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IBM

Working for Big Blue

I’ve worked for IBM’s Lotus Notes division for three years, and still work there over the summers. It’s a great place. IBM can be huge and beuracratic at times, but the people at Lotus are great and there’s still an energy about the place that lingers from their golden days. (For example, they shut down the open bar and free vending machines just before I was hired.) You may not know this, but Lotus basically invented the whole of what we now know as modern email, calendering, word processing, and even internet browsing way before Microsoft. Check it out for yourself on the web. There’s a reason why Lotus’s co-founder, Ray Ozzie, is now at the helm of Microsoft.

Domino… It’s What I Do

I’ve primarily worked on the Domino Server OS & platform team under Eddy Bell, as well as the networking team. On the platform team, I made modifications to the platform abstraction layer in Domino that lets it run on mainframes and different flavors of server platforms (z/OS, OS 390, IA 64, Sun SPARC, Linux, OS/2 (no joke!) etc.). In many cases, I was working on performance, such as rewriting low-level memory management routines, synchronization primitives (spinlocks, semaphores), or other performance optimizations. Later on, I started working heavily with the Domino performance team and Intel to evaluate Domino server, increase its CPU efficiency, and eliminate bottlenecks using their diagnostic package, V Tune.

After working on those types of things, I moved over to the networking team under Peter Mierswa, where I worked on various enhancements and additions to Domino server’s network layer. Some interesting projects included documenting and decompiling our low-level network protocol for government agencies, revamping how new mail messages (and other async events) are handled within the server, and fixing the internationalization of proxy passwords. Quite a hodgepodge of things! I also helped found and manage the IBM Mass Connections program for helping retain and develop new hires at the Westford IBM Campus. Some of that involved developing a Lotus Notes database for collaboration, and evangelizing. :)

Enter Lotus Notes

Lotus Notes, our primary product, is… well.. addictive. It has many quirks, but once you begin to learn the system, there are a few key things about it that are very hard to let go of. Here are a few:

Top Ten Things I Love About The Lotus Notes Client:

• Quick keystrokes for key editing and formatting functionality (ALT+T+L+L for toggling bullets, ALT+T+C+R for red font, etc., F2 for growing fonts, F11 for cycling fonts). This stuff is SUCH a pain in Microsoft products.
• Document Libraries that make it really easy to store, edit, search, and organize your personal information. And without having to use the native OS’s directory structure or worry about backups (replicas are worry-free and automatic backups).
• Automatic authentication and encryption of your documents.
• Automatic backups of your databases to whatever machine you sync to.
• Sections! (ALT+I+S)

Top Ten Things I Love About Lotus Domino Server:

• It is surprisingly easy to install centralized mail, calendering, and databases for a whole organization in just 15 minutes or less.
• Database design is straightforward and scripts are easy to manage.
• Astonishing scalability (7k+ mail/database users on a single-CPU server!)
• Bulletproof support across multiple OS / CPU / Platform setups
• Very lightweight server footprint thats easy to manage
• Upgrades generally don’t affect data stores

Lotus Notes Links:

• Accelerator.DLL — a small Notes Extension DLL that allows you to paste text into Notes without any formatting using the CTRL+SHIFT+V accelerator key.