I’m Surprised Quickr Is Still Around
January 19 2010 01:00:00 AM
Add/Read Comments [23]
Today at Lotusphere, IBM made several announcements around current products and future ideas. Everyone has been asking me what I thought, and I will blog about many of the Notes related items soon, but right now I need sleep. There is one thing I can quickly cover though...
I was really surprised that Quickr has not been completely rolled into Connections already. They both have file sharing, they both have wikis, and a few other features in common. It's always been confusing having the two, and I expected to hear an announcement about a consolidation.
What do you think?
I was really surprised that Quickr has not been completely rolled into Connections already. They both have file sharing, they both have wikis, and a few other features in common. It's always been confusing having the two, and I expected to hear an announcement about a consolidation.
What do you think?
Hopefully it will stay around ... at least as long as Connections requires a Websphere Server!
I'm not at all surprised that Quickr (for Domino) is still around.
But yes, I agree with you that Quickr J2EE doesn't seem to have a reason to exist, and in the IdeaJam event that IBM ran last year, the idea of dropping Quickr J2EE and merging it into Connections was a popular one.
We've only just started using QuickR. I am surprised at the lack of ease of use for end users compared to some other products on the market (not ms). No drag-n-drop, the members is a little strange, just convoluted. Hopefully they will shore up this product. I am still learning, but it seems that Quickr needs work.
Quickr is still around because they're afraid of offending the Domino die-hards. Lots of people are still upset that Connections / Portal runs on WebSphere. If they killed off Quickr there'd be no social software play on Domino.
;-)
</flamebait>
I purposefully did not mention any specific platform, since from a user point of view, the backend does not matter.
Nothing against Websphere - even for a die hard Domino fan ;-)
The only thing is that Websphere is too oversized for many occasions. Not sure about the license cost anyway. Maybe Websphere became much easier to handlesince I used it about 3-4 years ago ... but since then I try to avoid Websphere if possible.
But I agree with @3 ... Quickr could be much slickr and I really hope that Quickr 8.5 which seems to arrive mid year has some real improvements.
@6 Agreed - but I think the WebSphere license comes with Quickr anyway (as with DB2 etc.)
@5 the UI at the moment is quite different with the Domino/J2EE versions, maybe that will change with the next release. However, a lot of IT decisions are based on back end platform, without taking user experience into account (much as I wish that was not the case...)
@3 what version of Quickr did you start using? A year or more ago I signed up for the Greenhouse and the Quickr in there has the drag and drop in the Windows Explorer using the Quickr Monitor and I thought I read somewhere about drag and drop into the Notes sidebar as well (either already here or upcoming).
Might want to check on that one.
Alan I disagree that to the end user the back end doesn't matter, because the user experience and capabilities are either enhanced or throttled by the back end choice. Domino (the original Quickr, now a mature 11-year-old product) is extremely customizable and leverages high end web and Domino skill sets. There are lots of templates and business processes that can be automated with it.
I considered the possibility too of a merger announcement of Quickr J2EE into Connections - even as a separate entitlement - but was not surprised per se. There is an installed base, and it's one of the possible stepping stones for DomDoc migration.
Why not use Quickr to host Domino apps in the cloud?
QuickR Domino is still around because (and Rob can correct me if I am wrong on this) there is still no migration tools around to migrate data from QuickR Domino into a J2EE back end.
Rob, don't get me wrong, users care about features. They don't care whether those features come from a J2EE or Domino backend. I think it is safe to say 99.99% of them don't even know what that means.
Ironically this (merging Quickr) was the first question asked in the "What's New in Connections" session.
They will have to keep something for Lotusphere 2011. With Domino.Doc and Sametime there already have been two products that moved or died. As for QuickR I would not shed a tear if they would put it EOL or merge it with Connections.It is one of those ugly beasts that does not get the care it would need to become a great product but is not yet ready to die.
BTW, some IBMers asked me why I took this cheap shot. I did not mean it as a snarky criticism of IBM at all. I genuinely thought that this was something I would hear about this year, and did not, so I commented. That's it, there were no nefarious ulterior motives.
I agree with Alan..That was one of my burning Qs...I was not answered though I asked the Q in many Lotusphere Group/Sessions. IBM could have clear guidelines what benefits around J2EE version of Quickr over Domino.; and why they have duplicate features Blog/Wiki with Connections. And they have no integrations. Now my users will start posting blogs in quickr and Connections and noway to integrate both. Orlando..We got a problem!
Was it an accident in one of the early slides at the Application Development keynote that Quickr was the one product not shown when the Lotus components that will be used for project Vulcan were listed? (It did appear in a later slide).
@16 there are duplicate features as there two seperate customer bases.
As was announced today Quickr is seperate from Connections as Quickr is to be enhanced. This type of message is good news. Companies that are invested in Notes/Domino, which is a platform fully capable on its own, do not want to be forced to invest in Websphere for these products. i.e. it is the correct move that IBM does not consolidate Quickr and Connections.
sorry about the grammar
I agree and have thought the same thing for some time now. Both have very overlapping features but also offer a few things differently. Roll them together and make them one.
Although with that said, I was able to quickly get Quickr (no pun intended) up and running as a Domino Server where Connections/Websphere would still be in the planning stages.
Thank you everyone for the responses, I appreciate the conversation. My original post was not as clear as it could have been. People have asked me if I expected Domino-based customers to move to Websphere-based products, and I was not trying to stir-up that hornets nest.
My answer wasn't very clear either, Alan, I'll try to do something more comprehensive in a series of blog posts. AFTER the weekend :-)
As the IT-Manager of a midsized consulting firm, I am glad to be able to stick to Domino based tools only. It is hard enough to cope with all IT aspects with a small team, I do not want to add websphere, making things even more complex. The "right question" from my point of view is: Why is Connections not available on the Domino platform? I would buy it instantly, if it would go easily on the same platform as QuickR Domino.
Seems to me, that it is hard for a firm like IBM to really understand the needs of SMEs, especially when the SME is focused on non-IT Businesses.