I know, everybody is now talking about what HCL has to do to make Notes and Domino a renewed success. Let me just sum it up:
Fix a lot of things that need fixing now. Everybody has his opinion here which things need to be fixed right NOW. Or better yesterday. Me too, but I will not tell you which.
Fix a lot of things until the next version, that have been a neglected by IBM. Again, which one’s?
I could go on for a while and write a lot of stuff what I believe is the right way. Probably pretty useless, because HCL does know it. All of it. The community told them. Some of the HCL team will probably even read this gibberish. And here comes the point where I have to ask myself, what can I do with the new situation. The last few years I had my focus on other things, but I never really lost track of what was going on. Somehow I miss the time, when I was deeply involved with Notes. The time, when I was working on the edge, of what was possible with it. The time when I helped more people in the forums but my questions were not answered, because nobody knew how to do it then. Some solutions worked, but were really bad ideas with undocumented code. Some became long used software products, some never left the prototype state, like the aircraft-maintenance application that stored every part of an aircraft as an object (learned a lot about OO then) and all the parts made up the aircraft with different times for different components. Was nice. Never made it into the world.
Living in the past does not help and right now I have the urge to be more involved with Notes and Domino again (it is fun), because I see light at the end of the tunnel, but it might be quite a long tunnel. The last year has certainly slowed down the exodus and with a bit of luck, HCL might even realise that there are companies with less than 10’000 seats that are worth talking to. The community certainly embraces the change. Everybody is happy that IBM is history. While I have heard rumours that HCL is a software cemetery, I have also seen the dynamic the last year and that does not look like a bunch of zombies falling apart slowly.
I am really looking forward to the change (and I still have the urge to tell HCL what I want, but I am going to take a deep breath now … better, got over it) and no, I don’t want the old Notes/Domino/Connections/etc. back.
Dear HCL (I used this phrase often sarcastically with IBM, but not this time)
I am happy you took this step. I am looking forward, how Notes and Domino (and some other quite exciting software packages) will come back into the light. I hope we will see new versions that will have the WOW-factor I was missing the last ten years. Products that excite even the most snobbish twitter-snapchat-What’sApp-millennials. I wish you the stamina to get to the end of the tunnel. It is not going to be easy and I hope it is worth it for you.
I wish us all the best for the ride and who knows, one day we see each other at a party like Lotus used to throw. Missed that, too.