System iNetwork

A hardware without software is good as a museum piece. To promote, market, and advertise System i, one needs to promote, market, and advertise the software that can run on System i. The more software that can be run on System i, the more attractive and appealing is System i. As fans, advocates, and supporters of System i, the System i community should cheer for Notes/Domino and coupled it with System i (even though System i is not the only server that can run Notes/Domino).

I use Lotus Notes on the System i every day, and I don't think I am the only one. Maybe you just never hear about it because it just keeps working without problems, in fact I got this News Daily email at work in my System i Notes Email Database....

We currently run a back level Domino on an LPAR on an 825. However, we are thinking of taking it off and running it on a server. Our other copies of Domino run on various X86 servers in our branch offices.

The interface to Email that we use from Batch i5 Jobs is Esend which is now marketed with Sequel by Help/Systems.

We had Lotus Notes for email/calendaring on our iSeries for a while, until we merged with another company. We migrated over to MS Outlook/Exchange instead. Fortunately stuck with the iSeries for most other business functions.

Chris,

I have to say if you haven't heard much discussion of running Domino on i5/OS then you may not have been listening. : ) It is true that Domino runs on many platforms, and I like to say Domino is Domino is Domino, regardless of where you run it.

However, Domino on i5/OS does provide significant benefits to customers in terms of performance, flexibility and scalability. Take a feature such as Multi-Versioning, which is ONLY available with Domino on i5/OS. This enables customers to run several versions of the Domino code under one OS instance on the same machine. This is great for testing out a new release before running it into production.

You can also use Multi-V to load up a new version of Domino during the business day, but wait to apply it to your Domino servers after hours. This speeds up the upgrade process significantly.

You also have better support for Domino partitioning (DPAR) on i5/OS than other platforms - specifically Windows. While you technically can run DPARs on Windows, you can't run them with the various companion apps like Sametime & Quickr. On i5/OS all of that is possible and more.

I don't have to think twice about running several Domino servers on one System i because I know they'll work and perform well.

Domino is a great product and it runs very well on i5/OS. Pair the two up and you get a highly scalable, reliable collaboration environment. i5/OS is the perfect platform for Domino, hands down.

Note from Chris: In a recent System iNEWS survey, 20 percent of readers said they run Domino on their System i or iSeries. We don't know, however, which versions they're using or the extent of their usage.

Like many other features of the System i there is no one out there in the field calling on customers to sell ND8 (another disgusting new acronym). After IBM bought Lotus, the joke in Rochester was 'the answer to every question is Lotus Notes'. Notes was to be the next 'new big thing' on the System i. Now the answer to every question is 'vertical industry marketing', 'SMB', or 'IP Telephony' and Lotus Notes is history.

IBM keeps looking for the magic bullet application or program to fix their basic sales problem. Rochester and IBM don't understand that there is no one out there to sell this stuff. Check out how many System i Specialists there are available for sales calls. Don't forget to add together the IBM and Business Partner numbers.

Hi Chris,

I just returned from the System i Strategic Planning Conference in Macau. I was amazed at just how many of the customers there run Domino on their System i. Virtually every client presentation (and more than a few that I spoke to offline) included Domino running on their System i (which, for the record, most also still refer to as their AS/400!).

I think IBM recognize this, and as Business Partners, so do we. We use it internally (who would think Domino in a 20 person shop, eh?) and recommend it to all of our clients. The versatility and security are too compelling to ignore.

Regards,
Peter

The last time I heard about Notes was on the AS/400 about 12 years ago. Since then it's all been Novell and Outlook.

Well it depends on your point of view, for Domino the System i5 became the home of the second largest population of servers (after Windows!), and it was suggested that more users accessed Domino on System i5 than any other as the i5 servers tended to support very large numbers of users.

The applications available with a Domino platform often fit right into the typical i5 users requirements, and then there are special cases such as our loan management and related software where the flexibility and integration which comes with Domino and i5 make out offerring more attractive.

Those ease of use and integration messages apply to both Domino and i5 so it ought to be a good fit . . . and you ought to know more about it!

We have used Domino on our ISeries over many years and by utilising DECS and Trigger programs it is fully intergrated into the Business system.

For example when sales release an order from the Domino CRM database it automatically creates the machine record and order in the Business data bases, if Sales change a required date the production department are made aware of it, if Sales change order values Accounts data changes and if they are all happy about it they have nothing to do all data bases on the system reflect the changes!

The Customer database in Notes is the same Customer database accounts see on the ISeries, the Supplier database and many others work on the same principle, enter/change it once and all systems have the benifit of the data change. Is that not what computer system are all about?

I'm sure if we ever get Domino and DB2 as promised by IBM it will become even easier to share data.

Bring it on, 1 server is all things to all people so it must be an ISeries!

When we try to expose and educate business executives and students to System i at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, we focus on the business values created and enabled by the software (OS, DB2, Domino, etc.) that runs on System i. Of course, the Computer Science and Engineering students may be more interested in the chips, RAM, partitions, etc.




However, System i has little known issues with its hardware and architecture. In fact, most agree that it is a very reliable, an efficient, and a time-tested machine. Making business executives aware of System i and changing the perception of System i are the areas that need work and effort. And marketing the software (including its OS) that runs on System i will help in marketing and selling System i.