An open letter to Ferris Research (and Microsoft)

August 1 2009

A week ago, the Microsoft Exchange team's unified communications blog published a chest-beating missive on their perceptions of competition in the messaging market.  I addressed some of their points a week ago.  One claim, however, took some additional examination.

Cost savings is the number one driver for migrations.  Notes systems simply cost more to run and manage.  A Ferris Research survey of 917 companies found that Notes systems can cost twice as much as Exchange 2007.
As vendors, we love to find third-party sources that validate our perspective on the market -- why our product is great, why we are better than the competition, etc.  However, in eleven years of competing with Microsoft, I've seen the truth stretched in countless ways, and the latest round are, simply, outright lies.

Today, I'd like to address the Exchange team's citation of Ferris Research.  The survey results in question was published in January, 2008, from data gathered as far back as 2006.  At IBM, we wouldn't even be allowed to cite this report, because it's over a year old; Ferris points out that none of the respondents were even running Notes 8.  We certainly wouldn't keep going back to the report after its methodology had been invalidated.  We would realize that an opt-in survey conducted over three years by an industry analyst off their subscriber mailing list isn't necessarily reflective of the market at large -- it's like a BMW dealer publishing a survey of the types of cars driven by their customers and representing it as a market share report.  We would accept criticisms that an opt-in survey does not equal a rigorous market share analysis.  We would recognize the folly of on the one hand clinging to a report that claims our competitor has only a small share of the market, while simultaneously declaring that that competitor has millions of customers that our partners should be targeting for migration.

But let's get back to the Exchange team's assertion about cost.

Ferris's survey asked customers only about the price paid for software.  They asked: "In US$, what do you expect to spend on email software licenses, email software maintenance contracts, email software updates, and so on as of January 2006, January 2007, and January 2008? (Please do not include professional services fees; we are only interested in software product costs. Please leave this empty if you cannot answer or find it hard to estimate.)"

On page 58 of the report that Microsoft linked to, Ferris Research admits that only 8% of their 917 respondents answered the question about price paid.  On page 60, the truth comes out -- the data on "price paid" for Lotus Notes cited in this report comes from only six organizations.  So Microsoft and all of its corporate ethics are standing up behind a Ferris Research report that asserts facts about the price paid -- which Microsoft uses the word "cost", feinting the reader to think they mean the total cost of ownership -- based on six responses.

Even that would be fine if the facts supported the Microsoft assertion.  But they don't!  On page 59 of the report, the median "price paid" figure from the Notes customers who responded (all six of them) was US$100/mailbox/year.  On page 58 of the report, the median "price paid" figure from the Exchange customers who responded -- 76 responses -- was US$130/user/year.  The Microsoft Exchange blog asserts, to reiterate:
a Ferris Research survey ... found that Notes systems can cost twice as much as Exchange 2007
Yet the median price paid for Microsoft was actually 30% higher.  The only way to get to "can cost twice as much" is looking at one specific segment of Microsoft Exchange respondents (all 12 of them) whose median figure was US$50/user/year.  So based on 18 total responses out of 917, Microsoft asserts that Ferris Research supports a statement that Lotus Notes "can cost twice as much", and attempt to get the reader to believe the assertion is about the cost "to run and manage".  And their assertion doesn't carry the report's "Caveat: Replies are confusing" that applies to this section.

At Lotusphere, I met with David Ferris as part of the executive / analyst meetings gauntlet.  David and I have known each other for many years, and IBM has been a client of his off and on during that time.  I think David, and the team of messaging industry experts who consult for him, know this industry well.  Their qualitative analysis is useful and reliable.  However, this single report has done more to undermine Ferris Research's credibility than the goodness of all their other work combined.  I've told David this, as have other IBMers.  Yet David stands behind the report -- and Microsoft's interpretation of it -- as you can see in his comments on his site, and continued to do so when contacted by my IBM colleagues last week.

