Computer Currents (Vol 11 #9), Sep 21, 1993; p. 56 ..
 Lotus Notes for Managing Documents On Your Network

Readers Detail Problems
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By Michael Dortch

Michael Dortch has been writing, talking and thinking about information networks since the late 1970s, a state from which he fears he will never recover. Meanwhile, the opin- ions expressed in his columns are stead- fastly his own, until he changes his mind. If you want to help change it, he can be reached via fax at 415/386-9854, via CompuServe at 76517,2762, via MCI Mail at 599-1288 or via the Internet at dortch@radiomail.net. ..
I have been reading and ruminating over your responses to my now cautiously positive review of Lotus Development Corp.'s Notes software for collaboration and information management (see this column in the September 7 issue). For those who missed my last column, I said that with the advent of Notes version 3.0, Lotus has fixed a bunch of problems users encountered with earlier versions and concluded that Notes is now worth a serious look from any network administrators looking for a comprehensive environment for managing information and facilitating collaboration among computer-using colleagues. Since one of Notes' most pervasive uses is for the management of shared databases of documents and other information, I can frame my responses to your responses within a slightly larger discussion of managing information on a network.
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FIRST, WHAT YOU THINK

Here is what one reader had to say about Lotus Notes and my related comments. This reader began by saying he will accept my assertion that Notes is the closest that any vendor has come to "delivering the full measure of the promise of electronic collaboration." However, the reader (who did not give me permission to quote him by name) was blunt in detailing his problems with earlier versions of Notes and skepticism towards the new Version 3:

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"I have been a guinea pig of Lotus Development Corp. since the day my employer listened to a consultant who was a Notes development partner and agreed to pay $500 per license and an enormous amount of money for consulting services to try and make Notes actually work. Of course, this was with version 2.1. We were told that this stuff was the best thing since sliced bread.
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"Well, after a large pile of money changed hands, and countless hours of frustrating support work was invested, and all the end users and support people were alienated, the consultant was finally rewarded by being given the opportunity to pursue her career elsewhere. We have since upgraded to Notes 3.0, a fairly painless process on the Windows clients" ..
However, our intrepid reader is less than thrilled with the operating system atop which he must run Notes 3.0.

"The new 3.0 server is running on that gem of an operating ystem that just proved so unsuccessful for IBM, OS/2 verston 2 .3. (Since we have Apple Macintosh clients [too], we're still stuck with the older operating system because of the OS/2-NetWare issues.)"

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Interoperability between Novell Inc.'s NetWare network operating system, Notes 3.0 and OS/2 2.1 is still problematic at best, as I and our guest narrator understand it.

"I keep hearing talk about Notes [on] Unix, or Notes. . . on NetWare servers, but since these versions aren't actually shipping, they are still vaporware. We might as well run the stuff on "Microsoft Corp.'s Windows" NT on an AXP server [from Digital Equipment Corp.l. . . Oh, I forgot, that [combination] isn't available yet either!"

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I hasten to insert here that the Lotus folks promised me that a Notes NetWare Loadable Module (NLM) will really begin shipping Real Soon Now, honest, really. NLMs can run on the same server as NetWare itself, making for both greater interoperability with the network operating system and savings on separate servers, unless you want to run Notes and NetWare on separate boxes so that the failure of one doesn't risk the failure of both. But I digress. Back to another reader: ..
"If this letter seems rather bitter and cynical, then the communication process is working. Notes may actually prove to be a valuable tool for some applications. [But] from my experience, Lotus has done a pretty good job of alienating early users through poor guesses as to where the market is going--waiting until the third major version to support anything other than OS/2 servers and Windows clients-- and making expensive software which is very hard to use. I'll keep looking for one of the competitors to catch up and surpass Lotus in the execution of a good idea." ..
ANOTHER READER, MORE COMPLAINTS

Another reader writes from a company that provides high-speed network services other companies use to link their computers and networks together. This reader (for whom I will perform the same courtesy of anonymity as above) said he works where there is "a sizable constituency who would like to have us install it [Notes] for our company."

