IBM extends support for Notes/Domino until 2021 at least.

IBM has issued a press release announcing it will extend support for IBM® Notes®, IBM Domino®, IBM Notes Traveler, and IBM Enterprise Integrator for version 9 to September 2021.

Now, as my friend Gab Davis said in her blog post here, this does NOT mean support will end in 2021. I also agree the wording could have been better phrased using “at least”, but as Gab said there are IBM lawyers involved in this so things are not always as we would like them to be. Since I am not an IBM lawyer, I have said “at least until 2021” in this post title because since the press release does not mention an end of support, is a reasonable assumption to believe that support will be extended beyond that date.

I believe this statement from IBM is a good thing, it puts an end to the “Domino is dead” rumors that have been spreading around in these days. Why has that happened (again… this is the umpteenth time I heard that phrase, and has always been shown false) ? Because IBM is moving away from a major/minor release number schema in favor of a method of feature release more similar to what happens in the cloud space. How many customers care, or even know, what version is the software they are using in the cloud ? No one. All it matters is that from time to time new features are added and bugs are fixed. From now on IBM will release “Feature packs” that will enhance the functionalities of Notes and Domino, not caring anymore to call that Domino 9.0.2, 9.0.3, 9.1 or 10 or whatever. It will simply be Notes and Domino 9 updated to the latest features set available. So the fact that there will not be a new 9.x release does not means at all that Domino is dead or not evolving.

Domino is alive and evolving as it has been since R1.