Lotus vs. SharePoint 181
daria42 writes "An article at ZDNet pits the software collaboration kings against each other. IBM's Lotus Notes/Domino 7 goes head to head against Microsoft's SharePoint Portal Server 2003. 'If you don't have the resources dedicated to developing collaborative applications, don't have complex application or integration requirements or if you are focused on the Microsoft solution stack, SharePoint Portal Server 2003 is going to be hard to beat,' the review concludes."
Haven't RTFA yet, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Haven't RTFA yet, but... (Score:2)
Re:Been using SharePoint ... (Score:2)
Irony (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Irony (Score:2, Interesting)
Sure it kind of works in an All Windows/IE, purely M$ environment, but as soon as you add an alternative browser, or even worse OS, then it's damn painful.
It's also quite difficult to update data automatically (it might actually be possible, but I doubt it's trivial to get data from a non M$ machine).
I guess something like sharepoint works for 'Management', but for developers I think it's hard to beat a good Wiki. And good ones have history,
Re: Irony (Score:5, Interesting)
We're using it across a 250+ person project distributed across 7 US location through multiple firewalls and it works GREAT! It not only works well within our company, but we use it extensively to 'publish' project deliverables and status to our clients and selectively share information with subcontractors.
It's also very easy to setup new Sharepoint sites for new projects.
I also used Lotus 2-3 years ago and it was far more difficult to use and setup new areas. Sharepoint beats Lotus hands-down.
For what it does, it does very well and is easy to use. For developers, it's not a CM tool and doesn't seem particularly oriented towards them, so perhaps you were just looking for something else?
Re: Irony (Score:3, Insightful)
Three different programming models(Web parts,CAML,Sharepoint object model) for extensions, wacky directory structure, SQL server dependence, windows authentication, a stupid markup language with no designer support, and a whole lot of inadeuqately documented features.
Working across firewalls? Do you use the whole gamut of office integration features? Such as MS Project publishing, Outlook sync, and document storage for Offic
Re: Irony (Score:2)
Re: Irony (Score:2)
Am I the only one that first read that as "I also used Lotus 1-2-3 years ago"?
Re:Irony (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Irony (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Irony (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Irony (Score:5, Insightful)
No, no, no. If it doesn't have per seat and per server licensing it isn't a solution. I also loved the way they mentioned the existence of other products (because they knew readers would know about them and wonder) then promply blew them off to concentrate on the two most expensive and infexible offerings on their way to a conclusion that was a no brainer.
One paragraph summary of the review:
If you are already in bed with IBM, stay there for now and if you are a Microsoft Slave(tm) buy their stuff without question. If you haven't picked yet you should probably buy Microsoft because IBM costs more (it does) and trained monkeys can operate it (the stock excuse for buying any of Microsoft's junk) and anyway, we all know Microsoft always crushes all opponents so skilled Lotus people are going to be rare exotic creatures (read expensive) in the future. But whatever you do, DO NOT look over at those free offerings, they will only lead you from the One True Path, paying out the ass for licenses and consultants.
Re:Irony (Score:2)
Re:Irony (Score:2)
Then you will have to hire trained monkeys and you will wonder why your current monkeys get cranky and while about working too hard when you can't find ones that will work for the relatively few peanuts you provide.
Re:Irony (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Irony (Score:2)
http://plone.org/documentation/how-to/ldap-in-win
infinity (Score:1, Interesting)
The key phrase (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The key phrase (Score:3, Informative)
That said, Workflow is the biggest weak
Kollaberation Kombat? (Score:1)
FATALITY!
Too little too late (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Too little too late (Score:2)
which is the goofy part, as Notes has been around for soooo long it still is as buggy as beta. I have been using and supporting notes for almost 4 years and there is no end to the crashes, bugs, missing dic files, random unread docs, replication conflicts, and dont get me started on trying to migrate from version 5-6, let alone from 6-7. Every day I fear turning on the sametime server or using the more advanced features, often waking up in a cold sweat seeing the Red Box of death from the old days
Re:Too little too late (Score:4, Interesting)
I can tell you this about Replication Errors. They work flawlessly. If you are getting replication conflicts, it is because you have different data on different Replicas, and the data was changed on each replica since the last replication. Save/Replication conflicts are not a failure of Notes/Domino. They are the proper handling of conflicting data. Most other platforms just pick one copy and indiscriminatly over write the other. This is general done by date, and is a very poor way to handle things. Of course if you want your data handled poorly, you can set Notes/Domino to just overwrite the older data.
