One of our clients called the other day. They had an issue, and in answering the question  "what have you done recently" they mentioned they had run Defrag.Nsf.  Upon further inquiry I learned that this is a third party solution from a company in Australia.  In function it does for a Domino database what Defrag does for a file system.   Our customer reported that it significantly improved (as much as 50%) the loading of libraries and folder views in our Domino based doc mgt solution, Docova.  

The issue was resolved, and had nothing to do with Defrag.Nsf, but I was intrigued so I did some some research and downloaded a trial version of the product.  Will do some benchmark testing and report back.   Worth a look.  Google it to get the link to Preemptive Consulting's site.

PS.  In testing I copied and pasted several documents in a Docova library  (NSF)  that contained large MOV video clips.  When I was done, Domino Administrator reported the Logical size of the database as 64 Gig, but the physical size was only 400 mb.  I had DAOS configured on this test server.  Of course in real life you would not have the same 40 MB attachment copied and pasted hundreds of times, but it sure demonstrated the power of the Domino Attachment Object Store.  Wow!.

This is worth a read.  Comes from a DLI resource, so there is an obvious bias regarding Docova, but the soapbox is pretty close to the ground.  

What the article is trying to say is that if you want document management, not just file sharing and team collaboration, then there are alternatives on the Domino platform.  You do not have to change your infrastructure to get functionality that you were used with with products like DDM. You do NOT have to look for a non-Domino based solution.

This is especially true for SMB customers.  Although smaller in size, many of these organizations require features similar to what you find in an ECM product offering, but at a price point traditionally offered in a Lotus product.

You may notice that Quickr is not mentioned in the article. The reason is that we do not feel Quickr falls into this class of products. IBM is very careful in there literature to position Quickr in terms of Collaboration and Sharing.  If you do not believe me, Google IBM Document Management and try to find references to Quickr.  They describe it as a product that delivers "basic content services".  We felt that if we talked about Quickr in terms of a document management solution, we could not do it without shedding a negative light on the product.  Quickr is a good product, if you use it for what it was intended.

http://www.dominopower.com/issues/issue200906/00002385001.html
http://www.dominopower.com/issues/issue200906/00002386001.html

Been a bit tardy on the blog of late.  June 9 I began a road trip that included a flight to London, quick flight up to Belfast where I visited some potential customers with Geoff Higgins of Team Solutionz.  Then a train ride down to Belfast to visit with Blue Wave.  Next day a flight to Edinburgh for meetings with Ashok Khindra from CES and a meeting with a prospect in Edinburgh.  Tomorrow I catch a plane to London for more meetings with partners, prospects and customers.

The general feeling is that we have turned the corner on the recession.  Everyone has a good queue of deals they are chasing.  Nice to feel the positive vibes.

I did one demo where I could get out to the web but could not access Notes via 1352.  Looks like that port was not open on their firewall.  Geoff told me about a product that would tunnel a SSH port that was commonly left open. Handy thing to have in your back pocket. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunneling_protocol#SSH_tunneling http://lekkimworld.com/2006/05/18/show_n_tell_thursday_ssh_tunneling_a_must_have_tool_for_any_travelling_consultant_18_may_2006.html

Ran an installment of our Domino User Group in early June.   We demonstrated the Domino Attachment Object Store feature in 8.5.  Lots of interest from the group.  The consensus  with Domino 8.5 is that the server looks good, but the client is too heavy and slow for most.  Many are installing the basic version of R8 vs going with the eclipse version.

Chris Fales from Ardexus shared a performance load test they did with their Web Mode CRM product.  They used the IBM Innovation Center to test how the software behaved doing common CRM actions on both a R7 and R8.5 server on the same hardware.  The R7 server gave up at 100 concurrent users.  In most cases that is acceptable for SMB customers.  What was interesting was that the R8.5 was still giving acceptable performance at 2000 concurrent users.  IBM has done a bang up job on improving the HTTP task.  That is good news for Docova.  Nice when the manufacturer improves the base product and everyone benefits.