I think Microsoft's bold-faced deceptive interpretation of this report -- which will never be fact-checked by those reading -- is the worst kind of unethical competitive marketing.  But Ferris Research's complicit involvement in this deception is even more troubling for the industry.  When a supposedly-independent analysis allows their work to be distorted, and chooses not to respond to criticisms about the report's methodology nor its interpretation, the industry is left to wonder -- how confident can we be in other work of this nature?  Meanwhile, a company that publishes "standards of business conduct" has senior managers publishing wildly distorted interpretations on the company's own website (key phrase: "Our advertising, sales, and promotional literature seeks to be truthful, accurate, and free from false claims."), while the company's COO rallies the troops to "eradicate" Notes and lies about its "eradication" from whole countries (Hey Kevin Turner -- prove it).  

For me personally, I'm sure glad I turned down the offer to interview for Julia White's job at Microsoft four years ago.  I don't think I could look at myself in the mirror in the morning.

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Messaging  Add/View Comments [68]

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  1. 1  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 8/1/2009 4:21:46 PM

    daaaayyyyyyyuuuuuum

  1. 2  Palmi  | 8/1/2009 4:54:08 PM

    While this goes on with all the lies and deceptions on "How cheep there system is" we that sell MS license to customers know that this is not the FACT. But as everyone knows ones they are into MS its hard to get them out. But Ed what is IBM going to do about this ? Remember the phrase " Glows are Off " its time to make the punch ? would you say ?

    PS I'm also glad you turned down the offer to interview for job at MS.

  1. 3  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 8/1/2009 4:56:07 PM

    @2 what are we going to do? Go on offense. Wait for Monday. :-D

  1. 4  Tim Lorge http://www.groupwarenews.com | 8/1/2009 5:04:35 PM

    It certainly is crazy when lies get reported as truth. I don't know for whom this is worse: Ferris for claiming them or Microsoft for proclaiming them.

  1. 5  keith Brooks http://www.vanessabrooks.com | 8/1/2009 5:21:01 PM

    Having met David years ago when I was with Lotus at the time he was more pro-Lotus but I guess in that world one must follow the wind.

    Just don't get stuck being down wind.

  1. 6  Erik Brooks  | 8/1/2009 5:33:43 PM

    I've got clients that are market research companies that compete with Ferris. I know at least one that will be delighted to see (and likely reference) this dissection.

  1. 7  Andrew Pollack http://www.thenorth.com | 8/1/2009 5:33:46 PM

    What amazes me is that despite the fact that it's easier to name bad analysts than good ones -- and even the good ones have almost no track record for accuracy -- that these people still influence the industry.

    One assumes that to be the decision maker in a major corporation when it comes to enterprise software, that the person has the skill, diligence, and ethics necessary to not be taken in by the studies like this.

    That's wishful thinking of course. The entire industry spent years going down the path and spending crazy money on a technology directly simply because a prestigious analyst firm declare it was going to be a several hundred billion dollar market in a few years. Of course it didn't -- the idea is and was silly.

    Until people quit being lazy, until they quit just finding the nearest self delusional study to support what they already want to do -- IT "Professionals" will never regain the respect of their corporate governance people and will instead see the cycle of outsourcing failures repeat as CEO's seek any possible way to control runaway IT costs.

  1. 8  patrick picard  | 8/1/2009 5:40:00 PM

    This a textbook example of "How to lie with statistics" from Darrell Huff.

    Unfortunately, the tactics used by Microsoft are effective as the majority of people do not have critical thinking skills and don't bother to evaluate said claims.

  1. 9  Jim Casale http://www.jimcasale.net | 8/1/2009 5:40:13 PM

    What is really sad is that reports like this are used by corporate managers to further their own agenda - political or otherwise. Why check the current facts when you can state "facts" that are at least 5-6 years old - as long as those facts fit into what these managers want to accomplish. Never mind that point for point the reasons for migrating to the MS stack are no longer valid, and haven't been for a while now.

    Recent events have left a bad taste in my mouth for corporate ethics, values, and integrity. I applaud Ed and IBM for sticking to their high standards in the face of dirty tricks by the competition and supposedly independent third parties.

  1. 10  Jim Casale http://www.jimcasale.net | 8/1/2009 5:48:38 PM

    @Andrew "One assumes that to be the decision maker in a major corporation when it comes to enterprise software, that the person has the skill, diligence, and ethics necessary to not be taken in by the studies like this."

