Lotus Domino - A good choice for SME's ? - Micro Support Group

Lotus Domino - A good choice for SME's ?

by Colman Carpenter

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 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 bright 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 http://www-142.ibm.com/software/sw-lotus/products/product4.nsf/wdocs/dominohomepage.

About the author

An IT professional with experience in development, project leadership, consultancy and management. Since 1986 I have worked for a number of software houses, the business support sector and helped a multi-national recruitment agency with their IT support and operations functions. I currently own my own consulting business - Four Lakes Consulting Ltd.

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