Lotus Notes creator says Google Wave violates Web

By David M Williams
Wednesday, 10 June 2009 05:34

Opinion and Analysis

Ray Ozzie, the man behind Lotus Domino/Lotus Notes and now Bill Gates' replacement as Microsoft Chief Software Architect has voiced his take on Google Wave during an interview at Silicon Valley's Churchill Club. He claims Wave is anti-Web while Microsoft’s Live Mesh is web friendly.

First up, let me confess I will always have a soft spot for Lotus Domino. Ok, the user interface has inspired many postings on usability blogs, let alone a web site entirely devoted to “demonstrating that Lotus Notes sucks” (which, ironically, is a bit of a design mess itself.)

Yes, the Lotus Notes mail client has left many a CEO and executive cursing its lack of similarity to Microsoft Outlook.

However, from an administrative and development point of view I found it not without some charms. I could exercise fine control over the system’s operation and configuration and replicate it around the network with ease.

Additionally, as a development platform the ease in which e-mail integrated database applications could be churned out was delightful. Migrating a company’s e-mail platform from Lotus Domino to Microsoft Exchange is one thing, but migrating Lotus Notes applications to SharePoint is something else entirely.

Ironically, Ray Ozzie didn’t develop Lotus Notes until he’d already left Lotus once before. His company Iris Associates was acquired by Lotus in 1994, which in turn was acquired by IBM in 1995.

Ozzie left IBM and formed Groove Networks which was then acquired by Microsoft in 2005. He has remained since, as Bill Gates’ technical successor (Steve Ballmer taking on Gates’ chairman role) and the product he produced is now known as Microsoft Groove.

Or maybe “not known” is more apt, given that for many people it’s an unknown title even though it ships in Microsoft Office Ultimate and Enterprise editions alongside mainstays Word and Excel.

If Groove is known at all, more often than not it’s because it is a program you clear the checkbox for when making installation choices from the Office setup.

Groove, reflecting a Lotus Notes-like design, is a facility for shared workspaces and group collaboration. It allows documents in the workspace to be edited by each participant, with modifications synchronised to each other.

Although Groove is still a current product, and will continue to be enhanced with a 2010 version under development, Microsoft are also making file synchronisation facilities available in the cloud through Live Mesh, which is a building block of the Azure Services Platform, helmed by other Microsoft superstar Dave Cutler, of VAX VMS and Windows NT fame.

So then, just what did Ozzie say about Wave and Live Mesh?