Application Performance Tuning

MartinScott won the "Lotus Services" Editors' Choice award from e-Pro Magazine for several successful Domino application performance improvements for major Lotus customers.


Good, Cheap, Fast - There is an old saying in software development that, of these, you can only pick two. The traditional tradeoffs between functionality, cost, and performance are particularly evident with Domino applications. Your critical Domino application performed flawlessly when it contained only test data and a few test users. But as more users and more data entered the picture, the increasingly sluggish performance now has you thinking about new hardware. Sound familiar?

Is Domino slow?

Does Domino scale poorly across large numbers of users and documents? No, actually, Domino scales quite well. The problem, however, is that large high-volume Lotus Domino applications are notoriously performance sensitive to sub-optimal design practices. Such designs are not bad, per se; many times the developers have simply used the features the way they were intended by Lotus. However, such developers might not have known the performance impact of certain development decisions as the number of documents and the number of users grow. MartinScott's intimate understanding of how Domino works allows your applications to avoid and fix performance bottlenecks.

Application performance engineering

Before investing your budget in the purchase, setup, and maintenance of faster server hardware, consider that MartinScott can achieve new levels of performance at the application layer by applying our proven techniques, frequently at a fraction of the cost of new hardware. MartinScott's performance tuning practice has years of experience assessing and fixing performance problems through optimal design techniques. We know how to improve performance with minimal cost and without sacrificing functionality. Even if you do end up investing in new hardware, an optimally designed application will perform better and use less hardware resources.

Customer Testimonial

"After installing a new Domino application, we experienced severe performance degradation when in use by multiple users. The developer had said he couldn't make a change without losing some of the functionality of the application. IBM monitored the application and suggested upgrading the server to provide the resources needed by the application, which would have cost over $50,000. We called MartinScott for performance tuning assistance before taking the suggestion to purchase new hardware. Within a few hours, [MartinScott's] Jamie Magee made some suggestions for changes to the application design that made an immediate improvement without losing functionality and saved us thousands of dollars by not needing to invest in the suggested hardware. I can't say enough about the professional and expert manner this situation was handled by Jamie Magee. I would suggest anyone with performance problems on a Domino application to contact MartinScott for a performance appraisal and tune up before investing in more hardware."

Sandra Hunter, Director Information Technology
Story County, Iowa

Exclusive MartinScott performance tuning experience

IBM/Lotus has subcontracted to MartinScott Consulting several performance tuning efforts for its largest and most critical customers, such as The World Bank, MCI, and Verizon. We can assess your application remotely or via an emailed copy to rapidly identify the most impactful changes to remedy numerous symptoms of slow performance. Let MartinScott, the recognized leader in Domino application performance tuning, show you the small changes in your application design that can yield huge performance gains for your users.


MartinScott's Jamie Magee authored a 30-page article, Performance Engineering Domino Application Designs, which contains excerpts of our key performance tuning knowledge. The first published article to tackle the inexact art of performance tuning through design considerations, this research has been used by hundreds of companies to improve Domino application performance for Notes and Web clients. A draft of this paper appears in the Technical Tips & Articles section of this website. MartinScott has also presented performance tuning seminars at nine Domino development conferences in North America and Europe.

Let us speed up your application

Performance tuning skills come only with experience. MartinScott can save you time and money putting our experience to use in helping you get the most out of your Domino investment, without necessarily having to upgrade your hardware. Contact MartinScott today for a performance appraisal and tune up of your Domino applications.