Don’t Be the Last Company on Notes
The new year is starting off with a bang – a great new set of Notes customers decided to Exchange and SharePoint. At this rate, 2011 could be one of our biggest Notes “switcher” years, yet. With IBM’s annual Lotusphere conference starting next week, it means that Notes customers are evaluating what they can improve with their mail, messaging, and collaboration infrastructure. And for many Notes customers, it means taking a look at what Microsoft has to offer.
All this week, I will be posting here to the UC Blog stories from some of our customers who have switched from Notes and our Partners who help with the transition. These are just a few examples from the wave of customers migrating off of Lotus Notes --customers that include Daimler, Qantas, Procter & Gamble, GlaxoSmithKline, NTT DoCoMo, and Godiva Chocolatier.
Back in September in this post, I highlighted a Gartner report on email that I encourage everyone to read, regardless of what email system you use and whether or not you are considering changing your email system.
In another blog post last month, I cited an internal research study which shows “that Exchange market share has never been greater. In US enterprises with over 500 PC’s, an incredible 73% of organizations use Exchange as their primary email system. The next closest email platform is at 7%.” What I didn’t mention at the time was that the 7% market share is Lotus Notes. Microsoft has migrated 20 million Notes seats over to Microsoft in the last 5 years. All but 2 companies in the Fortune 30 use Exchange as their primary email system, and one of those companies is IBM. The question facing many attendees at Lotusphere this week is if they want to be the last organization left running Notes or if 2011 is the year to move to Exchange and SharePoint, the world’s leading email, calendaring and collaboration solutions.
I’ll talk more about our customer and partner stories later this week. Check back each day this week for a new post.
Julia White
Senior Director, Exchange Product Management
Comments
Anonymous
January 24, 2011
If you are a customer looking at your messaging solution, performing due diligence means researching if what a vendor tells you is reality or their own "spin". The figures quoted above are grossly inaccurate and I have personally been involved in many recent projects in moving Exchange customers to Lotus Notes. Regardless of your mail system, moving from one to another rarely makes sense if you evaluate the financial case. Consider the source and do your own evaluations and calculations.Anonymous
January 24, 2011
Exchange to Notes??? You gotta be kidding me... MSExchange is "The Best" corporate messaging product and I know that coz I've played with Notes. Let's forget technology for a while and think in an end user perspective. There is no better experience any product gives what outlook + exchange gotta offer. Again, the way MS take care of it's customers play a huge role in their success. MS PSS does a great job maintaining excellent SLA's.Anonymous
January 24, 2011
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January 24, 2011
Notes!?! HAH! We're still running Novell (soon, Attachmate) GroupWise :-( I can only dream of running Notes, much less Exchange :-( I wish Microsoft could make us a sweet deal.Anonymous
January 24, 2011
@Darren - what Apple product that runs enterprise class email and calendaring systems would you be referring to? Let's compare (wait for it) Apple to Apples here.Anonymous
January 24, 2011
Anonymous, huh? Love those. Set ignore=on. Mr. Ratish... I'm sure you meant, "If you're used to Outlook only, then there is no better experience any product gives what outlook + exchange gotta offer." Because if you meant something else, you're incorrect. Back to the post... I know that whenever I go looking for products to buy (software, cars, etc.), I always rely on "internal research stud(ies)" from each vendor to make my decisions. They're always reliable and unbiased.Anonymous
January 24, 2011
Love how you couldn't even spell Qantas correctly....Anonymous
January 24, 2011
@Darren- I use an iPhone4 myself and got an iPad too. I love it and guess it makes me "Apple Aware". The discussion is not abt knowing what or "not". If yes, tell me if you like Xbox... With my "limited experience" of around 100+ enterprise customers, I dont see a lot of people liking other products and trust me they are all well qualified and "know what they're talking about... Unless you have a Macbook pro for your personal use, how many company could afford to provide it to their employees. I myself prepared the SOP's for MacMail, Entourage, thunderbird etc and a lot of other clients too to talk to Exchange/SendMail.. @Craig Wiseman - If you think Outlook+Exchange combination works only if you are used Outlook, then I guess you gotta work on your Exchange/corporate messaging deployment coz with E2K7/E2010 with OL2010/2007, I bet ya "There aint no better combination" out there !!! Moral of the story - I was just mentioning abt the larger chunk of orgn's by saying "MSExchange is "The Best" corporate messaging product".Anonymous
January 24, 2011
Every large site in Australia that I've seen that has made the move is now running two environments. Exchange for messaging and Domino for apps. Every single one. They have all increased the complexity of their IT environments and also significantly increased the amount of money they are spending. I think other more serious, real world, professionally sound questions need to be asked.Anonymous
January 24, 2011
Procter & Gamble getting off Notes? Really? I personally delivered Notes and Domino developer and sys admin training to a large number of P&G folk in Cincinatti when they deployed Notes and I have heard every year since 2000 that they were "getting off of Notes". After you hear it year after year and see that it has not happened you start to ignore the talk. Then when you hear the same thing from a competing salesperson who mentions a bunch of other companies "leaving Notes"...well, it does make one question the speaker's credibility.Anonymous
January 24, 2011
