| Introduction | |![]() |
Notes/Domino | |![]() |
SharePoint | |![]() |
Verdict |
Verdict
It is a tough call between Lotus Notes/Domino 7.0 and Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003.
On one hand, Lotus Notes is a more mature platform and established itself early as the clear leader in the collaboration and messaging space. With this success, it has clung to the paradigm of developers creating collaborative applications, as opposed to users getting involved. And this is the main weakness at the moment -- it is a powerful platform for collaborative applications, but developing these applications costs time and money. There are a number of templates available to help get things started, but for anything more than basic applications, there is still a component of development that will need to be handled by a trained developer.
For the Lotus faithful, the software platform has not veered far from its roots and sometimes this legacy can mean that new features aren't as quick to appear as other collaborative platforms. Given the complexity of the Lotus Notes development tools and framework, there also hasn't been a lot of support from other software vendors for add-ons or integration with the platform.
SharePoint on the other hand is the relatively new kid on the block, and while it doesn't have the complete feature set that Lotus Notes offers, it does have a leg up in terms of Microsoft Office integration and ease-of-use. Designed from the ground-up for Web-based collaboration, SharePoint sites can be quickly created by team members for sharing documents, calendars, projects, among others.
Microsoft has made this easier by making a number of its templates available to administrators for download. Development of SharePoint portal "parts" is definitely developer territory, but there is tremendous support for SharePoint from software vendors. For example, you may find that your accounting software already has a number of SharePoint Web parts available, allowing you to slot in a Web part to display account balances or customer information.
If you are already use Lotus Notes for e-mail or if you are an IBM shop and can invest the time and money into developing collaborative applications, Lotus Notes/Domino 7.0 is a powerful framework on which to do so. However, 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.
| Introduction | |![]() |
Notes/Domino | |![]() |
SharePoint | |![]() |
Verdict |
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You should be comparing IBM Team Workplace (Quickplace) to Sharepoint.