By Steve Niles
Here at WebSpherePower, we recently interviewed dozens of the biggest movers and shakers in the Notes and Domino world in an attempt to see exactly what kind of influence WebSphere is having. We asked them what their plans are for WebSphere and received some very interesting results.
Robert Baum at TechFlow, Inc. (at http://www.techflow.com) says his company has been aggressively evolving their core expertise from Notes and Domino toward open systems and platforms over the last two plus years. "It is natural for us, given our strong relationship with IBM, to pursue Websphere. Our plans are very much focused on the WebSphere suite of solution-oriented products."
iEnterprises, Inc. (at http://www.CRMMadeSimple.com) is developing a WebSphere version of iExtensions CRM designed to compliment and leverage iExtensions CRM for Domino, according to Chief Software Architect John Carini. "Similar to the IBM philosophy, we are going full speed into new versions of Notes and WebSphere."
Jamie Magee of MartinScott Consulting LLC (at http://MartinScott.com) believes that IBM is clearly advocating WebSphere for transaction and high volume Web applications. Therefore, MartinScott is now implementing solutions in that category with WebSphere instead of continuing to do them in Domino, despite the fact it costs more to develop with WebSphere. "We have started to bootstrap our Domino developers onto projects led by some very good WebSphere expertise."
Greg Rosano of ComputerWorks (at http://www.computerworks.com) says that they're looking into the relevance of WebSphere based on the application they have created and the clientele they serve. However, ComputerWorks is "reluctant to promote the product due to long development cycles and lack of similar types of development tools we have in Notes and Domino today."
According to Steven Birchfield of Automation Centre (at http://www.acentre.com), his company is currently looking for a next generation strategy and is evaluating WebSphere, .NET, and some other open source development platforms. They haven't made any decisions yet.
Foedero Technologies Inc. (at http://www.foedero.com), on the other hand, packages their Document Management System, DocumentZone (at http://www.foedero.com/documentZone.html) with WebSphere and DB2, according to Arvin Kamboj, Systems Consultant--Business Development. "We actively co-marketed our DMS with IBM WebSphere Express to the Small and Medium Business Market this year."
