Today, of course, is Independence Day in the United States, marking the day 243 years ago that the 13 colonies declared independence from the British empire. But three days ago was, in a way, a kind of independence day for our favorite email and application platform, Notes & Domino…

Decluttering is big business these days. Writers like Marie Kondo have become media stars by inventing new ways to help people clean house. But what about your Domino servers? Where do you start when it comes to decluttering your servers?

Last month, we released a new version of our source code control tool for Lotus Notes, Teamstudio CIAO!. The new version has a slew of new features that allow you to automate many of the routine tasks that have to be executed each time you deploy a new version of the database design.

Teamstudio Analyzer is much more than a code documentation tool. It has a sophisticated audit function that allows you to define sets of filters or rules that you can run against your application designs. The filters can help track down Notes version compatibility issues as well as a host of other issues.

In the next few weeks, we expect that ownership in the Notes and Domino platform will pass from IBM to HCL, an event that’s been characterized as the dawning of a new era. But last month in Japan, we experienced the dawning of an actual new era, an event that holds some lessons for Notes and Domino developers.