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IBM Lotus Domino vs Microsoft Exchange-Part II

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

In the first part of our series, we gave you a brief overview of what's so

special about Lotus Domino/Notes 8.5 and Exchange/Outlook 2010. In this part,

we'll get into more details on the key new features offered by both platforms.

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IBM Lotus Domino 8.5



Domino has incorporate several new technologies to save storage space like

techniques to manage attachments, use of compression techniques, etc. There are

techniques to reduce I/O, routing optimization methods to reduce latency and

ensure faster mail delivery, etc. Several enhancements have also been done in

group policy management to ease administration, and there are features to

recover lost user ids and passwords. Let's take a closer look.

Attachment management with DAOS



Email servers are storage hogs, thanks to the ever growing volume of email

traffic on corporate networks. It would therefore make a lot of sense for the

email software to have space saving features. The Domino Attachment and Object

Service, short for DAOS does just this by creating a single instance of a file

that's to be shared by multiple users. A simple example of this is email

attachments. When a users sends an email to lots of recipients with an

attachment, then every user gets an instance of that attachment. If a 2 MB

attachment is sent to 10 users, then 20 MB of storage space is consumed. With

DAOS, there's only one instance of the 2 MB attachment stored in the database,

and all users are simply sent links to it. The good thing is that users would

never even realize this is happening. They would continue receiving emails with

attachments as they normally would. The good thing is that DAOS is valid for any

document stored in any database on the Domino Server, and not just for email

attachments. This capability also reduces the disk I/O activity on the server.

Lotus Notes/Domino 8.5 Features overview
IBM Lotus Domino 8.5:
  • Domino Attachment and Object Service
  • Compression of body text in documents
  • Gzip of HTML files in Domino Web Server
  • NotesID to recover lost user names and passwords
  • Dynamic policy assignment
  • Domino configuration tuner to analyze and recommend configurations for

    optimal performance

IBM Lotus Notes Client 8.5

  • New look and feel
  • Context sensitive right-click menus
  • Automatic compression of images in emails vCard support
  • Alternate email id suggestions
  • iCalendar support to import other iCal calendars
  • Google calendar import
  • Lotus Connections integrated with Notes
  • Drag and drop email ids to SameTime to add contacts to the list
  • Calendar support in Lite mode of iNotes
  • UltraLite mode for iPhone and iPod
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DAOS reminds us of an interesting IT project that was deployed by ICICI Bank

several years ago, called



mail attachment stripping
. The software did exactly what DAOS does. All

attachments would be saved on the server in one location, and only their

reference was sent to the users.

Save disk space with document compression



Text documents and several image formats like BMP are highly compressible.

Many times, you can compress them up to 90%! Considering that a majority of

emails are just text, imagine the amount of space saving that would be possible

by using compression. That's exactly what Domino Server has now

enabled-compression of body text in documents. This feature is further extended

to the Domino Web Server, which can even serve files compressed using gzip.

Imagine the space saving you'll achieve after gzipping thousands of HTML files

used on your corporate Intranet!

Recover lost IDs and passwords



A new feature called NotesID stores all user Ids and passwords in a

separate, secure database. This allows users to recover their passwords in case

they forget them. Users can even regenerate passwords if so desired.

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Dynamic policy assignment in Lotus iNotes



The policy management has been improved considerably to reduce

administrative overheads. You can apply policies dynamically to users and

groups. For instance, if you assign a policy to a group of users, and the group

membership changes, then the policy also changes automatically. Likewise, you

can define a policy and then add users to it for whom this policy should apply.

This is much better than configuring individual user policies.

Domino configuration tuner



There are thousands of configuration options in Domino, making it impossible

to optimize everything perfectly. Any setting that's not optimally configured

can cause performance degradation or other problems. That's where Domino

Configuration Tuner or DCT comes in handy. It can analyze your Domino server or

group of servers together and generate a report with an analysis of all the

configurations. It flags alerts for configuration settings that have been known

to cause problems, so that you can adjust them within optimal levels. It's

essentially a catalog of best practices on Domino Server configuration. The good

thing about DCT is that it's also available free of cost for customers using

Domino Server 7 and above.

IBM Lotus Notes Client 8.5



The Notes client has added several enhancements as well, with streamlined

context menus, image compression, advanced calendaring features, better contacts

management, integration with Lotus Connections, and much more. Let's have a

look.

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Look and feel: You'll no longer see the same, long menu after right-clicking

on something in Notes. Now, the menu context changes according to the document

being clicked. Notes also enables automatic compression of images, like BMP

files, to reduce the size of emails being sent out with attachments. Another

feature called type ahead has been added, which automatically fills up the name

of a contact after you type enough number of letters for it to find a match.

Moreover, it even shows you alternate email ids if a contact has them. You no

longer have to open the address book to find the alternate ids. Moreover, the

Notes client also allows you to send your contacts as vCards. The Notes client

has improved its login capabilities: When you login to Windows, you can get

automatically logged into your Notes client as well.

Advanced calendering features: The Notes interface now has iCalendar support,

which allows it to import calendars from other calendar products that support

the same standard. Moreover, you can even import your Google calendar into the

Notes calendar, allowing you to manage multiple calendars from a single

interface.

Social Networking support: The social networking software, Lotus Connections,

can now be integrated with Notes. Users can search through the various

Activities, blogs, forums, etc of Connections. Moreover, it also supports

SameTime better. Users can simply drag an email into Lotus SameTime, and

automatically add its contact into the list.

