Likelihood to Recommend Cisco business edition are well suited for the environment where we need regular communication as they are easy to dial and has got great features. The product is well suited for both small business and large enterprises. Speed dial, good voice quality are key features of Cisco phones. They are not well suited in scenarios where we do not have LAN connectivity or internet. Sometimes we may face latency and jitteriness which is not good.
Read full review I often work with teams from other country and regions, hence HCL Notes is a very useful platform for internal company management operations. It standardized organisational work standards in most of the offices worldwide. HCL Notes also enables chat with other team around the world that I find very helpful when initiating conversation or just want to have a quick update rather than sending emails and waiting for replies. However, HCL Notes is not very efficient in web browsing and user still need to use other internet service providers.
Read full review Pros The platform supports up to 5,000 users connected at the same time in voice and video calls. Everything is virtually deployed on Cisco servers with reliability. Intuitive configuration and user-friendly web interface. It has several types of IP phones and is compatible with legacy and multi-brand hardware with SIP protocol. Read full review It has a really strong and robust database that's extremely scalable and holds up well to thousands of users and many different environments. It has a really good enterprise-grade framework for development custom database applications All of the custom database applications along with the email all have a nice uniform look and feel so their easy-to-use. I really like how it's developed and supported on every client OS (Windows, OSX, Linux)! The competitors definitely do NOT offer this (M$). Read full review Cons More cloud based services need to be added to the default service package. Companies frequently require a small contact center within the UC environment. It would be nice to see a build it contact center in the box. It would be nice to see some advanced AI based services (IVR voice recognition service) in the BE7K application list. Call recording should be also built in. Read full review Notes' backwards compatibility sometimes gets in the way. Menus are cluttered with extraneous, outdated options and features that modern users will never use, and Preferences are often difficult to navigate for those coming from Gmail or Outlook. We have greatly simplified this via Policies, but users still find it daunting to go through all the options that are available. The IBM Notes client for Windows & Mac is essentially the Eclipse Java development platform...so it is HUGE. Performance initially was very slow but IBM has done a good job of speeding things up. As IBM moves more toward cloud-delivered applications, this will not be as much of a problem. Notes and Domino can be complex to manage for administrators who are more accustomed to ActiveDirectory, Group Policy, etc. Editing a notes.ini file to add a feature, or working with XML files by hand to create a SmartUpgrade kit can be daunting to those coming from more modern administrative roles. Some users claim to "hate" Notes mail. While I have heard this less and less over the past 10 years, we have had 3rd party software offer plugins to Outlook and it's rare to see any for Notes. The client update process should be automated more. I would like to see the Notes client update quietly and quickly more like an Adobe software update. If an update fails it should automatically try again without prompting the user over and over. Notes multiple language spell checking is a downloaded add-on Java-based resource that has to be deployed in a convoluted way that is difficult for users to grasp. Therefore any foreign language spell check updates must be done individually per Notes client by IT, which is unfortunate. I would prefer to see that be a "live download" update option for users to get directly from IBM (don't make me download it and put it on my network). Read full review Likelihood to Renew I've been in IT business and as a Programmer/Developer for 20+ years with too many programming languages experiences/back ground (C/C++/Visual Basic/Basic Program/Unix/COBOL/Java). Also with 18+ years with Lotus Notes/IBM Domino, I am still and always think Lotus Notes is the best RAD platform available!. When the time where resource is very limited and the expectation is very high and the turn around is too short, IBM Domino/Notes is the platform to use and it's the only choice available.
Tom Le Lead Application Developer/Lotus Notes Domino Developer
Read full review Usability Easy to use for the user, most of the apps we developed, there is not much need for user training. Most of the times, we just do a demo to the users group and they can pick up from there.
Tom Le Lead Application Developer/Lotus Notes Domino Developer
Read full review Support Rating I've been using the production for a very long time and very happy with it. Also, all the online resources and forums for notes is very friendly and easy/quick for getting help. I found out that compared to Microsoft or Oracle or any other platforms, IBM Notes online forum is the best I have seen.
Tom Le Lead Application Developer/Lotus Notes Domino Developer
Read full review Implementation Rating Implementation is easy and smooth if the requirement is well gathered/documented. Notes is a RAD platform, all projects in Notes is simple in the implementation step.
Tom Le Lead Application Developer/Lotus Notes Domino Developer
Read full review Alternatives Considered I've used 220s and 240s too, but it takes a lot of time to set them up, a lot of time to download the iso files, and set up of datastores. 7k saves the engineer a lot of pre-build assessment and evaluation time. Gets a lot done in a lot less time, returns are a happy engineer and a happier customer.
Read full review Outlook has been considered for years as a replacement platform. Pricing and support staff made it prohibitive. Our long-time use of Microsoft Office productivity suite naturally led us to consider the adoption of Office365. A recent investigation told us that Azure Cloud services propel an O365 solution to the forefront. Early adopters in international divisions have paved the way for Azure and O365.
Read full review Return on Investment It has allowed for mostly smooth communication from department to department/office to office. It allows for saved phone # / last contact to appear quickly. It has allowed for safety warnings/announcements to emerge all across every office so that everyone within the organization is on the same page about events when they occur. Read full review Over the years, we have lost countless hours of productivity from the thousands of crashes we have experienced. One benefit of IBM Notes is that it is very simple to train a new user on. Many people prefer and are familiar with Google tools, but those that use IBM Notes have very little trouble acclimating themselves. Read full review ScreenShots