    From personal experience this is the person who gives the higher ups what they want to hear and plays solitaire in their spare time (true story).

    @Patrick "critical thinking skills and don't bother to evaluate said claims"

    You must be joking :-) Having just finished my Masters degree during which "Critical Thinking" was covered, and during that time taking a continuing education course "Teaching critical thinking skills in the classroom" I can safely say that many managers and executives I have met or worked with have no idea what critical thinking skills are let alone how to use them.

  1. 11  Tripp Black http://www.mindwatering.com | 8/1/2009 6:44:28 PM

    Ed, an excellent rebuttal backed-up with the facts. Thank you.

    @7 Andrew, I'd like to see numbers for "good ones" and accuracy. Although I have personally seen this to be accurate in some percentage, having the statistics to say how much would make your statements more weighty. Do you have some "accurate third party analysts"?

    In my experience, I've found judgements for what to use are more often a reflection of personal preference/experience. For example, I myself have had very bad experiences with Sprint/Embark over customer service and therefore will choose any other provider regardless of price or feature set. On the positive side, I am also likely to choose an iPhone over a Blackberry not because I find it a better business device but because I prefer the user interface. I choose Notes over Outlook because I have been won over from the Microsoft side because of Notes and web-based applications and the Designer's quick development environment that I will complain about but love overall.

    I am also encourage by the high-road that IBM is taken. I'm thankful during my association with IBM Lotus as customer and partner, this is been the case.

  1. 12  Michael Kobrowski  | 8/1/2009 6:47:48 PM

    Wow. As soon as we are done upgrading to Domino Version 8.5.1 I will personally push to switch all servers to non-MS operating systems. This is ridiculous. How can they do business like that?

    Of course, taking gloves off and all is good, just don't forget about the other competition that is also kicking MS behind - Google especially. Don't forget about Apple either...

  1. 13  Kevin Pettitt http://www.lotusguru.com | 8/1/2009 7:05:04 PM

    The venerable technology columnist Bob Cringely had a great piece last year explaining what is wrong with the whole analyst industry:

    Reality Check: What does Gartner really DO?

    { Link }

    "...The truth is that there is no IT "profession." Most of what IT managers know about IT they learn from vendors, consultants, and folks like Gartner. Because they feel isolated, and because the IT vendor/consultant/media system encourages them to worry about such things, IT managers tend to feel they must have their important decisions validated and Gartner is the most popular place to find validation. Yes they wield a lot of power, but it is often the power of discovering the obvious.

    It's all about churn. If customers aren't buying stuff they won't worry about buying decisions, so they are always encouraged to buy slowly) they might become confident in their own ability to make the right choices, which would threaten the consultant relationship..."

  1. 14  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 8/1/2009 7:32:30 PM

    I've said it many times before: IBM needs to be pushing for industry standardization of practices. We should start with an American Information Technology Association. It shouldn't be illegal to practice IT without a real cross-industry certification anymore than it's illegal to keep your own books if you're not a CPA. But there should be a market-acknowledged layer of professional responsibility in place.

    IT is already more important to functioning companies and societies than accounting is. It's quickly becoming more important than law or engineering. It's hard to imagine a profession becoming more critical to a society than medicine, but perhaps the day might come when clear critical thinking and ethical behavior among those working with information systems is as important.

    Actually, maybe it IS more important. We're already moving medical records into the cloud. A person's reputation is maintained almost entirely by corporate information systems. Our traffic, electrical, water, food distribution, education, financial exchange, communication, media -- it's all filtered through IT now. And yet there are almost no professional standards for the practice of IT, and virtually no regulatory or market-standard requirements for knowledge or behavior among those in the computing profession.

    Y'know, one of the consequences of using computers to build a Smarter Planet is the increasing dependence that planet has on those computers. Maybe IBM needs to be thinking of setting strong industry standards here. Maybe it needs to be considered a marketing effort. Maybe, right now, amidst the effort to build a new economy in the wake of a receission that was ultimately triggered by BAD IT ANALYTICS BY FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS -- it's the perfect time to grasp the reigns and say "to have a Smarter Planet through information technology, we must have smarter information technologists who are held to the same standards of behavior we expect from doctors, lawyers, engineers and accountants."

