I have been carefully reading the "white paper" that the Microsoft Exchange team published in August 2004. Just so you know where I am coming from, I have been working with Notes/Domino since version 3.0c in 1994, so I have lived through the "Exchange is the Notes Killer" FUD campaign. I have been both an Administrator and Developer and am currently wearing both hats in a 1500 user environment, against my wishes, of course. I am nowhere near the level of some of the other big wigs in the Notes community, but I think I am relatively proficient at what I do. At the very least, I have an opinion and am not willing to let others know about it.

The white paper, entitled Migration of Lotus Notes/Domino Applications to the Microsoft .NET Environment, is 156 pages in length and broken up into 2 parts and an appendix. The first part discusses the methodology for planning a migration and the second part deals with "real world" scenarios and the tools that help with the migration. For this critique, I am going to deal mostly with part one since this is where the decision to move will be made.

My problem with the content of this white paper starts in the introduction. The second paragraph is so absolutely ridiculous that it is amazing that they published it.

Notes/Domino R6 is the last planned release of the existing Notes architecture; IBM plans to reengineer it to run on top of DB2 and WebSphere. The change in database structure creates a significant migration effort for existing customers and creates a situation where the Notes/Domino direction is re-evaluated. Additionally, IBM has halted plans for long-awaited improvements to Notes/Domino, and users are getting conflicting timelines for their replacement strategy. These problems have been amplified by IBM's lack of direction for a cohesive coexistence and migration strategy. Accordingly, many organizations are expressing interest in migrating away from the moribund Notes/Domino platform, but they do not want to abandon their existing investment in applications built on the Notes architecture.

I will be the first to say that IBM's message hasn't always been the clearest with respect to the back-end architecture of Notes, but that has been remedied starting with LotusSphere 2004. The release of the Notes 7 client and subsequent comments by Lotus' executives about Notes 8 & 9 seem to send a clear and concise message, Notes is going to be around a while and going to continue to be extended. While there might be some confusion with respect to how the Workplace product line will mesh with Domino, it is certainly much clearer than any message coming out of Redmond concerning the future of Exchange.

In the Who Should Read This Book section, the amount of Intermediate to Advanced knowledge of several Microsoft products was staggering.

An understanding of the following Microsoft technologies and the way they work together is essential for a successful project:

• Messaging and collaboration – Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003, Microsoft Office SharePoint™ Portal Server 2003, Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 and Microsoft Office InfoPath™ 2003
• Persistence – Microsoft SQL Server™ or other data stores accessible by ADO.NET or ODBC (open database connectivity), for example
• Directory – the Microsoft Active Directory® directory service
• Application development – InfoPath, Microsoft® Visual Studio® .NET, or other tools and languages to design, create, and deploy collaborative applications

Figure I.2 lists the skills and the skill level required for the technologies that are commonly part of the migration. A list of suggested training classes for consideration is included in Appendix A.

To need that much knowledge to build some of the simple applications that they try to migrate in this paper is amazing. I am sure I could never become proficient in all those areas, yet I am able to build complex, non-migratable applications in Notes/Domino. The amount of training and reading that would need to be done for a person to keep up with all these technologies is not something that is feasible, so having multiple people do in Exchange what one person can do in Notes is the way it has to be.

Next entry, we take on Chapter 1.