Ed Brill

And is Exchange significantly cheaper than Notes these days? I mean, even just for email/calendaring? And that's not taking into consideration the considerable cost of the migration itself.

And when they're done with the email migration, it will be "now, what are we going to do with all these Notes applications?"

Cheers,

- Mike

OK, specifically what are these savings that Virgin Atlantic going to make by migrating from Lotus Notes to Exchange?

What was the cost for Virgin Atlantic to run Lotus Notes?

What is the cost of Virgin Atlantic to run MS Exchange?

What is the cost of migration?

What specific savings are being used to justify this migration?

If Virgin Atlantic are using Lotus Notes for non-email applications, what will the cost of migrating these other applications?

....or will this yet be another example of email migration only and will Virgin Atlantic also retain the Domino infrastrucrure and thus maintain two platforms well into the future?

What is the specific cost justification for such a migration?

Pathetic article that many will read and believe, simply because someone wrote it :(

The sad thing is, I am not really surprised, annoyed yes but surprised no. "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" as our French colleagues might say

Putting aside the fact that the editorial contains a bunch of blind assertions ("JBoss is very often becoming the application server or middleware component of choice among many companies.") and terrible writing ("There’s a fear about print advertising but media and retail companies want to invest online, in self-service and so on to streamline costs.") combined with regurgitations of the obvious ("if you ask the programmers there to build something and your plan is wrong then they will do a brilliant job of fulfilling your plans but it will still be wrong."), it is simply incredible to me that a publication with the reputation of CIO.com can't be bothered with a byline that includes an "about the author" link.

If this exact same content appeared at blogger.com, the author would be expected to disclose biographic information. For a publication which supposedly exercises editorial review, the exclusion is simply beyond the pale.

It's not like they needed to spend printer ink and column inches to include it.

Truly sad. And truly indicative of the fact that there simply is no such thing as "IT press."

"potential savings in operating Notes/Domino as a result of improvements in releases 7, 8, and 8.5. Our assertion is that companies can achieve cost savings of 30% or more by implementing some of the improvements in scalability, compression, new features like DAOS and ID vault, and several other bits of tuning and fine tuning."

Ed, this is exactly the type of thing we need to explain to our management who read this type of article. We need concrete proof that staying on notes/domino and moving up to 8.x will save us money vs a migration to exchange. (not counting migration cost itself).

In discussions with clients that want to move to Exchange the obvious questions we ask to them is why?

Money is usually named, but after we walk them through the license costs for all the servers and hardware and maintenance and management to get what they already have in one Domino box it's hard for that to be an issue.

And really in this day of no money who wants to waste it on swapping one email system for another?

Next problem is usually where it gets sticky. Management doesn't like Lotus or only Likes Microsoft. Ed has done some excellent sessions over the last few years on this subject. But this is where it gets hard and you need to work on it from various points to succeed.

The bottom line is where was Virgin's BP or IBM reps while this guy was bugging them to move to Exchange? Like most of us, if we don't stay in front of the customer we won't have them as customers.

@6 I did not realize that was the real need from our e-mails. Let me send you something in draft form that hopefully will help.

This going back a good ways (certainly more than 5 years ago).... But I remember a story being told once comparing Toyota and Merrill Lynch.

Toyota at the time was a Notes shop of approx. 30,000 users. (I believe they still are a Notes shop, just not sure of the size.)

Merrill Lynch had 70,000 users and was (and still is) running Microsoft Exchange.

Toyota ran Domino on some big iron (I can't remember what specifically, but either S/390, RS/6000 or something very large). The number of physical boxes could be counted on one hand. Merrill on the other hand at the time had somewhere in the neighborhood of 700 servers.

Modern day versions of those stories need to be told, among many others. You don't need to have a PhD in economics to figure out that it takes a heck of a lot more resources to maintain one system over the other.

I think IBM needs to start worrying more about the Cloud as more and more fortune 500's are considering using this air space as their means to host and manage their IT Messaging Systems.