    It certainly isn't going to make things any worse.

  1. 15  patrick picard  | 8/1/2009 7:43:53 PM

    @10 Jim

    I just finished a Critical thinking course with athabasca U, so this stuff is fresh in my mind! I am now taking Scientific Reasoning which draws heavily on critical thinking ...and next course is Professional ethics.

    How timely! :)

  1. 16  Mika Heinonen http://www.siipi.com/mika | 8/1/2009 8:42:22 PM

    @12 Michael: That's what I'm doing all the time too. We have still the majority of our servers on Windows 2003 (I tried also Windows 2008, but it was a horror).

    A few servers are already running openSUSE 11.1, and the amazing thing is that they are the only servers with over 200 days uptime. Domino 8 never has crashed on openSUSE 11.x for me, but on Windows we had to downgrade to 7.0.4 to get Domino a bit more stable, so that it runs at least 30 days without crash.

    Also AIX is quite unstable compared to openSUSE. The worst thing is that when Domino crashes on AIX, then it takes the whole AIX down, and I need to run physically to the server room to do an IPL.

  1. 17  Gavin Bollard http://dominogavin.blogspot.com | 8/1/2009 10:16:39 PM

    Those sorts of reports don't generally hurt Microsoft but they do harm Ferris' credibility as a reliable research establishment.

    I'm not going to suggest that Lotus is "cheap" (I'm always whinging about it when we get to license renewal time) but at least you're paying for more than an email solution.

  1. 18  JM http://- | 8/2/2009 1:53:28 AM

    @16 All Application servers are on MS OS. Does moving the servers to Non-MS OS require any code and design change in application?

    All Applications (Client -base) are on R 5 with heavy customization (Lotus Script and formula language). Will there be many compatible issues (Code and Design element) in moving the applications directly from R5 server to R8.5 server?

    They are evaluating the cost in migrating to other technology and the cost in upgrading to R8.5.

  1. 19  Daniele Vistalli http://www.vistalli.it | 8/2/2009 3:16:10 AM

    I personally don't like Ferris' lack of deepness and "creative" (fact-less) analisys. Back in January after LS2009 (the first I participated to).

    Ferris wrote on his blog about a "clueless" OGS

    { Link }

    I responded on every point given the fact it seemed that the piece was written by somebody with no knowledge in the field at all (about product's history and market).

    If becoming an analyst firm is as simple as putting the word analyst in your website then maybe I can start monday morning....

    @14 Nathan, that's dreamland ;) I'd love that too but that would create a global problem. Most of IT systems around the world are run by people that are "good enough" to do the Next > Next > Next process and reboot systems in case of troubles. If we really would get a strict standardization we'd get more than 50% of IT out of business (even in bigger corporates). I think we need to deal with the bad an continue to push for improvement. A standardization by law wouldn't work because just a few can see the benefits that would repay for the costs.

  1. 20  Sean Cull http://www.seancull.co.uk | 8/2/2009 3:32:49 AM

    @18 JM there will be very few if any issues with you applications

    Things to watch out for are :

    >Applications that interact with the file system e.g. saving a file to the hard drive on ther server to process it - linux uses a different file naming convention

    >Notes clients 85 will render navigators differently from Notes 7 or 8 but this is very obvious and easy to fix ( if a full width navigator is used as an application home page it does not open full width in some cases )

    >If your applications manipulate calendars, reservations etc.. then there may be some change in how this interaction is structured - e.g. mail sgnatures are stored differently in Notes 8.5

    I've been writing Notes Apps for 14 years and I have yet to see an application that does not run on a newer version of Notes without problems apart from the three issues above. Others may be able to add more things to look out for but it will be a short list

    There are lots of Lotus consultants that could have a test environment up and running on a virtual machine within a day and would then be able to help you test the system further.

    This backward compatability is the single most powerful bit of the Notes offering - way better than what I have seen with MS products and it should be a bigger selling point than it is.

    Sean

  1. 21  Darren Duke http://blog.darrenduke.net | 8/2/2009 6:08:28 AM

    Is it Monday yet? No! Doh, more waiting.