The biggest curse of Notes/Domino is that for years, the Designer was the same application as the Developer. Given how easy it is to produce robust applications on this platform, many companies assigned the first user to be the developer. Now, I'm not saying that a secratary cannot be a good developer, but being a secratery certainly doesn't mean that you ARE a good developer.
Re:Too little too late (Score:2)
Secretaries turned Dev (Score:2)
That being said, a secretary and a real developer can make a fabulous development team. I do a lot of work for a steel mill, and their devleoper employee got the job because she was willing to do the work. No development background, and little
Re:Too little too late (Score:1)
You can code absolute crap and Notes will run, yeah it'll pop the red box up or piss off and think about things for 20 minutes before giving you control back but it will run.
Currently for my sins I'm maintaining and extending a Notes system written b
Re:Too little too late (Score:2)
Re:Too little too late (Score:2)
Re:Too little too late (Score:2)
Look where they are now?
Its amazing how much integration gives phb's a woody. Active directory is a pos or was when I was in IT in 1999 when someone told me its bloated 70x over NDS and would require a whole lan upgrade!
I think most linux users who love to bash Microsoft never understand why their os is not king of the desktop. Articles like this mentioning Office2k7 integration and windows integration is what MS use
GroupWise?? (Score:2)
Re:GroupWise?? (Score:2)
Re:GroupWise?? (Score:2, Troll)
On top of that, Novell just can't compete feature wise.
Re:GroupWise?? (Score:2)
Office integration, DAV support, FTP support, workflow, permissions (with delegation), internalization, all out of the box, all with one click install.
You can't really go wrong. If you really want to pay get Z4I from zope corp.
Re:GroupWise?? (Score:2)
Speaking as a Scarepoint user (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Speaking as a Scarepoint user (Score:2)
Re:Speaking as a Scarepoint user (Score:5, Informative)
It's pretty much not usable with anything other than IE on Windows. IE on OS X (when they Microsoft provided such a thing) was unusable. Fortunately I had my laptop with me when the Microsoft folks were pimping Sharepoint to management. They said things like, "oh, yeah, it will work as long as it's IE. No problem." So I asked them to show me how since I was having problems with their Sharepoint site using IE on OS X.
Needless to say, we're not running Sharepoint.
I Would Pay Good Money (Score:2)
I've been subjected to "Bloated Goats" every time I've worked at IBM. I've already arrived at the conclusion that all email products suck, but both IBM's and Microsoft's groupware products suck that little bit extra that makes all the difference. Notes and Exchange both get a rating of "Sucktastic" in my book. You know it's bad when you're glad to go home to an email client that "only" sucks donkey balls
Re:Speaking as a Scarepoint user (Score:2)
I've used it with Mozilla without any problems, and when there are problems, the same problems also show up in IE...
Re:Speaking as a Scarepoint user (Score:2)
WSS v3 & MOSS 2007 (Score:5, Interesting)
Ermm. Looks can be deceiving (Score:2)
What's nice about that is that as a sysadmin I'm -guaranteed- work anywhere that attempts to do anything slightly different than a default installation.
(I after e except after c right?)
Grrrr (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Grrrr (Score:3, Interesting)
Progress? (Score:2)
Re:Progress? Over or inTO the (Score:2)
(GO LOTUS! GO IBM!)
Goddamned Stupid:
"Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING."
I only lower-cased ver in over to end the abort..
Re:Progress? (Score:2)
I have used Notes before at my first company, which is why I sneak the topic into conversation at interviews. (usually it means the company has a IT dept that is rabidly anti-MS and pro IBM, and therefore usually religiously blinkered to a lot of other things that make life easier)
Sharepoint is OK (Score:5, Informative)
Recently we began using Sharepoint. The upside is it's like CVS - you can see who edited a file, when, and what they changed. This is useful more for utilitarian purposes than spying - if I see Joe created a file, or modified it, I can ask Joe about it.
One drawback for Sharepoint is linkage. In the old days I could just tell people to go to \\FILESERVER\IT\Documents\Whatever\Coolstuff.xls . They click on that in e-mail and it pops up. Now I have to give convoluted instructions on how to get the document. The URLs are long and convoluted. It was easier to direct people to information before.
I am stuck here in Windows hell, are there any GPL and possibly UNIX-friendly versions of this type os software?