Outsourcing your email makes alot more sense and most definitely a cheaper solution long term.

{ Link }

"most definitely a cheaper solution long term".

Having met with Ted yesterday and had a look at his data model, I'm not sure that it supports the idea that it is *cheaper* long term as much as it does the idea that it allows IT to reallocate expenditures long-term. We do offer Lotus Notes Hosted Messaging and a variety of other hosted or outsourced approaches, but we are finding in many cases that premises-based can be a less expensive solution. Also a lot of the IT shops looking at the cloud do not factor in the *total* cost of ownership... they look at the expenditure as the whole, while they still have to own directory management, bandwidth, connectivity, security, and many other factors.

If you are convinced, I am convinced too. Now instead of talking inside a Domino forum, let's go out talk in Mircosoft forum. Tit for tat...

I'm not going to say too much, but Virgin Atlantic was one of the first customers I heard roll out the "everyone likes Outlook and uses it at home" statement. I asked if they had any proof and people looked at each other around the table in a manner that suggested they didn't have any proof and had just been found out. They cited user dissatisfaction... okay, that's a tangible factor for a customer running Notes 5.

"The cost of running Lotus Notes is killing a lot of companies" - I just have to say that's a load of crap. Upgrade, upgrade, upgrade, upgrade, and capabilities to lower the cost of ownership with each. Okay, not all customers take advantage of those factors every time. Let's look at Exchange... migrate, migrate, very challenging 'upgrade'... next version will be based on SQL Server so migrate again. It requires more servers than Domino and still doesn't reach the same level of resilience. Where's it PKI? The costs rack up to achieve the same.

In a ZDNet article Ron Markezich (a Microsoft VP) said "It can cost corporations as much as $1,000 per user to move away from Notes" - okay, so companies can't afford to run Notes but they can afford $1k per user for a migration? Reality check guys, what a load of hogwash.

So how many of us are going to complain to CIO.com that one of its contributors is dressing-up an advertisment for his company as an article? Hardly unbiased reporting and a clear conflict of interest which undermines the reputation of the site. (Of course pointing this out to CIO.com's rivals may also be useful in pricking their conscience.)

As for his assertion about the cost of Notes, well we all know from Ron Markezich, corporate VP of Microsoft Onlne that "it can cost corporations as much as $1,000 per user to move away from Notes". Thats the killer cost surely?

@14 I looked into complaining to CIO.com and found out that the article was written/published by CIO.CO.UK and just picked up here locally. The original is at { Link } I haven't found my way to the right contacts in the UK to go after this (Daz?) but we will.

I'm not going to say too much, but Virgin Atlantic was one of the first customers I heard roll out the "everyone likes Outlook and uses it at home" statement.

Y'know, I fail to understand the logic of pointing this out. We've been hearing for years from IBM that this or that customers switch for some emotional, irrational or political reason. But the fact of the matter is that clearly you were in front of this customer at some point, and you couldn't retain them. That's a competitive failure. Full stop.

All this process of blaming the customer that IBM's been doing for so long is like the kid on the playground that whines "the sun was in my eyes! I wasn't ready! No fair! Do over!"

You lost. Suck it up and admit it. Then get better at competing for customer retention. Attach resources and rewards to it, instead of complaining that Microsoft pays kickbacks on migrations or owns the desktop or whatever the excuse du jour is.

IBM has 380,000 employees and took in over $100 billion last year. There's simply no excuse for being out-competed in an existing customer. Blaming the customer simply shows that you weren't paying enough attention, because you should have been able to stop the conversation before it ever got started.

Sorry, Ed... I'm sure this reads like an attack, and I swear I don't intend it to be. I'm just so frustrated about IBM's attitude about this stuff. When a customer says that they're switching due to usability issues because they're still on R5, the only question I ask is "why wasn't IBM in there making sure that the customer was getting maximum ROI on their investment?"

This is a product that a customer once said "what's the ROI on Notes? What's the ROI on the air you breathe?" Now customers are migrating at $1000/seat to a platform that is technically inferior and more expensive to run. And IBM is essentially saying "those people are just stupid."