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"I found nothing in your article with which I can disagree [this reader charitably began]. It seems to confirm my less-than-enthusiastic embracing of Notes. I have boiled down my concerns to two, which you obliquely touched upon in your article.

"First, using an early version of Notes at a previous employer, it required as much as 50 percent of the LAN administrator's job to maintain the system and answer everybody's questions when something not-too-intuitive cropped up. While this continues to concern me, it is not my major objection. [I think this support issue will be the major sticking point for a lot of prospective Notes users, but I am interrupting again...]
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"As you state in your article, too many people think that your entire enterprise data model can be incorporated in one system. This position seems to suit Lotus and their insistence on using their own proprietary database [management software] limits its application in our particular situation, where we are forced to have key enterprise data in an external database such as Sybase [Inc.'s Sybase database manager].

"If Notes would offer external database options... we could then seriously consider developing and deploying our enterprise data model with Notes as cornerstone."

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I believe this reader has reason to be more hopeful than the first reader, be- cause Lotus is planning to deliver interoperability with numerous external databases. When this will be delivered is an open question, of course, as is how difficult it will be to translate data formats between Notes' database and others once connectivity to other environments is established. (Ever reach a wrong phone number and get someone who didn't speak your native language? Then you know the difference between mere connectivity and true interoperability.)
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This reader concluded by asking me to clarify my earlier comments about Notes' support for Unix being not quite sufficient. In my humble opinion, Lotus has been slow to deliver versions of Notes that run on a variety of Unix-based operating systems. This would help many users. Unix offers inherently greater power than older versions of OS/2, and Unix-flavored operating environments offer inherently greater availability than potential alternatives like Windows NT.
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Lotus has announced and reaffirmed its commitment to deliver Notes on Unix environments, especially on those from The Santa Cruz operation Inc., dominant suppliers of Unix software for hard ware based on 80x86 and Pentium-class chips. Standard PC hardware is cheaper than the RISC-based (reduced instruction set computing) hardware on which Unix is most frequently run, and 80486--and Pentium--class machines are beginning to deliver power that matches the technological competition.
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NOW, WHAT I THINK

Based on comments from these readers and others with Notes or Lotus experiences, do I think Notes is worth implementing for document and information management in a networked organization? Well, maybe, but probably not if that's your major reason for getting it. Unless you have access to a person or team with proven experience making Notes work like you need it to work, you'd probably be much better off getting ahold of software more focused on document management and leaving Notes alone-until it gets better or your needs and resources expand, or both.
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How to approach the document/information management conundrum? Well, that depends. By the time you read this, Novell will have announced NetWare 3.12, an update to its most popular version of NetWare, 3.11. NetWare 3.12 will include integrated document-management features that ought to work with most NetWare- compliant applications, but you know how risky an operating system upgrade can be.. .

There are a lot of dedicated software products for document and information management, but not all of them are satisfactorily network-aware or network- savy. For this and other reasons too arcane and nit-picky to go into here, I think that the first, obvious way to approach document management is to look closely at the most popular applications on your network, and determine whether those applications include or can be enhanced with document-management features from the original software developer or from some outside but compatible vendor.
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I also feel compelled to suggest that for most small and mid-sized organizations without a lot of resources to apply to networks and network applications, relying on existing tools to meet your document-management needs may be the most practical approach in the short term. Some really powerful document-management solutions can be expensive, difficult to set up, not completely compatible with everything everyone on your network uses, or some combination of the above.
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While learning to get the most out of tools you already have, you can deliberate over issues like who needs access to what, how many formats, networks, applications and client PCs can you support, should you include information backup, archiving and restoral in your document-management plans, and whether your operating systems, network operating systems, servers and client PCs all have enough horsepower and resources to take on the overhead of document management.
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These and other questions should keep enough of you busy until better alterna- tives appear, and answering them should make you sawy enough to pick and implement the best available solution for your needs the first time. As always, if you want to discuss these or other network issues further, I always answer faxes and e-mail... eventually.