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iNotes: This feature allows Notes users to access their mail, calendar, and

scheduling features through a web browser. Earlier known as Domino Web Access,

iNotes has a new look and several interesting features. For instance, calendar

options are now available in the Lite mode of iNotes, which is meant for

low-bandwidth environments. Earlier, this mode only allowed access to mail and

contacts. There's a new UltraLite mode available to be accessed from iPhone or

iPod Touch. Now, even external widgets can also be integrated in iNotes.

Microsoft Exchange 2010



Having seen the new features in Notes/Domino, let's now focus on what the

new Exchange 2010 has to offer.

Archiving, retention, and discovery



Just as Domino introduced features to save disk space, Exchange 2010 has

added archiving, retention, and discovery features. In these, every user gets a

personal archive folder, which is directly associated with the user's mailbox.

Users can directly drag and drop email from their primary mailbox to this

folder. This keeps their primary mailbox light, thereby helping improve

performance. The process of moving emails to archives folder can also be

automated through policies, to make it easier for users to manage their

mailboxes.

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MS Exchange 2010
  • Automate email movement to archives folder through policies
  • Legal Hold feature to preserve emails, appointments, etc
  • Multi-mailbox search to look through emails, mail attachments,

    calendar appointments, tasks, contacts, etc.
  • Role based access control to delegate specific tasks
  • Web-based Exchange Control Panel
  • Automatic failover to different Exchange database in case of failure
  • Move mailboxes to different databases without downtime
  • Lower Disk I/O by up to 90% over Exchange 2003, and up to 70% over

    Exchange 2007

Outlook 2010

  • Every user gets a personal archive folder along with main mailbox
  • Drag and drop emails from mailbox to archives folder to keep primary

    mailbox light
  • Call answering rules to give users more control over how should they

    be reached
  • Better voicemail management, with voicemail preview to navigate

    through voice messages Protected voicemail to control which voicemails to

    forward
  • Auto Attendant in Voicemail to quickly find people in your

    organization without knowing their extension numbers

Outlook Web Access

  • Conversation view to group messages from a single conversation

    together
  • Support for Internet Explorer 7+, Firefox 3+, and Safari 3+
  • MailTips to warn users of activities that might cause a negative

    impact
  • Scroll through email in a big mailbox, instead of accessing multiple

    pages
  • Nickname cache to let users quickly find contacts
  • Save your favorite searches
  • Share calendars with people outside the organization
  • View multiple calendars side by side
  • Set colorful presence indicators for your contacts to see the best

    mode to communicate with them.
  • Instant Messaging and presence capability (requires Office Comm.

    Server)
  • Manage SMSs from your inbox

There's also the Legal Hold capability that would preserve all mails,

appointments, etc from a user's mailbox and the Personal Archive. As the name

suggests, this would preserve the users' mailboxes even if anything is deleted

from it. Moreover, the administrator can also define the duration for which to

hold deleted and edited email. On top of this, multi-mailbox search has been

added, which allows somebody like a compliance officer to search through a

user's emails, mail attachments, calender appointments, tasks, contacts, etc.

OWA



Outlook Web Access now has a conversation view to group messages from a

single conversation together so that the user can quickly go through a long mail

trail to understand the sequence of events. The interesting part here is that

the conversation view is always preserved even if your individual mails are

lying in different folders of your mailbox. You can move or delete an entire

conversation if required. OWA now supports Internet Explorer 7+, Firefox 3+, and

Safari 3+. Another useful feature called MailTips warns users of activities that

might cause a negative impact, such as sending out an email to a huge senders

list with a huge attachment, etc.

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If you have lots of email, then you won't have to go through pages. Users can

now scroll through their email, no matter how big their mailbox. There's a new

Nickname cache, which allows a user to quickly find a contact. As the user types

an email address, Nickname cache suggests names, and this list gets narrower as

the user types more letters in the address.

Mailbox searching has become more powerful in OWA, wherein you can search

'from', 'to', 'has attachments', etc, and even save your favorite searches. A

feature called Favorites let's users save things they need to access frequently

from their mailbox. OWA allows users to share their calendars with people

outside the organization. Moreover, they can even view multiple calendars side

by side, and fix meetings with both internal and external contacts. You can set

colorful presence indicators for users in your contacts list to see the best

mode to communicate with a user. Instant Messaging is also possible through OWA,

and this together with the presence capability we just mentioned requires an

Office Communications Server at the backend to work. SMSs can also be managed

through the users's inbox.

Voicemail



Better voicemail management has been introduced in Exchange 2010, with

features like voicemail preview to help you easily navigate through voice

messages, protected voicemail so you can control which voicemails to forward and

which ones not to; Another useful feature called Auto Attendant lets you quickly

find a person in your organization even if you don't know his/her extension

number. Call answering rules can be set to allow users more control over how

should they be reached.

Easier administration



Several new management features have been introduced in Exchange, like role

based access control that allows an administrator to delegate specific

management tasks to people without sharing the entire Exchange Administration

panel. There's a web-based Exchange Control Panel, which provides users with

certain self-service features to reduce calls to the helpdesk for common

problems. For instance, if a user isn't sure whether a message he/she sent was

actually delivered, then the user can check the delivery reports to confirm

this, instead of asking the administrator to provide this info.

Mailbox resiliency



Several features have been built in Exchange 2010 to minimize server

downtime and failures. Automatic failover to a different database is one such

feature. Online mailbox move is another, wherein you an move a user's mailbox

from one database to another without the user even knowing about it. Apparently

the new Exchange server reduces Disk I/O by up to 90% over Exchange 2003, and up

to 70% over Exchange 2007, allowing for more efficient storage.

These are some key enhancements in both platforms. We'll start comparing

specific features present on both platforms in our future series. Do let us know

if you have any specific requests.

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