White Paper. Advantages of IBM Notes and Domino 9 Social Edition for Midsize Businesses. 89 Fifth Avenue, 7th Floor. New York, NY 10003

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1 89 Fifth Avenue, 7th Floor New York, NY White Paper Advantages of IBM Notes and Domino 9 Social Edition for Midsize Businesses

2 Printed in the United States of America Copyright 2013 Edison Group, Inc. New York. Edison Group offers no warranty either expressed or implied on the information contained herein and shall be held harmless for errors resulting from its use. All products are trademarks of their respective owners. First Publication: September 2013 Produced by: Samuel Neis, Analyst; Victor Toal, Analyst; Barry Cohen, Editor-in-Chief; Manny Frishberg, Editor This document was developed with IBM funding.

3 Table of Contents Executive Summary... 1 Social Features... 2 Following... 2 Social Business Card... 2 Embedded Experiences... 2 Application Development... 3 Integration and Cloud Support... 5 Hardware Requirements... 5 Software Requirements... 6 Mobile Support... 6 Conclusion... 7

4 Executive Summary IBM Notes and Domino 9 Social Edition ( Notes and Domino ) together make an excellent collaboration software choice for midsize businesses. The software provides state of the art collaboration functionality, and the ability to use, develop, deploy, and integrate social networking applications for business, while running on a much smaller hardware footprint than competing collaboration software suites. Businesses can implement a comprehensive and flexible collaboration environment by using Notes and Domino on-premise resources, those available on the IBM SmartCloud, or both. Notes and Domino is an industry-leading client and server package for collaboration software. Version 9 transforms the way its users work, with all-inclusive social, mobile and application development capabilities. Unlike competing social strategies, such as Microsoft s purchase of Yammer, Notes and Domino is a cohesively designed social networking solution, with a consistent interface and wide compatibility. Grown naturally from its Lotus Notes roots, Notes and Domino continues to be a front-runner in , scheduling, and file sharing, expanded with IBM s cutting-edge features and interface improvements. Notes and Domino 9 Social Edition adds a seamlessly integrated user experience. With the sleek new interface, Notes users move from to calendars, to the Discover tab, or recent Updates in their network with the same exceptional experience. Notes and Domino 9 Social Edition continues to be a highly functional and secure system. And it provides a wide array of development options through IBM XPages technology, supported by a long-running and active development community. Edison: Advantages of IBM Notes and Domino Social Edition 9 for Midsize Businesses Page 1

5 Social Features IBM Notes and Domino 9 Social Edition adds many social features to the collaboration tools of the Notes product line. Users can access Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs, and forums on a wide variety of computers and mobile devices. IBM Notes and Domino 9 Social Edition allows users to access all sorts of social media through the efficient, stable, and graphically consistent Notes and Notes Traveler interfaces. Notes users do not have to face a hodgepodge of apps to click on or be limited to a single, licensed social channel, like the Yammer-based attachment to Microsoft SharePoint. Notes users experience all the social functionality of the modern web, in an organized fashion. Key social features of IBM Notes and Domino 9 Social Edition are: Following On their Updates page, Notes users can see updates to microblogs they have chosen to follow. Notes users can see updates to People, Projects, Blogs, Communities, Forums, and Files in their social network. In addition, because social functionality is embedded throughout the platform, users can follow an item wherever they encounter it (in an , a forum post, a Community page, etc.) Social Business Card By simply clicking on an s sender or recipient name, users can access a full range of social features from a business card popup including that user s profile, instant messaging presence status, microblog (a personal blog site available to all users), communities they are a member of, and forums they have contributed to. Users can also see their full Collaboration History with another user or invite them to an event all from their inbox. Embedded Experiences Numerous plug-ins allow users to access and work with XPages interactive applications and embedded content from other applications inside OpenSocial containers, directly in their Notes client, and on third-party applications like Twitter or Facebook. Edison: Advantages of IBM Notes and Domino Social Edition 9 for Midsize Businesses Page 2

6 Application Development Notes and Domino has a wide range of development options, compatible with a variety of technologies. It opens the door to users who are not full-time, expert programmers to create applications that will help them work faster and communicate more effectively. Someone with little programming experience can start out with Domino Designer, creating forms and database views. Someone who already knows Java, or programming for OpenSocial components, can continue to use methods familiar to them. Both experienced and inexperienced users can create and distribute useful applications that look great in the Notes environment. The core of app development for Notes and Domino is IBM XPages technology, a JavaScript-like language designed to run applications that look good and function smoothly and consistently, whether within the Notes environment, when served to other browsers from a Domino server, or distributed through IBM SmartCloud. XPages content is developed in Domino Designer, which allows less experienced users to create forms and controls in a feature-rich visual design studio, and also lets experts dive right into the code. (The screenshot in Figure, captured from an IBM online tutorial, illustrates the interface for creating an XPages form.) With it, they can work with icalendar to integrate to Microsoft Outlook or native Notes functions for Google calendars. They can also use REST APIs, which allow a lightweight web-based interface to query Domino data, and to perform, create, update, and delete operations. Further database functionality is offered by Notes SQL drivers that use Open Database Connectivity middleware to provide a "relational" interface to Domino data. Domino also allows developers to create custom Web services that provide external applications with access to Domino data and services. Edison: Advantages of IBM Notes and Domino Social Edition 9 for Midsize Businesses Page 3

