I have been fortunate enough to have worked with email through many of its phases of evolution. From Host-based systems such as BITNET, IBM’s 8100, S/36, Profs, Officevision, DEC All-in-One, Wang Mail, to LAN-based systems such as cc:mail, IBM Workgroup, Banyan Vines, and Lotus Notes. And integrated these systems with software such as IBM’s DISOSS and Softswitch and proceeded on to the early days of SMTP connectivity.
Many of the systems listed above have gone to the great IT graveyard in the sky. New technology is being developed in minutes rather than hours/days/weeks/years. And based on my own personal experience, whenever an article included the tolling of the death knell of a product, or the introduction of new technology – the reaction of management and users almost always follow Küber-Ross’s model of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. And after reading again the posts that stirred up “Notes is dead” again, it occurred to me that the authors are speaking not to the client software itself as much as the development tools that enable they and other developers to create applications that run on Domino servers. Look at any list of new programming languages. Why wouldn’t it be IBM’s strategy to incorporate these new technologies? They surely will work to do as long as they want Notes/Domino and Domino related products to be a viable option in the marketplace.
And finally to sum, I paraphrase the great Gershwin song…“Potato, potahto, tomato, tomahto, let’s call the whole thing off…”