Re:Sharepoint is OK (Score:4, Interesting)
All-in-all, I am very impressed with SharePoint 2003 and we keep finding more and more uses for it.
Re:Sharepoint is OK (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Sharepoint is OK (Score:2)
Re:Sharepoint is OK (Score:1)
Re:Sharepoint is OK (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been using basecamp http://www.basecamphq.com/ [basecamphq.com] as a lightweight solution, and I really like it so far. I'm not sure about scaling it up to a large corporate level, but it has been great so far for my small team. The downside is all of your data is on their servers.
It uses a Software as a service model, pay as you go. So not GPL, but it does expose a HTTP/XML API that could easily be
Subversion is far better for your needs. (Score:5, Informative)
Subversion. http://subversion.tigris.org/ [tigris.org]
What you are describing is a source control system applied to documents instead of code. By design any files in the subversion repo are accessible via url. And you can restrict access using apache httpd access controls.
For example, here is a subversion repo: http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/ [collab.net]
notice you only needed a browser to get to it. If you use TortoiseSVN as your client, you can grab a copy using Window Explorer as a file-friendly client.
Here's a screen shot of TortoiseSVN:
http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/ [tigris.org]
Access via apache httpd is through web DAV, so you can put it in your network share list as well.
Re:Sharepoint is OK (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.cybozu.com/ [cybozu.com]
then they hired an IT genius for a director or it who thought that the only true software is microsoft....
Re:Sharepoint is OK (Score:1)
Re:Sharepoint is OK (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sharepoint is OK (Score:2)
I would also reccomend people take a look at ifolder, it's really nice.
Re:Sharepoint is OK (Score:3, Informative)
1. Sharepoint integrates with outlook 2003, so that you can email a sharepoint document from the sharepoint UI and it automatically gets "reference attached" to your outlook email. This is very handy as it opens from within sharepoint, so if they edit it it's updated automatically on the site.
2. "\\sharepointserver\sitename\document library name" will work unless your sharepoint server is misconfigured. They still let you use it as a network share.
Conclusion (Score:2)
Another "Well, DUH!" comment (Score:2)
What a surprise. Isn't that the whole point of Microsoft's platform strategy? That it's pretty much an all or nothing proposition?
Hope you don't need Mac/Linux users on Sharepoint (Score:4, Insightful)
:: diatonic
Re:Hope you don't need Mac/Linux users on Sharepoi (Score:4, Interesting)
But don't let total ignorance of the product stop you from bashing it. This is, after all, Slashdot.
Re:Hope you don't need Mac/Linux users on Sharepoi (Score:2)
Re:Hope you don't need Mac/Linux users on Sharepoi (Score:2)
The only thing that requires an active X control is some of the advanced LCS integration functionality (mouse over someone's name, it tells you their online status in LCS) and other things like that.
I use it in firefox all the time.
They compared the wrong products (Score:1)
Sharepoint v Twiki (Score:3, Interesting)
Typically, we use Sharepoint for any Microsoft formatted docs (xls, doc, ppt, etc) since Office 2003 has pretty decent support for Sharepoint built-in. Click on a spreadsheet and Excel will check it out, show you who is working on the file, and check it back in when you save. Pretty slick. Gnumeric comes pretty close in that it appears to check it out, but Sharepoint doesn't seem to recognize the checked out state so checking it back in is problematic.
We then use Twiki for docs that are more static (PDFs, typically) and for pages that are heavily customized. I'm sure that Sharepoint allows for very customized pages as well but we use what we know and we know Twiki.
Uh-huh? (Score:1)
They both suck (Score:3, Informative)
The big end user problem in Domino is the limited hierarchy. You have rooms, cabinets, folders, and files. People find it very limiting and confusing to be forced into that model. Some other issues involve poor performance and difficulty of performing backups because of certain design decisions that haven't been changed in the last 10 years. Everyone I've spoken to in my company hates using Domino.
Sharepoint offers unlimited hierarchy. The big problem in Sharepoint is security. You can set security on a respository but not on folders or documents. As far as I can determine, Windows authentication is required. This can be a real problem in a large corporation where various parts of the business have their own domains or active directory trees that aren't configured to trust the other domains or directories. Also, documents are differentiated and versioned entirely based on filename.
Sure, there are some things about document management that can be hard. I know from experience. I've written a document management system. That's why it amazes me that IBM and Microsoft haven't been able to put forth better offerings.