Something is very VERY wrong.

@16 - come and walk in my shoes for a week. I can say no more.

@16/17 - I agree that something is very wrong, but I also know that Darren is absolutely right that this is a situational problem.

I believe the fundamental difference between the two competitors is focus. As you say, Nate, IBM is a $100 billion company. To us, Notes is an important but fractional business (at least it represents in total an actual percentage of that $100 billion, not a rounding error). However, to Microsoft, Office and Windows servers represent the vast majority of their business and the near entirety of their corporate business. When a Microsoft salesperson writes their business plan for working with a particular customer, they can focus on one or two competitive attack areas and, if they put enough money on the table or focus on the effort or deceive often enough, they will have some measure of success. When the IBM salesperson -- and by this I mean the client manager/executive, not a brand specialist -- writes their business plan for working with a client, they have to think about hardware, software, services, business consulting, outsourcing, training, managed deployment, even financing! In short they have to manage a portfolio, rather than focus on one or two individual stock trades. There comes a point where the IBM client executive simply won't fall on the sword, because they still have to work with the customer on all those other things for years in the future (and most client execs have a multi-year assignment with their customers...some go 20+ years in that role).

These may all be "excuse du jour" to you but to me they are the reality of the business I manage. You are right that we could do some things differently, but while customer retention is obviously easier than acquiring net-new, it's never a walk in the park. Remember how that home goods retailer in Atlanta simultaneously was kicking out Lotus Notes but deploying the Lotus-managed WebSphere Portal product? Tell me what IBM should have done differently there, because we both lived it, and I am quite certain the answer is "nothing".

Well, gee Ed, back in the old days, Lotus had their own "focused" reps who would have spent more time with the client and been in a better position to head off these sort of dimwitted decisions by "C" level execs. Perhaps Lotus (or even IBM) could dedicate staff specific to the software solutions? This would take pressure off the IBM rep by reducing his "portfolio" and add focus to the messaging solution platform end of it.

@19 we have a large team of Lotus focused sales specialists. However, they have to play as part of team IBM, the same as the Tivoli, Rational, DB2, and WebSphere reps (as well as the System i, System z, System p, etc.).

@16 - One of my favourite TV shows, mainly for spiritual content, was Kung Fu starring David Carradine. One of the lines from from Caine, the main character - "From a single action you draw an entire universe"

@21 - Is that a warning or an admonishment? :-)

Hi Ed, so... it's not the IBM reps that are dropping the ball in these cases, it's the Lotus reps? How is this happening?

@23 I don't think I can play the "who to point the finger at" game. Every situation is unique.

@24 Fair enuff, but that means we have been mistakenly thinking that it's the IBM reps that don't give proper time/effort into pushing the Lotus products, and actually it's been the Lotus reps all along?

Not a finger pointing game... oh yeah sorry maybe it is...

@23 - think about the issue we always come down to with marketing. We'd all like to see big Lotus posters and lots of them, focusing on how great Notes is, landing real punches with Domino's feature set against the competition (rather than dancing round the opponents and never actually throwing a punch). Ed has the backing of his boss and his bosses' boss to start landing some punches, and if any doubts his commitment to act upon that then they're totally insane. But Lotus are part of IBM and as such we have to stick, for the most part, to the way IBM does things. You can make your own mind up about whether I always agree with those things. But I have seen many a situation where an IBM client executive can reach senior people that the Lotus rep can't - so there are certainly benefits of being part of that larger organisation.

In the case of Virgin Atlantic we did all we could, and I don't believe cost was the reason. One of my close friends was a contractor there and I got some inside info. There's another recent situation where senior Lotus execs had visited the customer, we put them in touch with the labs, gave them so much attention... but in the end it came down to nothing associated with common sense.

@25 think about what you wrote -- of course the Lotus reps are putting the proper time/effort into pushing the Lotus products, that's *All They Do*. But it is different from the days when Lotus was a separate company with a separate account coverage strategy...now the product specialists do what they do in coordination with other IBMers.

