Bob Balaban's Blog

    In Theory...

    What Goes Around, Comes Around (or, should that be "WHO goes around..."?)

    Bob Balaban  February 17 2008 08:55:16 AM
    Greetings, Geeks!

    Yes, I have been away from blog-land for a few weeks, I was disappeared into the Lotusphere/QuitMyJob/GotANewJob parallel universe there for a while. And then, of course, along with the new job came a new laptop, which (as usual) took 3 or 4 days to get fully set up and functioning properly (and we're still not completely there yet, for some reason the new SonicWall VPN thingie just won't do its job...)

    So, here I am once again, on the outside of the IBM firewall, back in Business-Partner-Land. Coming up to speed on my new company's products and services. It turns out there are a lot of those, so it may take a little time. I was given a terrific suggestion on how to expedite that -- join in as a lurker on any and all sales presentations/demos being given to our existing or prospective customers on the Net.

    In the meantime, it looks as though I will be immersing myself in a couple of new (to me, but not new to many of you, I suspect) technical areas. One that I'm particularly interested in so far is the particular problems faced by organizations trying to run BOTH Notes/Domino and Exchange messaging infrastructures. I'll call it "Coexistence" (peaceful or otherwise). There are a bunch of them out there, though I have no idea how common it really is. Even though I'm no Admin expert (yet, anyway), I can easily see how maintaining/synchronizing/integrating two directory systems, two (or more) mail clients, and two calendaring systems could be  a real nightmare.

    [full disclosure]
    Naturally, Binary Tree (my new employer) have some products in this space, and my "interest" is therefore not entirely academic, nor will my opinions on this topic be entirely objective (for one thing, I can't imagine why anyone would keep Exchange around when they already have Notes/Domino....). But since I am not a sales/marketing guy, my interest and focus in this blog will remain almost  entirely technical. And there are PLENTY of interesting technical issues needing resolution in this space.
    [/full disclosure]

    So, in the sprit of me-learning-from-you with which I started this blog in the first place, I would love to know:

         - How common is a dual IBM/Microsoft messaging infrastructure?
         - How often do you run into other enterprise messaging systems in terms of integration/coexistence needs? (I hear Groupwise still have a few million seats...)
         - Is it really the nightmare to administer that I imagine it is? Or have you figured it out?
         -What specially difficult technical issues do those of you who deal with this situation for a living encounter?
                (One example that I've heard mentioned: Sending Notes email to Exchange, when the email contains an attached form and/or an LS button or doclink in the email body...)

    Another, related-but-less-technical question I have is:

         When you have encountered this 2-headed situation, has it been "stable"? By that I mean, does the organization intend things to stay that way over time? I can imagine that in many cases, there are 2 messaging systems in place, but the situation is temporary, because the organization is actually migrating from one to the other.

    I'd love to know how often this is the case (i.e., there are 2 but 1 is on the way out), versus how often it's the case because of historical accident (acquisition/merger, or whatever), and the organization intends to leave it that way.

    Let's hear that feedback!