Recent discussion on Brent Peters’ blog about the possibility of IBM/Lotus developing a Linux/Mac Admin client and a pre-Lotusphere post by Paul Mooney on the same subject got me thinking today on the future of the Domino Administrator client.
The basic consensus is that IBM will not be focusing on developing a Mac or Linux client unless there is significant market share to be gained, or in other words, unless it is customer-driven. And I have to agree. Before seeing a Mac OS X Domino Administrator client, I would like to a Linux version developed. Working as a Domino Administrator at IBM, and previously having been one all my life, I would certainly enjoy consolidating everything on Linux. Macs, both abroad but specially here in Brazil due to the import taxes, are outrageously expensive. Yes, they are gorgeous, rock-solid hardware, and I would love to buy one in the future, but it has no place for me at work.
Paul describes his setup as running a stand-alone Mac Notes 8.5 client and running Domino Administrator in a Windows VM. And that in itself is an advantage that we do not have with the Domino Administrator in Windows (not without significant hacking at least): independence between the Notes client and Domino Administrator. This to me is the biggest thing that needs to be taken care of in the Domino Administrator client. Have the Domino Administrator client working standalone from the Notes client. Make it a separate install. Make it be multi-threaded. I would much rather see a multi-threaded stand-alone Domino Administrator client on Windows than try to repurpose/repackage/rebuild any of its features and functionalities as composite apps/expeditor plugins to the Notes client. Call me what you will, but having experienced the Sametime integrated client on the Notes 8.x client (which is great to have for the integrated awareness), I have to say I am constantly firing up the standalone Sametime to get independence from the Notes client.
For me, as a Domino administrator, it is counter-productive to work when I’m on a group chat discussing a server outage to wait to get my chat window back while I am working on some other dialog box in Notes or Domino Administrator. IMHO, do not provide any eclipse-based Administrator functionality inside the Notes client. This is bad. 
Instead, give me a truly independent, multi-threaded Domino Administrator client on Windows that lets me:
- connect to multiple Domino server consoles (not doing the Java console here, sorry) at the same time;
- connect to different Domino Domains without loosing connectivity to my current domain while switchings ids
- use filter commands to filter out specific keywords from the console in the same that grep works in Unix/Linux (believe me, it is impossible to try to read the console output of a mail server with 4,000 users on it)
I’m guessing some of this could be achieved by separate installs and hacking registry settings and windows shortcuts, but since we’re on the topic of improving the Domino admin client, that’s a few of my wish list.