HCL Notes vs. Jive

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.

Incentivized

The content in the news section isn't totally responsive - meaning if I have a small window taking up half my screen, the images for the headline articles may not load properly and when I maximize that window, it's left with ugly half-loaded images. Also, the collaboration feature for Office documents is great in theory but tends to cause more pain than it's worth to just download the document and open it separately in Word or Excel.

Incentivized

• Data sharing via small database format is valuable as they are quickly deployed, easily managed and distributed on backend email servers.
• Integrated messaging allows quick communications between geographical sites reducing long distance costs.
• Policy documents for registering new users, setting initial security levels, assigning default database access is managed easily with the admin client.

Incentivized

• Jive makes it easy to create new pages for administrators.
• Jive makes it easy to manage users in one area and simple to navigate administration user interface.
• Jive is a really good concept, the idea behind jive creates a great main hub in an organizaiton.

Incentivized

• The simple user experience can be touted as a positive, but it is also a negative in some ways. Compared to other calendars, email and chat tools, IBM Notes looks like it is from the 90s.
• We have constant issues with chat crashing. This is the main reason so many people in our organization chose to switch away from Notes.
• There aren't a lot of integrations with IBM Notes and other applications we regularly use. Notes seems to have been left behind by many.

Incentivized

• Search functionality is very weak
• The information architecture and taxonomy doesnt allow for easy discoverability of content
• It's hard to navigate the and find spaces/groups that I already know about
• The main profile/interface does not allow easy access to key tasks or common tasks.

Since companies started to moved their email systems to the Exchange platform and the cloud, we are unable to find any new projects with IBM Notes, the marketing share and software price is another issue, so we have to move to another platform.

There are always external factors that can impact this decision but currently, the Jive platform is maintaining its lead in the market place in this area. If the innovation in this space by Jive continues, then this number will remain high. Integration with other systems and adaptability to changes in the market or in client needs will also make this decision hard to predict more then 6 months into the future

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.

It was very cumbersome to generate reports. Often I had to run several reports and then merge them offline to get what I needed.

Reporting granularity is also lacking

Uptime was OK. But there was one day that the system crashed for a whole day. Our company was unable to operate. And all the plugins to word/excel froze causing those systems to freeze.

Jive posted a statement to the media saying all customers were up, but we were not.

The product worked as designed. It just didn't work for our needs.

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.

They did an OK job when I needed them. Except for the one day the system went down. Jive pointed the finger at the hosting company, and the hosting company pointed the finger at Jive. No reliable information came to us.

Jive online training is there. It is OK/average. I feel some other companies are doing better. It is not a piece that is required to have a successfully implementation, but it could be useful to improve it

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.

If I did this over, I would hire out the implementation. They know the best practices and could have guided us to make an easier to use setup.

I've already answered this question in the previous questions however to sum it up IBM Notes stacks up VERY WELL! It has a LOT of really good business/enterprise features like enterprise-grade Dropbox-like storage, synced email/calendar/contacts, it supports a LOT of third-party add-ins, easy-to-use and friendly, very strong and robust, and most importantly it's a LOT more secure in my opinion than the competition.

Incentivized

I honestly don't recall what we briefly used before Jive - it wasn't good and didn't last long. I think it was under-utilized because you couldn't really do a whole lot with it. Jive does pretty much everything we need it to do, so for that reason alone, Jive is the superior tool.

Incentivized

• ROI for us has been extreme. In the late 1990's we automated dozens and dozens of paper-based processes and created workflows for activities that had never been formalized before. Additionally all those forms with their comments, etc. have been captured in a central place to serve as audit trails.
• Whenever we need faster access to data (mail or otherwise), it's quick and easy to deploy a new Domino server somewhere, setup replication of appropriate databases, and get the local Notes clients pointed to those resources. So that to me is positive ROI because it represents time savings based on user need.
• Tech. Support would claim a negative ROI in terms of supporting the Notes client, Notes updates, peculiar Notes issues, and users who complain about Notes. That is certainly true to a point. The Notes client is a much more complex piece of software than, say, Outlook. But we have to remember that Notes deployments are not just for Mail but many, many applications as well. In the end I'd say we might have 1 or 2 user complaints per month, typically around Calendar issues more than anything else.

• Makes us seem bigger than we are.
• Makes it so the person that manages this part of the business can go on vacation and can pass on these duties to other people when he is gone.
• Helped us fulfill MSA requirements from our clients to have phone support. Couldn’t have closed some of our deals without it.

Incentivized