What’s IT all about?

…as announced on Ed Brill’s blog. The guides cover such topics as Roaming, Password Recovery, Backup & Recovery, Admin Process, Calendaring & Scheduling and Security.

I blogged a few days ago about my initial impressions of Google Apps, saying that it looked promising as a free mail/calendar/web service aimed at small businesses and other groups (families, clubs, etc.). Certainly for our particular circumstances at home it promised to ease a bit of a headache, namely running a full-featured groupware platform in a VMWare virtual machine merely to provide mail and calendar services to family members, all on a home PC.

Well, a few days in and there have been no real hiccups so far. Changing the MX and CNAME records to point at Google’s servers was pretty simple, and all changes took effect within an hour. Installing and configuring Thunderbird was pretty painless too, and the simple user interface provided no issues to my Outlook-familiar wife or my 7-year-old daughter ! A nce feature of the Google service is the ability to set up friendly URL’s for the services (e.g. http://mail.domain.com or http://calendar.domain.com)

The only real potential gotcha I have so far encountered happened just now. Google mail has quite a good spam collector built in (on another Gmail account I have reached the point where I rarely bother to check it so confident I am that there will be any false positives), and in logging into the web interface I saw that it had already captured one spam item, which turned out to be quite an important email. Turning spam filtering off is an option, but I think it would be best to monitor the web account for a while until it ‘learns’ what is and isn’t spam to us.

Another success was setting up IMAP access to our old mail accounts (on the Domino server). Took a little bit of fiddling in Domino to make sure each mail database was set up for IMAP access properly, but once done I was able to drag and drop emails and folders to ensure all the mail I wanted to keep was now in Thunderbird. This was so successful that I can see Domino being decommissioned sooner rather than later. Or at the very least being left off by default and only being fired up if an old email needs to be searched for.

One previous facility that I have not yet reproduced, though, is synchronisation of my contacts and calendar between PDA and PC. I was using Laplink PDASync to synchronise Domino and my Palm Lifedrive, which worked very well. I have not yet been able to find a product that will sync the Palm with Thunderbird 2.0 although there does appear to be a product for Thunderbird 1.5 which will hopefully be updated soon. Exporting contacts to CSV seems to lose a lot of the nice information…and using vCards would require them being exported one by one ! The search continues on that one.

I came across a link to Google Apps the other day and it certainly intrigued me. Why ? Well, I have been running Lotus Domino as my personal mail server for some time now, primarily on the basis that I have many years experience with Domino, and it offers both a decent mail client (OK, Notes has it’s idiosyncrasies, but I am very familiar with it and can make it work the way I want) and the ability for me to check my mail online using Domino Web Access (DWA). This all happens in a VMWare-based virtual linux server (specifically Fedora Core 4) running Domino 7 and using fetchmail to pull four family members’ personal mail into separate mail databases. It works, and works well, but it has a downside. Basically, no matter where I am, if I want to access my personal or work emails then this virtual server has to be up and running. And since this does not sit in a server farm somewhere, I can’t guarantee it will be available.

So when I saw Google Apps I thought that there may be an opportunity to replicate the important aspects of my current setup within a more stable environment with higher availability. Here’s how I see it working:

• Register the ‘family’ domain name with Google Apps, giving mail, calendar, chat and website for free.
• Change my MX and various CNAME records for the domain to point to Google.
• Install Thunderbird as the new mail client, pulling emails from Google using POP3.

And that’s about it. The big issue right now is how to migrate everything from Notes to Thunderbird, but I will probably use IMAP to give access to old emails for a month or two and not bother copying everything across. Sometimes these exercises are a good means of having a tidy up !

I’m not totally convinced that POP3 is the way to go, but Google mail does have a setting that archives emails once they have been downloaded, and I think that will be the best solution. I will blog more about this, but initially I think it’s a good solution. I am certainly looking forward to the point in time when the Fedora VM is only fired up occasionally rather than running all the time. It’s a bit of a resource hog on what is, after all, a family PC.

OK, it’s a blog by a rabid Notes/Domino fan….but interesting nonetheless :

link

I guess it really reinforces the absolute commitment to MS software you need to have if you are going to run Exchange, or presumably most of their other server-side software. So much for open standards

I read an article by Davey Winder on the ITPro website today about the recent announcement by IBM that it’s Sametime server will support both the XMPP and SIP/SIMPLE instant messaging protocols, out of the box, allowing free access to interoperability with Yahoo, AIM and GoogleTalk users. This is, apparently, set to create the world’s largest business IM community.

However, the article bemoans the absence of Microsoft-based IM users

Not so great if you happen to be a user of MSN Messenger or Live Communication Server though, as IBM has not included Microsoft in its chat strategy.