7 Figure 1: Creating an XPage for Editing in Domino Designer - this screen shot from a Domino Designer tutorial shows: Forms can also be used to design Web pages, but XPages allow more UI options and greater control of appearance with less effort. It is helpful to also have a form to provide a list of fields for binding data. Also the form can be used to calculate computed fields with field formulas, rather than putting code on the XPage. New to Notes and Domino is the XPages Social Enabler, which allows developers to integrate all OpenSocial components into collaborative applications. With Social Enabler, social features of Notes and Domino and IBM Connections, and cloud functionality of IBM SmartCloud for Social Business are now available to XPages developers, as well. XPages gives advanced developers deep capabilities for creating complex applications, but a core quality of Notes and Domino development is that it is accessible to people who wish to develop everyday business process applications without formal programming training. Domino Designer s visual, intuitive, efficient development environment is designed to lessen the learning curve. And reassuringly, developing for Edison: Advantages of IBM Notes and Domino Social Edition 9 for Midsize Businesses Page 4

8 Notes and Domino is supported by a strong community that has been built over the long history of Notes. Websites like planetlotus.org, xpages.info, and openntf.org contain hundreds of apps and code snippets available for users to embed or use as examples, and XPages has active communities on programming Q and A forums like stackoverflow.com. Integration and Cloud Support Notes and Domino is not only a flexible and powerful tool for scheduling, file sharing, and social media interactions, but an efficient user of computing resources, which runs on a wide variety of platforms. In this section, the system requirements of IBM Notes and Domino are compared to those of Microsoft SharePoint. (While the two are often perceived as competing in the collaboration software space, Notes and Domino natively support and social networking technology. SharePoint users can only access such functionality through add-ons or separate software suites.) Hardware Requirements Hardware Requirements 1 Processor IBM Notes and Domino 9 Social Edition 32-bit or 64-bit Server, Intel EMT64 or higher Microsoft SharePoint bit, four cores RAM 512MB 8GB Storage Space Table 1: Hardware Requirements Comparison 1.5GB minimum per partition 80GB For on-premises deployment, the hardware footprint differences are tremendous, saving organizations acquiring Notes and Domino significant costs on equipment. It should also be noted that the RAM usage figure for SharePoint is the base number. When using Visual Studio 2012, it increases to 10GB, and with all available services running, to 24GB. 1 Requirements are for x86 systems running Microsoft Windows Server operating systems. Edison: Advantages of IBM Notes and Domino Social Edition 9 for Midsize Businesses Page 5

9 A growing number of customers are choosing to deploy Notes and Domino in the cloud with SmartCloud Engage, an option which can reduce cost and decrease IT complexity even further. Software Requirements Microsoft SharePoint 2013 runs on Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1) Standard, Enterprise, or Datacenter 64-bit edition, or on Windows Server 2012 Standard or Datacenter 64-bit edition. It ships with SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 Express Edition for use as a database, but this implementation supports only small numbers of users. A midsize business would need to run Microsoft SQL Server bit edition or SQL Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1, with Microsoft.NET Framework version 4.5 to truly make use of SharePoint. A midsize company choosing to implement Notes and Domino in a Windows environment would require Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition or Standard Edition, or Windows Server 2012 Datacenter Edition or Standard Edition. Domino is its own server and does not require additional database server software to support it. Outside the Windows realm, Notes and Domino 9 Social Edition is also compatible with AIX, IBM i, IBM z, and Linux. Mobile Support SharePoint can be configured for mobile access, which allows phone-based browsers to view SharePoint web content in a simplified format. Notes and Domino 9 Social Edition supports broader mobile access with the dedicated Notes Traveler software, which provides users with a rich, consistent Notes experience on a wide variety of devices. Devices running Notes Traveler need 2GB of RAM and include: Apple iphone and ipad OS 3.x, 4.x, 5.x, 6.x, 7.x Android (2.2 for enterprise security signatures); 3.0+ or 4.0+, smartphones and tablets Windows Phone 7.5/7.8 and 8.0. Windows RT/Pro Tablet Blackberry 10 Nokia 60 3rd and 5th edition devices Windows Mobile 6.x Edison: Advantages of IBM Notes and Domino Social Edition 9 for Midsize Businesses Page 6

10 Conclusion IBM Notes and Domino 9 Social Edition is a highly capable collaboration software platform. It helps users perform their jobs efficiently in the modern, social-enabled business environment. Notes and Domino lets them interact easily with others through the Notes user interface. It also empowers them to create and share applications, even if they are not expert programmers. All this functionality can run on a fairly modest hardware platform, making all the advantages of this cutting edge software readily accessible to midsize businesses. Edison: Advantages of IBM Notes and Domino Social Edition 9 for Midsize Businesses Page 7