Question from NELUG: Does Lotus Notes have a future?

05/12/2010 11:28 AM by Chris Toohey

While presenting last night at the New England User Group on XPages development (specifically on using Custom Controls), I was asked if there's a future to the Lotus Notes platform.

The question -- the first of the night -- got a few laughs... but I could tell that there was a true need to know that the Lotus Notes platform was still viable and had a future.

I don't know if my on-the-spot answer addressed concerns or added to them, but I'll do my best to retell it here:

Lotus Notes -- as an application platform -- absolutely has a future. The way you develop Lotus Notes apps today, however, does not.

There is a paradigm shift at play with how Lotus Notes applications are written, and it's not due to the advent of XPages, but rather user expectation.

Application developers can no longer say "it doesn't do that", nor can we say "in the next release", as the user expectation has been set -- mostly from Apple -- that there's an app for that.

XPages allow us for the first time -- without considerable hacks -- to create rich and flexible user interfaces as well as rich and functional backend logic and data processing. XPages are a tool... but they're a tool that needs to be used and extended far beyond it's original conceived (or currently perceived) limitations.

XPages are the future of IBM Lotus Notes Domino Client and Web Browser based applications... but more because of what it allows an application developer to do with the IBM Lotus Notes Domino platform.

So I'll say again: Lotus Notes -- as an application platform -- absolutely has a future. The way you develop Lotus Notes apps today, however, does not.