An update on IBM Mail Next

by Volker Weber

You can skip the first 29 minutes of industry strength blabla, if you understand the following:

A couple of takeaways: the design has become considerably more "classic" than what you saw in January. Less radical, more useful, much better use of screen estate. There is no mention of Blackberry or Windows Phone. None. Availability will be very selective and run into 2015. In the cloud.

Mail Next runs on Domino, plus a lot of things around it. We will have to see how IBM is ever going to package it for installation within your company. Same delivery mechanism as iNotes. And Kramer Reeves was very clear about the direction: move to iNotes 9.0.1 ASAP, use the browser plugin for legacy Notes apps.

Don't expect a press release about the future of the fat Notes Client. The direction is very clear to me. Browser and Mobile. Mobile means Android and iOS, unless a customer dumps big money on IBM to develop beyond.

Comments

I am totally unimpressed. I am not even sure if messing with the mail client is the way to go because if IBM is right and so many large companies still use IBM Notes a very huge percentage is not using it for mail anymore.
The browser plugin is excellent if you want to move away from Domino, not so much if you still have a deep investment in the legacy part (that is feature frozen for about 10 years). There still is no satisfying bridge between the old and new technology (and I am aware there probably never will).
An excellent strategy if you already decided to move away, not so much if you believed IBM marketing in the past and with Android and iOS, IBM is again missing the vendor that still dominates the enterprise. If you lock me in I need to feel comfortable and I need a platform that moves forward (fast).
Great quote from vowe in 2011: http://vowe.net/archives/012385.html#c054612
"Wait for us, we are the leaders."

Henning Heinz, 2014-07-28

I just wonder how the browser plugin handle things like COM objects. In several of our mission critical applications, we use a COM object we developed to read/write data from/to a Visual FoxPro backend. That is critical functionality for us...

Karl-Henry Martinsson, 2014-07-28

For me Notes Browser plugins lacks the following functionalities :
1. A seamless way to do mass deployment and or upgrade existing client. Bonus point if it can also do conversion for existing Notes client users.
2. Someway to get the "sidebar" functionality (Connection Files, Sametime, etc). Right now you can only get this if you open iNotes in Full Mode, would be nice to have this functionality within the Notes Browser Plugins.
3. Support of Mac and Linux, as well as support for Safari too (presumably this will be the browser of choice for Mac OS ?)

Tinus Riyanto, 2014-07-29

The browser plugin is for customers who want to migrate their applications to xPages or other web technologies. It can not be a replacement for the notes client, because it does not support many advanced functions that the notes client provides. And the handling of modal dialogs in the browser plugin is an absolute nightmare. For example when you should enter a telephone number in a notes dialog you can not have a look in the company adress book on the intranet because all browser windows are blocked by the modal dialog. So i really hope that IBM will support the Standard client in future releases.

Ralf M Petter, 2014-07-31

Ralf: if a customer upgrades the apps to XPages, there isn't any need for the browser plug-in. XPages don't need it and don't run offline unless you have a full client.
The Browser Plug-in serves one and only one purpose: keep legacy applications running, so the IT manager can say: Look no more Notes on the Desktop.

Stephan H. Wissel, 2014-08-01

Stephan: No one can update all applications at once. So new xPages Apps and legacy apps coexist and the browser plugin helps that you need only one client and not the Notes client for legacy and the browser client for xPages.

Ralf M Petter, 2014-08-06

Old vowe.net archive pages

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