Spelling Qantas correctly would be a good start.Anonymous
January 24, 2011
Ray Ozzie leaves M$? wonder why......Anonymous
January 24, 2011
So if MS Exchange is really such a first rate messaging platform and better than Lotus Notes and other competitors, then why did the Radicati Group recently report from a survey of several hundred organisations in 2010 that the average number of unplanned downtime for Exchange was 300 minutes (5 hours) per week, almost double the downtime rate of Exchange users for 2009 and significantly higher that competitors such as lotus Notes and Groupware. I have been using Lotus Notes for email for 17 years, and I don't think that I have been down for even a total of 30 minutes in that entire time. Let's face it, both Exchange and Lotus Notes are fine enterprize-class email platforms, and are both fine products. But to claim that Exchange is superior in any way, or that any organization can cost justify switching from one platform to another is just rubbish. The title to this blog entry is the key to why organisations switch email platforms, because they believe all the marketing from Microsoft without questioning it. But to try and justify that people are switching because Exchange is a superior product or because a switch to any another corporate email platform is cost justifyable is total nonsense. Wake up people, the salesman just lied to you and you fell for it.Anonymous
January 24, 2011
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January 24, 2011
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January 25, 2011
Everyone's entitled to his opinions. But please, don't be the last home user on Microsoft! money.cnn.com/.../index.htmAnonymous
January 25, 2011
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January 25, 2011
Mail and messaging????? Isn't this a bit like suggesting to companies "don't be the last company left using an IBM typewriter"? The world has moved on quite a bit over the past 20 years. Its such as shame Microsoft hasn't caught up. It's the products like Exchange and SharePoint that are the dinosaurs of the new era of social software. Lotus Notes started adapting to that new era quite some time ago. I guess you guys failed to notice that.Anonymous
January 25, 2011
I'd like to see the customer who is stupid enough to believe this nonsense. If Microsoft still believes that they can gain interest with a plain messaging system then they are very wrong. Look at your competitors and look what IBM offers for a much better price than yours. Our comany recently moved from Exchange to Lotus Domino and we now get much more functionality for the same (or slightly better) price. I do encourage customers to ignore these marketing statements, because the statistics are nothing else than playing with figures. Do you really think that calculating companies is the right way to do it??? e.g. taking 3 companies with 500 users and 1 company with 100.000 users will give a market share of 75% for Exchange? Clever people (+clever companies) take Notes/Domino because thats all you need for building your corporate applications incl. your web platform. Microsoft instead is advertising 1 product, but they ignore that you have to purchase multiple of them ($$$) in order to make use of it. So please open your eyes and carefully look at what you get for your money!Anonymous
January 25, 2011
What a complete # blog this is!....give me one good reason to spent lots of money to migrate to a system that is far from perfect? And why should I use Microsoft products as everything is so vendor locked.....MIcrosoft products are in my opinion not suited for global companies. To expensive and to hard to maintain. Microsoft get alive and get awake.....you are far behind on almost everything else availible in the market.....Anonymous
January 25, 2011
Why not mention the Microsoft customers moving to Google Apps and Lotus Live......o sorry this is a commercial blog #fail (thats twitter language).Anonymous
January 25, 2011
M$ is beyond expensive - what it took us to do with 5 Exchange servers and 2 admin is done with 2 Domino server and 1 admin and giving us much more than just email. Perhaps we pay more for that one admin, but does not exceed the cost of 2. This is complete FUD. I don't even want to get into Sharepoint ... that's a server sprawl waiting to happen from what I've seen.Anonymous
January 25, 2011
All I can say is that Microsoft is not the future. The old paradigm of Client/Server technology and clunky old desktop PCs is going by way of the do-do bird. The Windows O/S will be like DOS in ten years. Dead! That means Microsoft's cash cow for the last 20 years will be gone. How many teenagers even use a PC except to do homework? The world is moving to mobile technology and cloud computing at an breakneck pace. Smart phones, laptops, tablets, etc... In ten years office computing will be vastly different than it is today. Operating systems like Android, Apple iOS and others are paving the road for the future of computing... what is Microsoft doing? Let's take a look. Who owns a Windows Phone? Only Microsoft employees. Who has a Microsoft tablet? There isn't one! How many companies plan to upgrade to Windows 7? Why??? Where is Microsoft in terms of social networking or social business?? Bing? Huh, what? Microsoft is like IBM from the 70's and is being left behind by progress. So go ahead, switch to Exchange and spend a million dollars... you're being left behind. Microsoft is dying!Anonymous
January 25, 2011
Loving the responses! Nice to know MS spin is exactly that, just pure nonsense.Anonymous
January 25, 2011
@Mark +1 A slight difference, I don't think MS in that sentence.. Unfortunately, the world seems to be driven by nonsense... not only in IT though .... subprimes ?. This taken, why would a software editor seeking for success talk another language ? @Julia White. Wow a whole article for only 7% off of the market while tou own 73% ? This is being hungry. Really. I'm impressed. BTW. Didn't you forget some customers running both system at the same time ? Didn't you, as well, forget some customers still stuck in migration process because Exchange + Sharepoint can't take all what's Notes+Domino does ? Just wondering.Anonymous