That's great an' all, but why do we so often hear about these competative losses, but not the wins?

I keep thinking that nothing is changing, that the schoolyard bully is still stealing candy from the gentle giant who hardly ever seems to stand up for itself. IBM/Lotus always takes the high road, and that's commendable and should never end, but perhaps they should hold onto their candy a little tighter?

@28 it's hardly true that we always take the high road. If you have been reading here for a long time (which I know you have) then you know that isn't the case. I met with customers last week under this competitive pressure as well as one who has started migration and realized it wasn't such a good idea. There's plenty of that going on as economic reality sets in more and more places. If we can save a customer 30% simply by upgrading, that's obviously a lot more compelling than buying a new house.

@22 Neither...more like friendly advice. I do have alot of respect for your contribution to the "yellow" cause... I actually thought this thread was "expired" and no one would read what I wrote...

@29 Ed, one question... when has Lotus gotten "aggressive" in it's sales and marketing? Truely aggressive? Openly making inroads into Exchange markets, openly making statements like have been made by it's competition on dominance, penetration and perception. Not buried in some interview, but a real concerted aggressive move.

Just like MS has done for so many years, that's how they got to their current level of brainshare, by being bold and aggressive.

Look, I don't want to sound pissy or bent out of shape over this, so please don't take my stance wrong. I'm actually quite happy with the new Lotus products, and I'm very happy with the current "direction" and new management, I just get bummed out when I see this kind of story, and look for an aggressive Lotus position, but never seem to find one.

@32 - this is a serious question and I'm interested in feedback... say we (Lotus) take an aggressive position and want to land some punches, where on the web would we publish it?

@30 - I didn't take it as an affront either way. :) I actually quite like the fact that the quote, out of context, is ambiguous.

@32 - I feel a little like I started something bigger than it deserved. I think yet another "Lotus marketing sucks" thread would be both pointless and fundamentally incorrect. But it certainly realistic to channel Kanye West a little here: "IBM doesn't care about Notes people."

That's an exaggeration, of course. But the idea that an IBM client executive wouldn't aggressively pursue the retention of messaging customer for the sake of not wanting to blow his plan on tech services, or blade servers, or SAN solutions -- well, that just speaks volumes about priorities. It might well mean that the priorities are in the right place for some grand scheme of IBM as a whole.

But personally, I think that points to a fundamental flaw in the way that IBM handles it's relationships with customers.

Would it make sense for IBM to pull an AT&T here? Go through a massive divestiture and separate it's hardware, software and services businesses into stand alone enterprises that can compete and generate revenue on their own? The strategy was very successful for AT&T. And really, how much of IBM's profitability is based on cross-business synergies anymore?

They spun off Lexmark and Lenovo. I know another brand name in the portfolio that starts with "L". :-)

@33 - YOU wouldn't publish it on the web. You'd use a press relations team to make sure that Ziff-Davis, and CNET and the Associated Press picked up the story. And they'd publish it on the web.

But if you have to self-publish the story, may I suggest an URL? How does { Link } grab you?

And a follow up.... why is the IBM client rep not compensated MASSIVE better for software license retention than for services or hardware business? I bet the margin on a Notes license renewal is 10 times greater than the margin on a blade server. TEN TIMES. Fund managers drool over investments that have ten times the return over average.

Why doesn't IBM? That's just good business.

@35 - while I shouldn't comment on whether you're right or wrong on that point (which I unfortunately don't have any control over), it's certainly an interesting debate.

Maybe it's time to give IBM's way of doing business some credit here. Wired has a good story on Ozzie is trying to transform MS into a software + service company. There is quote saying that IBM took Notes from 2 to 150 (?) million licenses and that Lotus would never have been able to do that. I think he is right, and I also think that a spun-off Lotus would have much greater problems.

@37 - Given MSFT's ethical history over the last 10 years as a software company, I can't wait to see what they're do as a service company. Why am I suddenly thinking of "The Firm?"