  1. 22  Luigino  | 8/2/2009 7:30:21 AM

    Well, I think the problem here is not about "costs", but TCOs. The real problem here is about how mailing and collaboration informations (addressbooks, calendar, acivities) are easy to use, compatible with all the rest of the world, keeping the costs under controls. If the standard (read "most used in the world") is Outlook and MS Office colaboration suite, then we need to make something that is full comnpatible, easy to use an to mantain (example: can you provide me a mobile devide wich sincronyzes perfectly with domino, except balckberry or a few of nokia "travellers"? now think about how easy your new washing machine which synconizes laundry program with outlook activities ;-) )

    Exchange is EXCELLENT for mailing and compatible with the "MS Standards", and it's the reason why most of the companies are migrating. Here in Italy most of large companies are adopting Exchange for mailing, kepping their old applications in the domino enviroment, because they need them or because they can't rid off them. The question here is: now they have "Exchanged", how long it will take them to get their applications in a more compatible (and easy to use) enviromment (sharepoint?). This is about old Domino users: for new companies, which have always used outlook, how they will be excited to use a program with that poor compatibility, difficoult to learn, with so less manuals in libraries, and with this heavy and bugous Lotus notes Version 8.x (about 8.0.x speed it's the IBM's biggest lie)? Now calculate: what's the real total cost of ownership?

  1. 23  Pete Hampton  | 8/2/2009 7:41:27 AM

    Ed, great appraisal of the problem we all face with "loaded" analyst reports. The only thing that surprises me is the collective surprise we all seem to show everytime Ferris & the other analyst groups produce their MS propoganda. Lotus just needs to keep doing what it's doing, producing great quality innovative and relevent technology that continues to make Microsoft look ever more desperate

  1. 24  Mika Heinonen http://www.siipi.com/mika | 8/2/2009 7:57:35 AM

    @18 JM: It depends how forward looking you have designed your applications. It is possible to design Lotus application on Windows so that they are fully cross-platform compatible.

    Common mistakes I've seen done on MS OS, and which could be easily avoided are:

    1) Using server-side Microsoft.XmlHttp dlls. This can be done better using wget (also available for Windows)

    2) Using server-side Excel or other MSOffice DDE calls. This can be avoided by writing Excel.html files, which support everything what excel supports, including pie charts, formatting, etc...

    3) Using hardcoded paths with drive letter and backslashes. This should be done anyway using a parameter database, so all paths in all applications can be changed from a central repository.

  1. 25  Jim Casale http://www.jimcasale.net | 8/2/2009 8:04:02 AM

    @Luigino "and with this heavy and bugous Lotus notes Version 8.x (about 8.0.x speed it's the IBM's biggest lie)?"

    So explain to me why the standard/minimum PC for Outlook 2007 and OCS is the same for Notes 8.0.x at my organization? If you want to talk heavy you should be talking about anything 2007. My colleague who sits 2 cubicles away constantly asks why Outlook is so slow...

  1. 26  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 8/2/2009 9:08:43 AM

    @19 - "Nathan, that's dreamland ;) I'd love that too but that would create a global problem. Most of IT systems around the world are run by people that are "good enough" to do the Next > Next > Next process and reboot systems in case of troubles."

    I have a dream that one day this industry will rise up and live out the true meaning of its name: 'To provide accurate and truthful information where it is needed through the effective and ethical use of quality technology.' ;-)

    (Apologies to Dr. King)

    Seriously, though -- Accountants have bookkeepers and clerks; lawyers have paralegals, researchers, first year associates; doctors have nurses, residents, interns. There's no reason that every single person in an IT department needs a graduate degree -- just the people who have oversight. You could easily make it like medicine, where a qualified professional has sign-off responsibility for everything that's done by an entire team.