January 25, 2011
For mail, and only mail, Exchange Vs. Notes Vs. Whatever, speaking only for ease of use, the Whatever wins hands down. If there aren't other issues, very few things will beat Google Apps. Disclaimer, I have not used Lotus Live or Microsoft's equivalent. I have also not used Exchange since 2003. I have seen the 2007 Outlook client and I am left with my normal "who cares" reaction to most of its features. I found search to be better in Notes. With the Eclipse client, the Notes mail interface is just as robust and professional. However, as an independent developer, I don't use either one. Most of the small businesses I do work with are moving to cloud based e-mail. By far, this means Google Apps. For a mail to mail comparison, I do understand that this is all marketing hype. A large company's CIO would have to be truly idiotic (or forced to listen to his boss who has no idea when it comes to technology) to spend the money it would take to migrate in either direction based on performance/scalability/cost alone. This is without considering the costs of migrating all of those applications, which would only vastly exacerbate the problem.Anonymous
January 26, 2011
Thanks Julia for the update.. Exchange is always better than notes.Anonymous
January 26, 2011
Promotion of personal businesses are not allowed, according to Microsoft TechNet’s Terms of Use.Anonymous
January 26, 2011
Hmm, the VHS v Betamax analogy may be quite apt... regardless of whether VHS won that battle, how many people actually use VHS recorders these days for anything other than playing old tapes?Anonymous
January 27, 2011
Promotion of personal businesses are not allowed, according to Microsoft TechNet’s Terms of Use.Anonymous
January 27, 2011
Wowww....Guys its better to say I hate Microsoft rather than claiming Exchange is nonsense. As I am writing this post I am migrating mailboxes from Lotus notes to Exchange moving applications to sharepoint. When I asked the CTO why did they make this decision the answer was Lotus notes is nothing like recycle bin on Windows OS four flat files storing the identity and no central control. In the last 12 years of my career I have seen Lotus notes been migrated to ExchangeAnonymous
January 27, 2011
@Annon - no recycle bin ? Most of these decisions are made by the woefully uninformed. No central control ? MS is the very epitome of server sprawl and lack of control.Anonymous
January 27, 2011
Promotion of personal businesses are not allowed, according to Microsoft TechNets Terms of Use.Anonymous
January 27, 2011
Promotion of personal businesses are not allowed, according to Microsoft TechNets Terms of Use.Anonymous
January 27, 2011
When large Corporations face a $10M+ upgrade fee from IBM to step up to Lotus 8.5, they think twice. This happens quite often these days. The cost of operating Lotus Notes kills them. So more large companies will switch to MS Exchange soon. Just lean back and watch.Anonymous
January 28, 2011
Promotion of personal businesses are not allowed, according to Microsoft TechNets Terms of Use.Anonymous
January 28, 2011
Promotion of personal businesses are not allowed, according to Microsoft TechNets Terms of Use.Anonymous
January 28, 2011
Promotion of personal businesses are not allowed, according to Microsoft TechNets Terms of Use.Anonymous
January 30, 2011
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January 31, 2011
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January 31, 2011
Peek 'under the hood' of Notes/Domino and you will find grace and elegance, a commodity increasingly scarce in today's IT landscape. The result? Efficiency and developer loyalty enjoyed by few others. Peek 'under the hood' of Exchange/Sharepoint and you find product(s) designed to stimulate sales of SQL server, Visual Studio, Office, IE, AD, Windows operating systems, and in the case of Sharepoint, an Admin interface that only a mother could love. The result? More of everything, especially developer resource and licence costs. Please do not misunderstand me here, the core email functionality of Exchange and the Outlook client is undeniable - but that is just about all it will ever be without significant effort and expense. Users who want only base functionality or can afford additional development / support costs will be well served. The big problem with Notes/Domino is IBM marketing / management - the product is hugely capable. The big problem with Exchange / Sharepoint is extremely tight integration with the Microsoft 'stack' and how little can be achieved without swallowing .NET and adding significant support costs. Customers have a clear choice, which they must make extremely carefully. In my opinion, Exchange / Sharepoint is NOT an email / collaboration solution, rather it is the beginning of a steep descent into the heart of Microsoft technologies. For some, this will be perfectly acceptable. Others may choose to disagree.Anonymous
February 03, 2011
Promotion of personal businesses are not allowed, according to Microsoft TechNets Terms of Use.Anonymous
February 06, 2011
What a marketing gimmick again by MS :PAnonymous
February 07, 2011
Don't be the last company using Microsoft email for collaboration ! MS has demonstrated extremely well over the last decade that it has no clue about how people work together outside of email. But current generations have moved on from email, and don't care to use it much anymore. While IBM leads the innovation into the Social Business space, the embrace of social tools in business and recognizes that collaboration is about people, not documents, Microsoft fights tooth and nail to keep their cash cow at the center of their collaborative universe. Redmond, the rest of the world has moved on. Don't be the last customer clinging to Microsoft, wishing you could "exchange" their mediocre tools for something more modern and useful, all the while hoping that some day they will actually get what collaboration is all about. They won't.Anonymous
March 08, 2016
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