Ed Brill

Lee Lovig, who was chief IT architect at a 5,000-user financial services firm in the Midwest until last month, says his former company's upgrade to Lotus Notes 6.5--required because of a merger-- was difficult because over half of the end users were still on Notes 4.5. "We waited too long," says Lovig, who's now an independent consultant in Grimes, Iowa. "There's a lot more bells and whistles in 6.5. The client is tremendously different, and we [were] spending a lot of time and money on training."

Now that is tremendously insightful.  I find that in a lot of organizations where there is pressure to consider migration to Exchange/Outlook, the pressure stems from an end-user issue.  That end-user is often on a back-level version of Notes, and probably has never even seen Notes 6.x, or 6.5 with the integrated, no adidtional-charge  instant messaging.  They might, however, have seen a later version of Outlook, through a new home PC purchase, a neighbor, or whatever.  I know, I know, you'll tell me that is why IBM should be in the consumer market...not going there.  But Mr. Lovig's comment is accurate -- users who see the latest bells and whistles tend to be pretty darn happy with Notes 6..
Link: Computerworld: You go first: Making the e-mail upgrade decision >
There's also this story that talks about standardization on a single messaging platform; it highlights the Minnesota Life Insurance consolidation onto Lotus Notes/Domino, eliminating their Microsoft Exchange environment.

The company, which has 2,600 Notes users, is saving about $1 million a year by standardizing on one e-mail system, Nelson says. Cost reductions stem from support staff savings, decreased downtime and other factors, she says.

Link: Computerworld: E-mail suite dilemmas >