  1. 27  Ira Shore  | 8/2/2009 9:20:14 AM

    @22 - Luigino, Why is it that over the past several years, each company we've migrated FROM Outlook/Exchange TO Domino/Notes (yes, FROM Outlook TO Notes!) has reported to us that prior to switching they had experienced email outages anywhere from several outages lasting from one hour to a full day (and 1 case longer) in their Exchange environment? How are we supposed to explain that to our COO if we were to switch the first time it happens? If we have an outage in Domino, it lasts for a matter of minutes and recovery is predictably never a panic (can you say corrupt Exchange Message Store?). As far as speed is concerned, try configuring a Notes R8.5 client with a local mail replica (similar to your 'cached' Outlook mode) against an Outlook 2007 Client running on Microsoft Vista (....and by the way, that's if you won't have any problems with cached mode? { Link } ) ..oh wait, Microsoft recommends against that now?). I think you're going to find most of your argument mute. Next, let's try running both clients on SuSE, Red Hat, or Ubuntu Desktop (Oh wait, you can't) or Exchange Server on it (Can't do that either). Furthermore, having exposure to both systems its far less troublesome dealing with Notes clients and replication of mail and applications then Outlook, where Microsoft 'tweaks' default settings making the client appear faster from the default install, only for the user/IT staff to discover harsh realities after (from Technet) configuring it to truly work offline to be as productive as a Notes client. As far as licensing costs are concerned, please don't forget to add the extra costs of your Front End, Bridge, and other servers (hmm, Sharepoint, SQL to get some Notes items replaced) required to build an Exchange environment, along with full reliance on Active Directory and its 'health'. I'm just an Admin with 'in the trenches' exposure to both systems, not an Industry Analyst nor a CTO. Any deaf ears listening?

  1. 28  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 8/2/2009 9:35:26 AM

    @22 - "Well, I think the problem here is not about "costs", but TCOs."

    Ed's entire point is that the Ferris report didn't measure TCO. It measured license cost only. And MSFT is presenting it as if it measured TCO.

    I'm sure IBM would welcome a comprehensive TCO study between Exchange 2007 and Domino 8.5.

  1. 29  Mika Heinonen http://www.siipi.com/mika | 8/2/2009 9:45:54 AM

    If IBM would hire a propaganda writer from Microsoft, he would find 1000 more things in IBM products which are better than in Microsoft products. It's amazing the he found any good stuff in Microsoft products at all :)

  1. 30  Dave Harris http://www.wavysworld.com | 8/2/2009 11:51:30 AM

    Ed, Ferris lost my trust when they started touting "Migration away from Lotus Notes/Domino" in their daily emails.

    From your email response at the time (within 24 hours as usual), I thought you were going to be all over them for that, but biding your time. However, from this piece, it seems they've chosen which colours to nail to their mast.

  1. 31  Luigino  | 8/2/2009 12:43:01 PM

    @25 Jim, in a company where they were using exchange, we did a measure of the time which takes Notes v. 8.0.2 to start Vs outlook to start. The measure (made on p4 or dual core PC @ 2GB of RAM, Vista/XP) was in average 112 seconds for Notes and 18 for Outlook. I don't talk about operating speed, which is about the same in Notes and Outlook, I talk mostly about starting speed and how it affects User's nerves..! (The migration to Domino here failed exclusively for the notes client and for the reject of the users).

    @27 Ira, I'm not talking about how cool is Domino in these ways, I feel great when we setup a Domino server and it never crashes... But if a notes client v. 8.x crashes about 2-3 times a week and we tell users to use killnotes.exe or reboot the pc, the things became almost "equal" ( for that reason we distribute again the basic client). Again about the local replica vs cached mode (we use lots of these configurations), on large email files there are about the same speed issues (some large files takes over time to replicate, so notes tells that time to replicate was too long etc.). I love the way Domino installs on every enviroment, and there is nothing to tell (except that 80-90% of users worldwide use windows, not linux on desktops). The thing that I'm trying to tell you is that domino is great and has been great for 20 years, but now there is a valid alternative, wich is more easy to use (less cost of knowledge for both users and less admins to pay for). Were I work in Italy (see a discussion in Italian here) { Link } pratically only some companies are asking notes skills, the others are migrating, (in these months we are getting to become professionals of MS too to keep us alive). I think the truth is "we are taking our head under the sand" and we don't see what it's really happening. Regards

  1. 32  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 8/2/2009 12:47:57 PM

    Luigino, please use your full name and provide a valid e-mail address if you are going to continue commenting. Grazie!

