business-IT relationship.
Extend IT, automation, and digital capabilities to the business with the right tools, good governance, and trusted organizational relationships.
Optimize your organization’s enterprise application capabilities with a refined and scalable methodology.
Leverage your vendor sourcing process to get better results.
Darin is a Principal Research Advisor within the Infrastructure practice, leveraging 38+ years of experience. His areas of focus include IT operations management, service desk, infrastructure outsourcing, managed services, cloud infrastructure, DRP/BCP, printer management, managed print services, application performance monitoring, managed FTP, and non-commodity servers (zSeries, mainframe, IBM i, AIX, Power PC).
Troy has over 24 years of experience and has championed large enterprise-wide technology transformation programs, remote/home office collaboration and remote work strategies, BCP, IT DRP, IT operations and expense management programs, international right placement initiatives, and large technology transformation initiatives (M&A). Additionally, he has deep experience working with IT solution providers and technology (cloud) startups.
Rob is the Founder and Chief Technology Strategist for Rivit Technology Partners. Rivit is a system integrator that delivers unique IT solutions. Rivit is known for its REVIVE migration strategy which helps companies leave legacy platforms (such as Domino) or move between versions of software. Rivit is the developer of the DCOM Application Archiving solution.
Cheshire, Nigel. “Domino v12 Launch Keeps HCL Product Strategy On Track.” Team Studio, 19 July 2021. Web.
“Is LowCode/NoCode the best platform for you?” Rivit Technology Partners, 15 July 2021. Web.
McCracken, Harry. “Lotus: Farewell to a Once-Great Tech Brand.” TIME, 20 Nov. 2012. Web.
Sharwood, Simon. “Lotus Notes refuses to die, again, as HCL debuts Domino 12.” The Register, 8 June 2021. Web.
Woodie, Alex. “Domino 12 Comes to IBM i.” IT Jungle, 16 Aug. 2021. Web.