Seems to me that this is probably the biggest news we have had in the Lotus community for a very long time! Possibly since Project Hannover was announced at DNUG in 2006 (was it really 5 years ago?!).
I’m thinking that this is the first time that ISVs and partners can really talk about Domino applications (whether they be XPages or ‘classic’ in nature) without having to mention either ‘Lotus’ or ‘Notes’ in the conversation.
With collaboration, social or business applications delivered on the IBM XWork Server platform, we can focus on the merits of our secure, easy-to-manage, easy-to-deploy, cost-effective application server platform without any need to argue the merits of the Notes client, to discuss whether the customer is an MS or IBM shop, whether the CEO used Notes in a previous life or any of the other barriers to entry that we have had in the past.
Don’t get me wrong, I know that some ISVs have done that successfully with Lotus Domino web apps in the past, but it has always been an uphill battle. Now all ISVs can simply talk about their app running on a standalone or clustered IBM XWork Server and move on. Even as a partner that just uses Domino as a platform to build apps that use Connections data, I love the idea of talking about XWork-based applications.
I’m feeling like it’s a new dawn…