  1. 33  Luigino  | 8/2/2009 1:26:49 PM

    Hi Ed, please excuse me if I write with this nickname (my real name is Luigi), but I don't want my real name to be indexed, because I don't want to risk losing my job (my name can be associated with my company and it's not "cool" saying these things from a company that sells Domino). So this is my last comment. Regards

  1. 34  Jim Casale http://www.jimcasale.net | 8/2/2009 1:32:49 PM

    @Luigino I was referring to the operating speed of Outlook, not the startup time.

  1. 35  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 8/2/2009 1:57:10 PM

    @31/33 There's also no reason for Notes 8 to start in 112 seconds on any machine. Try 8.0.2 or 8.5 with the fixpack, and examine your security software. It starts on my machine in about the same time as you indicate for Outlook. And I don't start Notes that often anyway.

  1. 36  Darren Duke http://blog.darrenduke.net | 8/2/2009 2:02:22 PM

    Time to update the relative performance post me thinks, { Link }

  1. 37  Darren Duke http://blog.darrenduke.net | 8/2/2009 2:12:32 PM

    @33, version has a lot to do with start time (but not 112 seconds) as pointed out in my post above.

    Another thing to check (as Ed alluded to @35) is security software. Symantec Endpoint Protection has an issue with the device control that prevents users from using DVDs, USBs, etc. Not sure what that status is, but if you are using that for AV you may want to check it out, { Link }

  1. 38  Carl Tyler http://www.iminstant.com | 8/2/2009 4:18:06 PM

    @26 "You could easily make it like medicine, where a qualified professional has sign-off responsibility for everything that's done by an entire team."

    As someone who does not have a graduate degree I'm a little taken back by your opinion here. Do they have to be degrees in Computer Science? Can they be degrees in English History? How about degrees in Music? Some of the most skilled people I know in IT have no degrees or degrees in subjects that have little to know relevance to their IT specialty.

    A degree is often a foot in the door, but in my eyes I have yet to see it make someone an expert.

  1. 39  The IT Skeptic http://www.itskeptic.org | 8/2/2009 5:09:22 PM

    Analysts are parasites on vendors - they have a symbiotic relationship. they are purchased by vendors like whores. This kind of report is beneath contempt. Check out this other example by Forrester for BMC { Link }

  1. 40  Ian Randall  | 8/2/2009 7:52:58 PM

    For years Microsoft has been positioning Lotus Notes as an email & calendar system only and comparing it directly against Exchange which happens to be only a messaging and calendar platform (ignoring the collaborative and development capabilities of Lotus Notes). Even IBM has pidgeon holed Lotus Notes as a messaging platform in their own Web site.

    Now Microsoft is marketing the SharePoint collaborative sofware platform (which doesn't include messaging) and wants people to believe that Microsoft technology has a lower total cost of ownership than Lotus Notes. But they can't have it both ways, they can't attempt to compare the TCO using a study that only covers messaging and calendar capabilities and then conveniently ignore that fact several years later when comparing collaborative capabilities, they must be forced to compare apples with apples.

    Why not have IBM challenge Microsoft to a direct independently verified comparison of the TCO between both vendors for both messaging and collaborative capabilities.

    This means that Microsoft should compare both Exchange and SharePoint against Lotus Notes/Domino. If both vendors need to include the TCO of other products in the mix then so be it.

    This face-to-face comparison should include the cost of software licences, ongoing maintenance and support, messaging and calendar, collaborative applications such as workflow, collaborative document sharing, review and approval and archival, security management, directory services, underlying database technology, initial and ongoing application development and maintenance costs, system migration and upgrade costs, underlying hardware costs for an agreed number of end users, the true costs of implementing and supporting a fault-tolerant environment, the cost od recruiting, and the training and maintaining a full team of IT staff to implement and support the system for the entire life of the system, and the full range of internal and external consultants (inlcluding the costs of so called "free" consulting experience provided by the vendors during a migration project.

    The comparitive design and development costs could be compared between both vendors on a mutually agreed range of real-world collaborative applications. Or simply agree to allow the independent third party evaluator of the comparative study to pick the applications that both vendors must develop in a direct comparison.

