A rchive Date
[ 10-06-2000 ]
Category
[ Information Technologies ]
sub-Categoy
[ Lotus ]
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[Lotus Notes and Domino Strategy for Windows 2000 Integration
With the upcoming release of Windows 2000, many IT managers are asking Lotus about plans for integrating it with Notes and Domino. Lotus believes that Windows 2000, in both its Professional and Server editions, will introduce a number of features and capabilities that will benefit both individual users and entire organizations. And in light of this, Lotus will adopt and integrate many of these new attributes in future versions of Notes and Domino.
Lotus acknowledges the benefits that Windows 2000 can bring to users; however, we remain strongly committed to the belief that customers reap the greatest benefits when they are able to choose the platforms, clients, and servers that meet their particular needs. For that reason, Notes and Domino will continue to be designed to add value to all customer environments - not just to Windows 2000 users. This open policy marks a dramatic difference from the Exchange 2000 policy that will require deployers to also adopt Windows 2000 and Active Directory.
The Lotus Platform Strategy: Leverage Without Dependence
While trying to maximize the benefits of Windows 2000, Lotus will maintain its policy of "leverage without dependence."
This means that Lotus will implement new capabilities that add value to a particular environment, but only as value-add on top of core Domino/Notes services. Windows 2000 users will benefit by Lotus' implementation of many of the new features in the context of that environment.
Lotus remains committed to supporting customers using all operating systems. That's why Domino was designed as an open infrastructure that will continue to support not only Notes, but HTTP/HTML, POP, IMAP, MAPI, LDAP, NNTP, cc:Mail, and PDA clients as well, regardless of platform.
This policy provides customers with the advantage of choice and results in superior functionality. With Notes and Domino, customers can use the right tool for the right situation. New technologies can easily be brought into existing environments. And because Notes and Domino work so well with those existing environments, customers can build more powerful and efficient solutions by using the best of both technology sets.
Domino R5 and Windows NT 4.0: A History of Integration and Exploitation
Notes and Domino have over their history exploited Windows features and functions. With R5, Lotus introduced support for many Windows NT 4.0 features, including "Wolfpack" MS Cluster Server clustering and Windows NT's native IIS Web server. Looking at how Notes integrates with Windows NT, it will be easy to see how Lotus plans to exploit Windows 2000 technology in the future.
With the addition of a Domino user registration tab to the NT User Manager, IT administrators are easily able to register Domino/Notes users. That means that among other things, they can easily synchronize user accounts bi-directionally, create and delete Users and Groups from NT, modify existing Users and Groups from NT, and synchronize Domino and NT directories.
In addition, Domino registers numerical statistics with NT's Performance Monitor in real time, and logs to NT's Event log as well. Plus, for those customers using IIS, Domino applications can be brought into their environments and managed from a single point of administration. To that end, customers can take advantage of all Domino Services, such as messaging, workflow, security, and replication.
One of the major benefits Windows NT users experience with Notes is a single sign-on capability. Furthermore, on all Windows platforms, users can also use Internet Explorer as a browser inside of Notes and integrate Notes and MS Office.
Windows 2000 Exploitation: The Plan
With the introduction of Windows 2000, Lotus will continue to integrate and exploit the MS platform in future releases. The first phase will be directed towards ensuring that Domino runs reliably and efficiently on the Windows 2000 server, just as seamlessly as if Windows 2000 were a new version of Windows NT. In addition, Notes will support Windows 2000 Professional as if it were a new OS version. Windows 2000 will be a supported Notes/Domino platform starting with R5.0.3.
Starting in Notes/Domino 5.0.2b COM interface support for Domino objects is added; Domino back end classes are available as COM components. In Windows 2000, you can further take advantage of the new COM+ services - applications currently using COM will work in a COM+ environment. Some of the new services include:
Object pooling: improve performance and scalability by re-using objects through object pooling
Load balancing:
- queuing: let server components participate in transactions even if they're unavailable or off-line
Event notification: a COM+ service that notifies the client side of the application code (or subscribers) when an event happens
In the initial release of Notes/Domino that supports Windows 2000, Domino Directory and Active Directory will co-exist so that customers have a choice of directories to meet their requirements. For environments running Domino Directory with other directories (Active Directory as well as others), Domino Directory Assistance provides access to standard LDAP directories.
Plans for Next Feature Release
Lotus is investigating different areas of the Windows 2000 operating system that are targets for exploitation and further integration; our goal is to acquire logo certification for the next feature release of Notes/Domino. Demonstrating our commitment to customers using all operating systems, selected Windows 2000 features will be adopted when they can add functionality to Windows 2000-based Notes clients and /or Domino servers without affecting the performance of Notes clients and Domino servers running in other operating systems.
Integration points planned in the next feature release are:
Windows installer: notes and Domino will leverage the Windows 2000 software deployment model. The Notes/Domino installer will respect current DLLs, store files in appropriate directories, and modify the registry and Active Directory only when necessary.
The shared DLL problems experienced when maintaining multiple applications on Windows platforms will be resolved by providing "side-by-side" support.
Domino User Manager Extensions will enable the Windows 2000 administrator to:
- register Domino users and groups
- modify existing users and groups
- delete users
- create Notes ID and mail files
- synchronize Domino and NT directories
Domino migration tools can be used for bulk imports of users and groups into Domino running on Windows 2000. Users may be Exchange users, Windows 2000 users, LDAP users and their associated definitions.
Active Directory: Lotus is looking at ways to improve synchronization between Domino Directory and Active Directory by increasing the level of automation for bulk imports and directory replication. Lotus has even more plans to continue LDAP support enhancements with future releases.
Microsoft Management Console (MMC): Lotus is working on a plug-in for MMC that would provide Domino specific properties and menu choices. This ties in with Lotus' overall goals of providing better tools for synchronization between AD and Domino and simplifying the administration of users in an environment with co-existing directories.
Unicode: Domino will support the Windows 2000 Unicode model for local language installations.
The Windows 2000 Kerberos-based security model will co-exist with our own native security mechanisms. Lotus will continue to provide Notes/Domino authentication and PKI support. In addition to Kerberos, Windows 2000 will continue to support public/private keys and will provide utilities for creating key pairs for Kerberos users.
Single sign-on: Today we replace the native GINA DLL with our own version to support single sign-on. In Windows 2000, we'll adopt the same approach - being one of several providers.
MS Cluster Server: Making Domino a MSCS-aware application (versus a generic application, which it is today) means that we can leverage the CA (continuous availability) features of MSCS in Windows 2000]
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