Now anyone who has read this blog will know that I have a background in Lotus Domino consulting and have voiced criticism of Microsoft’s marketing strategies. That may be construed as bias, but I prefer to consider myself selective.

Anyway, I would like to point out one fact that seems to have been overlooked by Mr Winder. Microsoft are carrying out their usual strategy with open standards, in this case the SIP/SIMPLE standard adhered to by the other IM players mentioned above. That strategy can be summarised as embrace, extend and extinguish. There is an initial show of welcoming the standard with open arms, followed quickly by MS-specific extensions that are most definitely non-standard resulting in the creation of a closed and proprietary ’standard’ where Microsoft dictates what goes, and always to it’s own benefit.

Bearing that in mind, I believe IBM are perfectly right to open up Sametime to standards-compliant IM systems. If Microsoft wants to join in, then let it do exactly the same, and without charging it’s users as it does now. After all, why should IBM have to open it’s product up to a non-standard competitor ? In the short term it may be beneficial, but in the long term it most certainly isn’t.

IT is changing.

“What’s new there?”, you say. “IT is always changing. It sometimes seems at though it deliberately changes every 6 months in order to extract more money from me to keep up to date.”

I sympathise. Really, I do. From my side of the fence it can be really frustrating to see something that has taken years to put together have a shelf-life measured in months. The sheer pace of innovation and change is breathtaking, and concerning. In what other arena would you try to create something so big and complicated and then rip it down so quickly afterwards. Some of the software that is put together these days rivals skyscrapers in the amount of man-days required to create, and yet in 5 years time it will be obsolete. Weird.

But there is a change taking place. Software is becoming more self-service. “You need a calendar, sir? No problem, here you go. And a portion of mapping on top of that? No problem.” A lot of this is happening on the web in the form of Web 2.0 applications, although there is quite a way to go in improving the inter-operability of these services. You may have heard of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), which is a framework that, in time, should get us closer to the goal of seamless integration between the pieces of software that we decide best meet our requirements.

As this enviroment comes together, it is noticeable that there is a much greater opportunity for non-developers to put relatively complex systems together. In essence, the distinction between an IT person and an end-user or power-user is blurring. Anyone, in theory, can develop a system using tools available on the web without needing the technical expertise of a developer. I’m sure we’ll see a lot of people ‘dabbling’ as the tools develop.

However, I would argue that you should utilise the knowledge and expertise of an IT consultant if you want to create something sustainable. It’s probably not the done thing to refer to the same post in two successive blogs, but Joel Spolsky’s take on Lego Programming is a good lesson from someone who really knows his stuff. Returning to the skyscraper analogy, if you don’t design it right from the start, then it’s bound to come crashing down around your ears.

I’m sure there will be many people wondering if it’s a good thing to give application development capabilities to end users. However, that has been with us for many years. How many people do you know who have created, sometimes quite complex, systems using Excel or Access? In my particular area of experience, Lotus Notes, the ease at which a new application can be created from a template and then tweaked to a person’s requirements has allowed power-users to solve problems without having to go through the usually complex and time-consuming process of requesting a new solution from their IT department. And, truth be told, it’s a means of involving the user more closely in the IT decision-making process, a topic Kevin Pettitt blogs about today.

So IT is opening itself up more and more. Of course you’ll still have developers who create the wonderful tools everyone will be using to solve their problems, but in-house IT developers will be under pressure as end-users create their own solutions. The only answer is to join them, and use your skills to influence how the solutions are created. Better gloss up your consulting skills!

Strange, isn’t it. One day you talk about sharing your data as the next ‘big thing’. The next day you come across a pretty mature web-based app that does it already and pretty much blows your mind away. I’m referring to Dabble DB, which allows you to set up pretty simple database apps in a Web 2.0 environment, and does it very well indeed.

A couple of thoughts occurred to me whilst watching the very impressive demo:

• Whilst Dabble is extremely slick, the basic principles of what it is doing are very familiar to anyone who’s developed in Notes/Domino over the last 10+ years. Shows how good Ray Ozzie’s concept really was.
• Web 2.0 is now bringing us many, many building blocks (databases, spreadsheets, etc.) in addition to a number of well-formed applications. However, a post by Joel Spolsky entitled Lego Programming is a very relevant reminder that the challenge with development is in the initial specification rather than the actual building of the thing. In other words, make sure you know exactly what you want before you dabble

The people who use Lotus Notes and Domino, or sell associated services, are not your typical bunch of software users. They are what I can only describe as a community, a global village. A village that I have lived in (or at least on the outskirts thereof) for many years now.