@38 nah, not The Firm ... MS isn't based in Chicago or NY/NJ ... I am sorry but you don't get that attitude in the NW :-)

At the risk of this being a waste of time, let me put a stop to the urban legend that Ron Markezich said it costs $1,000 a user to migrate off of Lotus Notes. Ron never said it...it was, instead, said by a blogger at the blogger lunch during the launch of MS Online. The actual cost of moving a user from Notes to MS Online is more than an order of magnitude less than $1,000...

Oh, by the way, here's a quote from the CIO of one of the customers who has moved to MS Online after years as a Notes customer:

"Please also let MS know that I am really impressed with the performance from their server farm and the entire experience has been outstanding. The client is so much better than Notes it is amazing to me that anyone would possibly prefer Lotus over Outlook. Simply put, everything is better and easier!"

Just one opinion, to be sure, but the sentiment is a common one, in my experience.

@40 actually not a waste of time - I never saw that quote either, and haven't used it in a single discussion as a result. I saw the blogger make the assertion ... any ideas where the blogger came up with the number?

As for the CIO quote, that must be a CIO who never used Notes 8. Most of your customers, like the Blockbuster and Eddie Bauer examples, moved from "older versions" (I think Blockbuster was R5). Quite the contrary, my inbox is full (and a new blog post will be about) of customers indicating that after further review of the play on the field, they are overruling earlier decisions to migrate to Microsoft. A stunning deluge number in the last few weeks. I get tired of playing defense but through a variety of efforts we are winning through defense and turning it into offense (one of the largest deals ever to close in Australia happened just as a result). So, I'll take it.

@41 Wow that's great to hear Ed, any chance of sharing the "deluge" with the press?

Cheers

Brett, you find me the CIO who wants to go on the record as saying that they made a decision and changed their mind, I'll get the PR engine ready. Unfortunately, it's not that simple and often times, press releases aren't the best way to approach. IBM publishes Lotus case studies at { Link } and you can find some there that involve customers who migrated from one to the other and/or considered the competition. It is always more difficult to make them public case studies than it is to get references for use in individual sales situations, but we have both kinds in varying quantities.

@40

"Server farm".

Says it all, really.

Cheers,

- Mike

Good point there Ed, gosh I wish I knew one.

"Hi everyone my name is 'Bill', I made a huge mistake and migrated half our company to Exchange and Outlook, it took two years of fruitless effort before I realized what an incredibly boneheaded move it was. But I'm feeling much better now that we have moved back to the latest versions of Lotus Domino and Notes"

Hi all

Good to see the Notes community in such robust form. Just a note about Mike's column as I edited it: we do have his Conchango allegiance included as part of his biog in print. I'll make sure it goes online too from now.

Best,

M

@41 - agreed. I attended a customer workshop a couple of months ago to protect Notes / Domino from an unstoppable desire to have an Outlook love-in. Before we started the users described Notes as old, clunky, unattractive, the usual. Someone said that everyone used Outlook at home (never heard that before), but before I could comment the others looked at him and said "I don't". Anyway, as their old clunky Notes client was approaching it's 10th birthday, I thought they'd like to see what we delivered 9 years later. Throughout three user sessions everyone unanimously loved Notes 8 (apart from the guy who used Outlook at home who sat moping and disinterested). That customer is now moving to Notes 8.

So yes Jim, when you compare Notes 5, and probably 6 and 7 to Outlook 2003 and 2007, Microsoft win the beauty contest. End users, bless them, don't see the big picture of TCO, integration, reliability (until they can't access the active-passive Exchange cluster), upgrades, security, etc etc. But end users do like Notes 8 when they see it. And many see that it's more than an e-mail client. So when Notes starts to get even in the beauty contest, what will Microsoft do then? Give away Enterprise Agreements for peanuts and dupe customers with the "but you already own the licenses" scenario.

Any news on the roadmap? I'm getting really bored with asking for it.