Quantum leap for groupware (Lotus Notes R5)

Member Name: IanPaterson

Product:	Lotus Notes R5
Date:	08/09/00 (148 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Stable industry respected groupware

Disadvantages: Expensive, high admin costs

Lotus Notes admin is a big chunk of my job at the moment and has been for a couple of years. I 'grew up' on version 4.5, migrated to 4.6, changed jobs to roll out version 5, changed jobs again and now use 4.6! You might say a whistle stop tour of Notes admin! Now being CLP R4 and R5 I think I have just about got a good grip on Notes.

There is a BIG change in store for you from R4.6 to R5. My experience of R5 is on AS/400 and a little NT with 1200 users, R4.5/4.6 NT and a little AS/400 for about 3000 users. The most significant change in R5 by Lotus is the push for legacy platforms like AS/400. If you have ever installed and configured R4 on AS/400 you will know what I mean when I say death to AnyMAIL! R5 has broken free of all the R4 problems and natively runs SMTP on OS/400 (V4R3 only!) Lotus sold more OS/400 installs in 4/1 than NT to date! The reliability of the 400 and Notes is a force to be reckoned with in the current platforms world.

Installing R5 is very simple, even on 400's. Your first server is simple enough, as per R4, second server the same to. Connection documents are very similar and need very little research from R4 to get working properly.

The real benefits come from user management, PKI and web services. User management can now be drilled down and reversed, i.e. what groups is this user a member of (God send compared to R4!), activity logs and so on. If like me you have 30 odd servers to monitor daily around the globe, server stats are on one pane for all your NNN servers. This significantly reduces time trawling through logs and mail.box for dead mail. Replication errors can be reported on to avoiding digging through statrep.nsf. SMTP mail has been greatly enhanced with mail router power. R5 gives mail delivery and routing stability the punch of a V8! Web integration is the real power behind R5. Collaboration with extranet and intranet through Lotus Script and Domino Web Server has leapt i
nto 21st century.

The user fron tend is also very different. Lotus have really gone for the web integration here as well. If you need to manage multiple databases, the traditional workspace is still there but the new workspace loses this flexibilty I feel with hyperlinks to calendars and no 'buttons'.

Mail file templates have changed to. Calendaring is much much easier to use and configure and can span a workgroup or a whole business without falling over like R4.

The only comparable system on the market is Microsoft Exchange. Having used 5.5 quite heavily, I do prefer Notes. The major downfall of Exchange is the directory replication. I can only say I have found cirectory replication on Exchange lacking in reliability especially for large databases across organisations. Notes has always won hands down here on replication across diverse networks and remote users.

If you have R4, upgrading to R5 is a logical step. Lotus are dropping support of R4.6 3/4 of next year so the pressure is on! If you are considering Win 2K as well, good luck!

If you are planning R5, it is a good oppurtunity to lay out Utopia before you start, I would consider R5 probably capable of getting you there.

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