Carl Tyler's Blog :: Domino administrators have been spoilt for far too long

« Magic Quadrant for Web Conferencing | Main| Did you know about Snipping Tool? »

Domino administrators have been spoilt for far too long

Category Domino Admin
What a strange title you may think. Having just spent the weekend installing some IBM products that are running on the combination of DB2 and Websphere, I have concluded that IBM believes Domino Administrators have been spoilt, and for far too long. Domino administrators take for granted some simple things:
* The Domino server starts as a service when windows restarts, no batch files.
* Installing Domino doesn't involve running batch files.
* Installs that take 5 minutes
* You rarely open a command window
* A console to show you something's going on.

Well those days are going away, as more Domino apps become Websphere apps, start loving those batch files!

Hopefully IBM will start to realize that time spent on installs, and editing batch files, it less time spent pushing the business value of these apps.

Posted by Carl Tyler On 08/24/2009 | Permalink |

Comments

1 - Yep, you're right.

The MAD thing is that both DB2 and Websphere have the scripting interfaces that could keep everything automated.

But IBM is not using those scripts to simplify our lives.

Posted by Daniele Vistalli At 09:57:16 AM On 08/24/2009 | - Website - |

2 - Yikes. Say it isn't so! Domino Admins need more love... Emoticon

Posted by marie scott At 10:03:00 AM On 08/24/2009 | - Website - |

3 - What's even worse is that EVERY SINGLE TIME I have tried to install some sort or WSP & DB2 product, I can't do it straight away. It always takes days, opening a PMR and far too much back and forth with support. It really makes me wonder why I even bother with these things!

Posted by Tim Lorge At 10:15:22 AM On 08/24/2009 | - Website - |

4 - Think...think...think...

A) Why don't I trust the "moving to websphere will be awesome." mantra?

B) Why will the cloud will kill enterprise software?

Posted by Craig Wiseman At 10:30:04 AM On 08/24/2009 | - Website - |

5 - To be clear - it's not that I have a big issue with Websphere - it's the back-assward way IBM implements it's software on it.

Posted by Craig Wiseman At 10:40:08 AM On 08/24/2009 | - Website - |

6 - You completely miss the difference - Domino grew from Notes which was all "end user" technology.

That was Lotus. This is IBM.

The "new stuff" grew from WebSphere and DB2 and that is all clearly "middleware". There's no need for usability, automation, or easy of use when you are dealing with middlewhere. IBM only sells middleware. Emoticon

Posted by Glen At 10:44:44 AM On 08/24/2009 | - Website - |

7 - Doesn't IBM already realize that time spent on installs is time added to Global Services' invoice? Emoticon

Posted by Kerr At 11:06:12 AM On 08/24/2009 | - Website - |

8 - @7 Oooh that would be terrible Kerr, IBM making software suck so they could make more consulting dollars.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 11:12:16 AM On 08/24/2009 | - Website - |

9 - @5 and everybody else.

A friend of mine (of WebSphere faith) says the problem is the way Lotus implement products on WebSphere ;)

The quality of WebSphere as an app-server is awesome. Some Lotus products on websphere (I remember Connections 1.0) deserved a "go back to school" rating for the dev team.

But the knowledge of the platform is maturing, and so is the quality of products.

After all XPages is a J2EE technology embedded into domino (but born on WebSphere Portal).

Posted by Daniele Vistalli At 12:07:28 PM On 08/24/2009 | - Website - |

10 - @9 - Exactly. It CAN be done right, but if the VENDOR itself can't/won't do it?

Emoticon

Posted by Craig Wiseman At 12:36:56 PM On 08/24/2009 | - Website - |

11 - Domino, it's been said, makes the easy parts hard, and the hard parts easy.

IBM-products-on-Websphere make the easy parts hard and hard parts hard.

Consistency is, indeed, important.

Posted by Craig Wiseman At 12:40:13 PM On 08/24/2009 | - Website - |

12 - I totally agree with this...Websphere/DB2 is wayyy too complicated. I mean if it's your area of expertise, great. But for me, setting up our Sametime Gateway server (twice) was hell! I'm still trying to get it to work. And had to create a dozen batch files for starting/stopping everything. And we need to leave our admin account logged in just so everything runs. Now I'm really scared of Sametime 8.5, since I hear it runs on Websphere also...

Posted by Scott Petricig At 01:21:24 PM On 08/24/2009 | - Website - |

13 - @12 That is my concern too. The people that develop the websphere stuff obviously know it. But your feet on the street Sametime admin doesn't have a clue. I hope IBM doesn't make ST 8.5 so hard to install that the only people that can use it are large corporates with an army of consultants.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 03:29:49 PM On 08/24/2009 | - Website - |

14 - I did not see this until today - I CONCURRRRRRR! Websphere is a great product once it runs, but to get it there is too hard for the average IT guy, I deal with it allot and still think it is too hard.

Posted by Victor Toal At 12:27:16 AM On 09/18/2009 | - Website - |