IBM Notes

IBM Notes is a unique platform in that it integrates several major business components around an enterprise class email client including social collaboration, messaging and business applications as well. It's a mobile solution so you can login to use it from basically any device such as your smartphone, tablet, laptop or desktop as long as you have an internet connection available. The idea is to have a centralized hub or workstation from which you can access critical business data so you can improve your overall workflow efficiency and productivity by being able to make decisions and take action faster through a simplified experience which helps you to focus on the task at hand. And it does this very well though it is certainly not the most do it yourself application comparatively speaking. I like that you have full email capabilities along with scheduling and calendaring. There is also a contact address book and database functionality. With a web server and custom programming possible as well and it display all of these components in a single, centralized account. It's most popular as an email server and has POP3 and SMTP capabilities. And both can act as a client or server based email solution. IBM Notes is most notably a database with your ability to share databases and alter or update information. While you can program advanced workflows and have this make your team more efficient and productive. You can store data on your workstation or on a server. And you can customize each database quite a lot with forms and data records with info that comes from the internal or an external database so that's good news. Using IBM Notes you can create an expense approval solution, a community forum, file storage, a web based request system, customer info portal and quite a lot more. There are a number of ways to access and modify data including JavaScript and Java. You can store this code in a couple of different modes and modules so whichever suits you best. IBM Notes has a strong security component and a granular level of access to ensuring it is setup just how it works best considering various roles and permissions that you must. There is also LDAP integration and clustering to name a couple more of the functional possibilities of using IBM Notes.

It's not a relational database so you should be comfortable with using unstructured data and using other methods to access or alter your database. There is a steep learning curve in order to full utilize the potential of IBM Notes. It is most certainly not a non-technical do it yourself platform. I am consistently dumbfounded by big companies who select rigid technology that takes a long time to implement relatively speaking. There are so many options today and I have recently researched intensively into the market. This seems like a great platform for about 1996-1998. And it hasn't much been updated to meet the standards and ease of use possible today.

Overall, this is a massively complex solution with a lot of customization and configuration possibilities. It doesn't use a relational database so you must be comfortable working with unstructured data but this can actually making creating your apps somewhat easier by some opinions. The security is granular so this is one of it's strengths. There are actually many uses of IBM Notes including a community forum, email, file storage and a lot more. But overall it's hard to recommend something that feels so challenging to utilize efficiently. The price is not crazy expensive at a couple hundred dollars per year, but that doesn't include any of the setup you are going to need to get to market quickly.