But every so often then togetherness of this village of people retains the capacity to surprise me, to demonstrate that, in common with real villages, it is made up of people who are not just associates, but rather very good friends. To illustrate this, have a look at a recent post on the widely read blog of vowe (Volker Weber). In a matter of hours, vowe was able to raise over £1,000 to buy a Macbook for the creator of DominoWiki, Ben Poole. This was as a sign of the gratitude of the community to someone who has poured heart and soul into a very impressive but, as it is open source, not commercially profitable piece of software. Ben’s a bit flabbergasted, which says volumes for his modesty !

Now just have a little think about what it would mean to have a member of such a passionate community providing services for your company. You’d know they care about the solution they provide you with, wouldn’t you!

Open Source Software (OSS), i.e. software that is freely distributable without licence fee, has been around for a long time. The best known and most widespread child of that concept, Linux, is in use across the world, running mission-critical services in environments ranging from large data centres to one-man bands. OSS has given a genuine alternative to the Microsoft stronghold for small businesses (see my Life without Microsoft article), as well as continuing to underpin the majority or websites across the world in the guise of the Apache webserver.

I read, with interest, a recent email from VMWare that illustrated just how the very concept of Open Source software is starting to impact directly on licenced software products. The email was announcing the new VMWare Virtual Appliance Marketplace, an area where self-contained virtual machines with a specific purpose can be showcased and made available for others to try out. Some of the appliances utilise licenced software and are not free, but many merely pull together OSS products and add some configuration. The end result is a free virtual machine that you can download and run within the free VMWare Player to add a particular function to your network. For example, you might want to add a web proxy server with content filtering without having to download Squid and Dansguardian and configuring them from scratch. So instead, you can go to the Virtual Appliance Marketplace and download one of many submitted there, such as this one.

When I initially read the email, I was immediately struck by the similarity to another OSS marketplace I had come across in the Notes/Domino world, namely the OpenNTF site. This is a website whereby applications developed in the Notes/Domino environment can be made freely available to all (NTF is the file extension for Notes Template Files, application templates to you and me). And, like the VMWare marketplace, it contains some applications that one would normally expect to pay a large licence fee to use. Popular applications include a blogging tool (Blogsphere) and a Wiki application (DominoWiki), although there are many others.

You might wonder why Open Source is so popular, not just with consumers of the software but with developers too. Certainly, at first glance, it can be difficult to see why a developer would want to put so much blood, sweat and tears into an application without making any money out of it. But from the developers point of view it can have some very good benefits. Not only is it a way of honing your development skills, but it also raises your profile in a way that can be referred to in future job interviews (not dissimilar to a consultant giving presentations at seminars to demonstrate their expertise in a certain area). Finally, it removes the need to ’sell a product’, so the developer doesn’t have to worry about marketing and taking payments and providing support and so on. Although frequently the developer will find that happy customers are very willing to make a contribution towards their costs.

For consumers of OSS, there is the obvious benefit of not having to pay licence fees, and the opportunity afforded to properly evaluate a product without having to worry about artificial deadlines or crippled versions of software. However, it also removes one of the frustrations frequently experience by large organisations when they encounter a bug in some software. Instead of having to wait for the licence holder to replicate the bug, produce a fix, test the fix and release it to customers; they can just go ahead and fix the bug themselves. The only obligation is to release the fix back into the OSS community so that others may benefit from it.

What is the future of OSS ? Difficult to say. I think there will be a continued move away from licenced software and towards OSS until a balance is found. It is possible that licenced software will die away completely, but that may have serious implications on the development of new software as well as the provision of support to smaller organisations. I’m sure the pendulum will continue to sway back and forth for some time yet, but eventually a happy medium will be found.

The current marketplace for email is dominated by two products - Microsoft Exchange and IBM/Lotus Domino. Although, if you are a very small company then you have many more options, usually involving someone else (such as your ISP) managing your mail while you use a POP3 or IMAP client to pick it up, or indeed use a browser to access it remotely. Popular mail clients include Outlook Express (free with Windows) and Mozilla Thunderbird. Web-based mail is divided into web access to your ISP-managed mail address, which can use any number of enterprise-grade products (although typically they will be Unix/Linux based) as the mail server; or consumer-grade webmail services such as Hotmail, Google Mail, Yahoo Mail, and many, many others.

However, as a company grows, it is not unusual for it to want to take more control of its email for a number of reasons. In brief, they include ease of administration (creating a new email account can be automated as part of the new employee process), better control over backups, and a desire to ‘own’ the infrastructure in case of ISP issues. If you are running Microsoft software, then the easy choice at that stage is to carry on in the same vein and go with Exchange. And sometimes it is very tempting to take the easy choice. However, if you are running a successful business (and you must be because the business is growing, right?) then you will not have reached that stage because you always take the easy choice. Rather you will have made sure as much as you can that every choice is the right choice. So why change that habit now?