Re:They both suck (Score:2)
"Sharepoint offers unlimited hierarchy. The big problem in Sharepoint is security. You can set security on a respository but not on folders or documents. As far as I can determine, Windows authentication is required. This can be a real problem in a large corporation where various parts of the business have their own domains or active directory trees that aren't configured to trust the othe
You're not talking about Domino... (Score:4, Informative)
Rooms, cabinets, folders, files, etc; are not Domino features... they're Quickplace features. Domino applications can be developed to have any sort of hierarchy you want. Quickplace comes out of the box with the room/cabinet... architecture you refer to.
Probably, though, the comparison of Quickplace to Sharepoint is more relevant anyway, as Domino is the full-fledged application server, and Quickplace is the easy document collaboration product. Quickplace specs match a lot more directly to Sharepoint than Domino specs do.
Sean
Sorry... (Score:2)
I haven't worked with either product in a while, and I got them confused. But Quickplace does have at least some of the same stuff. I just created a test Quickplace at the IBM trial site, and you can create rooms and store folders in them (the metaphor's a little confusing - are the "folders" just stacked on the floor of the "room"?).
Anyway, my apologies for talking about the wrong product.
Sean
Wrong Products to compare (Score:2)
We went with Confluence (Score:2)
It is a hell of a lot easier than either of those two behemoths, won't lock you into anything, and the company isn't going to force to you into upgrades you don't want and don't need.
Just like choosing between two lousy presidents (Score:2, Informative)
I particularly like the entry in the interface hall of shame specifically dedicated to the disgrace called Lotus Notes. The problem is that I thought Sharepoint was almost as bad.
Luckily I am a developer and I will just build a custom website that continues to function (unlike sharepoint) and has an intuitive interface (like neither).
My choice would be "none of the above
Jeez, I get tired of hearing this (Score:5, Informative)
The "interface hall of shame [mac.com]" site is ludicrously out of date. It refers to Notes release 4.6, for God's sake! That was released in what, 1996? We're up to version 7 now! It's a little silly to keep harping on an interface that hasn't even been used in 10 years.
And criticizing Lotus Notes because you don't like the interface of a Notes application is somewhat like criticizing Linux because you don't like the GIMP. Applications can be well or poorly designed in any environment.
Sean
if you don't need it then get sharepoint. Nice. (Score:2)
You're squeezing my balls here... (Score:2)
If you're going to make proper comparisons you _really_ need to compare Domino with Sharepoint/Exchange maybe even that "other" MS Web server products *shudder*.
Domino is everything to everyone and uber fucking stable at that.
The _only_ thing that sucks about domino is the Notes client and personally I can get over that because the alternative is just as pointy-end-of-the-pinapple bad.
Sharepoint requires Office and IE (Score:2)
Personally I would prefer some home grown solution that uses a content management system, bugzilla and dokuwiki. The use of a wiki for documentation is a much better solution than Sharepoint.
Andy
Having been on the user and dev end of both prods (Score:2)
- Lotus notes was more difficult to build an application but once we had built that application it did exactly what we wanted it to do and we could introduce our own work flows etc. That was something that sharepoint never gave us the ability to use/do.
- Sharepoint provides another great way for Microsoft to lock users into their software suites, We had disabled the use of IE across all servers within our company and installed and mana
Reminds me... (Score:2)
I understand that products of IBM and co are more capable and powerful, but in 70% of the cases the MS product would do fine..how come then the 'enterprise g
Re:Reminds me... (Score:2)
My experinece[sic] with a lot of their ( very expensive) products is that they are difficult to install, use and develop with. As if they're following a "Making customers hate your product HOWTO". Microsoft's products are like 5 or 6 times more usable, always.
It has been my experience that if are already an all MS shop, MS products are less expensive, but only if you are an all MS shop and may the gods have mercy upon you if you ever need to integrate with other platforms or do anything beyond those limi
Re:Reminds me... (Score:3, Insightful)
The Oracle products I used (in 1999 I admit) were hard to install, used a nonstandard GUI and were programmed with PL/SQL, a crappy nonstandard language that I despise to this day.
So while MS products are friendly when you're an MS shop and hard otherwise, it's a step ahead of the competition, which is hard on any platform. I hear Oracle improved the quality of the database
Re:Reminds me... (Score:3, Insightful)
While that's true with their desktop applications, Microsoft's server software is built on open standards like everyone else. They use TCP/IP, and XML everywhere. Also, MS's products are very programmable and If you know a bit of C++ and COM you can make the software work with almost anything.
