I spend a great deal of my time supporting complex applications originally built in Lotus Notes R5 & R6 and recently upgraded to R7 or R8. It does mean however that I am very much behind the curve in terms of all the new stuff coming out of IBM such as Lotus Symphony (http://symphony.lotus.com) and quickr to name just two. Its hard to find time to grow new skills or even keep up with new releases such as Notes 8.5 which went gold in January. I'll have to find the time though as every new product is making it easier and easier to sell Lotus/ IBM as a tool to help small & medium sized business to thrive and even grow, when so many are failing.
A common comment I hear is 'I used Notes 10 years ago' or 'I don't like Notes Email, Outlook is better' etc. If that is you though then put your preconceptions aside for a while and take another look because you really need to. The ability to communicate better with your customers and internally within your organisation have never been more important and Lotus/ IBM software is making it so much easier.
In some cases the products work out of the box, other cases require some work on your side but from what I see the results are more than worth the effort.
Andrew Broxholme 14 March 2009 22:39:54