First of all, though, a disclaimer. I have worked with Notes and Domino for many years and I am a fan. So this is not going to be an objective critique of Domino vs. Exchange for the growing business. I have strong views on why I think Domino is a good choice and I will share them with you. If you are faced with making a choice then I would recommend you speak to someone else about the benefits of Exchange, and make sure you ask all parties some searching questions.

OK, with that out of the way, lets have a look at what a growing business expects from it’s email system. I think we can sum up those requirements pretty simply:

• Security
• Cost of ownership
• Scalability
• Ease of administration
• Disaster recovery capability
• Accessibility

Security
As it needs to be exposed to the outside world, your email server will not be sitting cosily inside your LAN, but rather will be sitting in your DMZ, leaving it somewhat at risk from internet-born attacks. Top of your list, therefore, is to implement an email system that will not compromise your business. One that is not a target for viruses and DoS attacks. You may be considering a platform other than Windows for this system for that reason alone. Domino can run on a large number of platforms (Windows, Linux, Unix, iSeries, s390) giving you many options in that area, and there are no known viruses that attack Domino servers.

Cost of Ownership
In theory, having a whole suite of Microsoft products should keep things simple, right? In practice this isn’t necessarily the case. Particularly if you want to take your communications infrastructure beyone email and into webmail, instant messaging, forums, wikis, blogs, Extranets and so on. With Microsoft, you need to start adding on extra services…IIS, SQL Server, Live Communications Server, Sharepoint Portal Server, Office Roundtable, possibly Speech Server and, of course, Office. The costs start adding up, particularly when you then consider that Microsoft has a habit of completely changing the structure of Exchange on a regualr basis, requiring costly migrations unless you are happy to run out-of-support software. Domino has most of the above built in, you only need to add a Sametime server for instant messaging. Add to this the laughably easy upgrade process, typically measured in minutes rather than days, and you can see why Domino administrators love the product.

Scalability
You want your business to carry on growing, right? You want your choice of email system to allow and assist with that growth, not hamper it, right? So whilst now you are probably looking at a single Windows or Linux server, in two or three year you may have 5 times the workforce, spread over half a dozen sites. Well, whether you carry on adding extra Windows or Linux servers, or decide it makes more sense to have a Sun Solaris server, or an iSeries, you can keep on using the same email system. You can even mix and match and they will happily talk to each other, ignoring the underlying operating system.

Ease of administration
This could be an article in it’s own right! To summarise, though, having made the decision to bring your email ‘in-house’, the initial outlay on software is probably the smallest aspect of this calculation. The largest is probably the people resources required to administer the system, and this is where Domino really scores. Looking at large organisations, you typically require less than half the IT resource to administer a Domino infrastructure than you need to run an Exchange setup. Why? Primarily because Domino is more stable (even on Windows) and easier to setup in such a way so that if there is a problem then you can work around it quickly and easily. How this translates to SME’s is that, rather than having to employ an mail administrator, you can have a much cheaper contract with your local Domino consultantcy to provide support services. After all, pretty much any aspect of your mail administration can be carried out remotely.

Disaster recovery
Domino has always come with very strong data replication capabilities. This allows the same data to reside on multiple servers around the world, and for updates on any of them to be pushed around the network in an efficient manner. Additionally, Domino has one of the best server clustering capabilities in the email server market, particularly when you consider it does not require the host OS to be the same in cluster partners (i.e. you have have a Windows server clustered with a Linux one). These capability forms the basis of excellent Disaster Recovery capabilites. Typically you will have all your important Domino data replicated on to another server, from where you can back up to tape as and when you like. For areas where high availability is required (e.g. email) you can run a Domino cluster, so that if one server is taken off-line then users automatically fail-over to the other. For repication and clustering, it is perfectly feasible to have the servers in different physical locations.

Accessibility
Remember the means of accessing your email that were discussed earlier (POP3, IMAP, webmail). Out of the box, Domino supports all these protocols in addition to native Notes client access, it’s simply a matter of turning them on. If you like using Outlook, then there is a bundled product called Domino Access for MS Outlook (the name’s a bit clunky, but it does the job). There are add-on products, most notably from Blackberry, that open up Domino to mobile clients. In short, if you need access to your Domino-based mail on any device, then it’s possible.

In conclusion, I believe Domino is very worth of consideration as a mail server for the smaller company. Coupled with a support arrangement with your local Domino consultancy, you will have a secure, scalable, flexible system that will grow with your business. And best of all, it gives you choice over your server platform and, indeed, client platform too.

For more information, the IBM/Lotus product page is here.