Disclaimer: I haven't administrated and Windows servers for several years, just used them and listened to gripes
You must mean open standards like Exchange, Active Directory, FAT, .doc, .wmd and the like? They only
Re:Reminds me... (Score:2)
Well, I'm not an administrator but a developer. So I don't have firsthand experience with running MS Exchange in a multi-platform environment but I've seen fellow developers who are capable of doing almost everything with the Exchange API.
That API has been use
Re:Reminds me... (Score:2)
I call BS. I have never, ever had an Exchange server fail to interoperate with any non-MS client via SMTP, POP3, or IMAP. It just works, plain and simple, and it is certainly "stable". Most of our Exchange 2003 boxes have 40-50GB databases, yet perform well. The only time Exchagne ever goes down is when we reboot for an OS-level security patch.
We've been using Ex
Re:Reminds me... (Score:2)
I call BS. I have never, ever had an Exchange server fail to interoperate with any non-MS client via SMTP, POP3, or IMAP. It just works, plain and simple, and it is certainly "stable". Most of our Exchange 2003 boxes have 40-50GB databases, yet perform well. The only time Exchagne ever goes down is when we reboot for an OS-level security patch.
Do you allow the clients to use their mail from Exchange/POP/SMTP/IMAP and synch them all so that all the inboxes contain the same data or do you just let each use
Re:Reminds me... (Score:2)
I have no idea what you're talking about with running "only" Exchange. IMAP & POP3 are just protocol stacks that run as part of a functioning Exchange server. From what you say, it sounds like you're trying to sync two mail servers using IMAP... WT
Re:Reminds me... (Score:2)
"It sounds like you know a bunch of *NIX admins who try to run an Exchange server with little or no training, and don't understand at all how Exchange is architected."
Re:Reminds me... (Score:2)
I have no idea what you're talking about with running "only" Exchange. IMAP & POP3 are just protocol stacks that run as part of a functioning Exchange server.
I mean running an exchange server without POP and IMAP enabled.
From what you say, it sounds like you're trying to sync two mail servers using IMAP... WTF? Neither IMAP or POP3 as protocols were designed for that at all.
Not at all, older versions of the exchange server used to have separate mailboxes for users connecting via exchange and POP.
Re:Reminds me... (Score:2)
The above statement is totally and completely false. I have been administering Exchange servers since version 5.0 in the mid-90s, and there has only ever been one kind of mailbox. See my previous statements about the pssibilty that the people you reference may not have any understanding the archicture of Exchange Server.
Re:Reminds me... (Score:2)
The above statement is totally and completely false.
I'm just stating what I recall as a user of the above. I don't know how it was configured or why, but it certainly was.
Tens of thousands of geographically dispersed enterprises that run Exchange in mixed environments would disagree with you. I know admins at plenty of Exchange server shops besides mine, and none of them have ever experienced "instability" due to serving mail via POP and IMAP. By the way, if you could describe the nature of the instabi
Sales and Consultancy (Score:2)
I know of two very large organizations where they're sticking with IBM solutions for no reason other than the fact that the IBM sales guy has built a great relationship with someone very high in management and the Microsoft sales guy has been downright incompetent by comparison.
Besides the sales savviness, IBM and Oracle both have very strong consultancy departments which will customize their software to do w
Point (Score:2)
Heh, Oracle even has "software installation consultants"
IBM knows their products... (Score:2)
MS on the other hand, has a lot of code that no one knows is even there. If something doesn't work as expected, you may just be out of luck.
Besides, IBM just dropped support for OS/2 this year. Point me to one MS product that has recieved suppo
Re:Sharepoint vs WebSphere (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sharepoint vs WebSphere (Score:2, Insightful)
The article should compare Lotus Notes to Microsoft Outlook OR Lotus Domino to Microsoft Exchange.
Maybe ZD can compare apples and oranges next for citrus content and determine apples are the true winner if you have an apple orchard.
Re:Sharepoint vs WebSphere (or Notes...) (Score:2, Insightful)
SharePoint? Well...it w
Re:Sharepoint vs WebSphere (Score:2)
If you wanted to make this a fair comparison, you should really include Microsoft Exchange and IIS to this collection.