I’d say this is significant, in fact, I am really really delighted it has been published...
Not that one white paper will change the face of application development in this industry, or even IBM’s own prioritisation of this area, but this is the first time I have seen IBM so publicly push Lotus Domino as an application development environment for the future. Bravo!
Here’s the intro:
Six capabilities of a development platform that deliver a greater return on investment
Although companies were once able to invest in resources that promised a return on investment (ROI) in months or even years, times have changed. Smart organizations need to invest in solutions that increase efficiency and decrease costs every day.
To thrive in a business climate that demands responsiveness and rapid time to value, an IT organization must accelerate application development and compress the time it takes to deliver targeted business value. It needs to easily evolve applications to keep pace with user needs and expectations—without disrupting IT resources and budgets. Faced with a dizzying array of application development platforms, IT organizations must be smart about choosing tools that empower them to innovate, integrate and extend their existing systems—instead of introducing new layers of complexity that impose development and maintenance headaches.
Over six pages, the white paper goes into why having the right tools, the versatility, the rapid deployment techniques, the integration and collaboration functionality is so vital. It closes with this section:
The IBM solution for RADD (Rapid Application Development and Deployment)
Based on many years of application development for collaborative and business logic applications, IBM offers best-in-class tools, experience and strategies to help companies obtain nearimmediate gains and ROI for custom business solutions.
The open standards-based IBM Lotus Domino platform features XPages technology, which provides one programming model for developers to build applications for desktop, browser and mobile experiences. This comprehensive platform integrates secure and semistructured data storage, applicationlevel security, robust user directories and built-in messaging services that support human-facing workflows.
The IBM Lotus Domino Designer tool facilitates an iterative development process in which business requirements can be quickly prototyped, tuned and deployed to provide a compelling Web 2.0 experience. The graphical drag-and-drop, Eclipse-based environment allows developers to rapidly build web, Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino applications. The tool includes XPages technology, which is built on JavaServer Faces (JSF). XPages technology provides a layer of abstraction on JSF, allowing developers to build online or disconnected applications using HTML, CSS and JavaScript skills, along with a set of modern web controls, Dojo and built-in Ajax services.
Developers use the Lotus Domino platform to support industry-specific development objectives with built-in, customizable frameworks and templates. And they can build an application once, launch it on practically any deployment model—including the cloud—and make it accessible through the web, mobile devices and rich clients.
IBM designed the Lotus Domino and Lotus Domino Designer solutions based on world-class research and development, as well as Eclipse open standards, helping ensure interoperability with other open standards projects. IBM continues to contribute to community open standards development and its own open projects, such as IBM Project Vulcan, which is designed to allow developers to create new generations of applications powered by collaboration. In support of IBM Project Vulcan, Lotus Domino software provides Representational State Transfer-based interfaces to data and services, simplifies widget frameworks to increase reuse of UI assets, and extends support for mobile applications to deliver native-like experiences.
Finally the white paper highlights a case study showing how Lotus Domino was used to help respond to the Haiti Earthquake disaster.
So, Lotus Domino is IBM’s solution for Rapid Application Development and Deployment. It is highlighted in a ‘Thought Leadership’ paper. Count me a happy man today.
Link: Six capabilities of a development platform that deliver a greater return on investment (PDF)
Update: Looking at this announcement page, this paper was released on 9th November. I’m amazed more hasn’t been made of this since then.