  1. 41  Tripp Black http://www.mindwatering.com | 8/2/2009 10:24:21 PM

    @18

    We have seen an R2 application running on R6 and R7 on one of my client's installs. This was a very simple doc repository and approval app. that hadn't been touched with a designer in years, until R7.

    We had several R4 and R5 applications and were doing our own "document locking" before Notes did it. We used a field unfortunately named "Lock". This became a method/property in R6 and those applications had to be touched. (They actually continued to run just fine, but adjustments could not be saved in the Designer since the field was now a reserved word.)

    Everything else is just remembering that linux filesystem is different (@20 said), and that folders and files are CASE SENSITIVE, which means you have to watch your manual links you've had for years. We had several to fix when we went Linux in R5 for our production server. We had a problem with moving a couple workstations to Mac and Linux on the client-side. It's not that Notes isn't compatible, it's those side calls we developers have to make to do things like import export flat files, or print to PDF that are O/S specific. You have to add code for the new platforms. The Notes code itself runs just fine.

    Besides what @20 said, we are small Notes shop. We run both of our servers on RedHat Linux one is our production server, the other is used just for Sametime. (If we have a reboot, we hate the additional load time that Sametime adds to a restart of the Domino HTTP service.) Domino also runs on SuSE well, too. We just chose RedHat years ago. We tend to reboot a couple times of year mostly when we install Linux and Domino patches. Both servers were P2V into VMware VI3 a couple years ago. Being a Debian/Ubuntu fan, our development/student lab "WWCorp" server is actually running on Ubuntu. It works fine, but it NOT a supported distro by Lotus except for the client.

    @22

    Exchange 2007 has taken a step backward. Some management is partly done with scripts run in a CLI. There are options missing from the GUI after a 2003 to 2007 upgrade. It's less easy to use for "average IT small shop". Uses of SBS only get one "free" support call compared to Lotus. From the support standpoint Lotus is a clear winner.

    That said SBS consultants should cheer because the software now requires more hand-holding. That's great for the vendor and the consultant. Not so good for the customer. SBS also maxes out sooner (about 75 users) than Foundations or Express (only because License limit of 1000 users). The hardware requirements for SBS 2008 are 4 times that for SBS 2003. The hardware requirements for 8.5 are about the same as SBS 2003.

    @27 Ira, We've seen many of the same issues with a couple SBS clients we have.

    @28, Nathan. It appears to me that the licensing can be cheaper second year onward on the Lotus side. One the companies are huge, licensing seems to be negotiated to whatever pricing and becomes importantly irrelevant as there isn't just one program platform in the mix. Also, they'd have to do a TCO of Exchange w/Sharepoint and Lotus Notes since that would be more apples to apples. I've never seen a Sharepoint install servicing 500 concurrent users that is also the Exchange box for those same 500 users. I've seen it on the Lotus side a few more times. (That said we are no longer a Microsoft business partner and see mostly Lotus shops now.) In both cases, most companies are big enough to need/want separate mail and app servers. The comparison would be somewhat complicated. However, I think it would be very high value.

    @31. I personally run the 8.5 Standard client. It takes about 35-40 seconds on my threaded 2.4Ghz machine with 1.5Gb ram. I have it also loading Symphony at start-up. Without those check-boxes selected at install time, the start-up is about half the time. Before 8.02, though I was seeing 2 minutes myself. If you are not on 8.02 or 8.5 do upgrade, you'll see a HUGE increase. 8.0.0 had a dismal start time. We all know it. Your start times sound like either your machines are running virtual or you are running pre 8.02. We had to upgrade a couple workstations from 1Gb to 1.5 or 2Gb for the Standard client. If you have older workstations, like we do and did, install the Standard client just in case, but run it with the ini set to start the Basic client. That way you can push one client down, but then turn it "off" until the workstations have a RAM upgrade.

    I have done a couple 2003 to 2008 MS upgrades. Two combined were several thousands in consulting income to get about 10 and 15 users upgraded - the 2003 to 2007 upgrades are anything but a turnkey operation - you cannot even follow standard Exchange 2007 or SharePoint documentation. On the Lotus side it's about an hour - about 45 minutes of system review and 15 minutes to perform the upgrade. Only a few of our clients even bother to hire us and that's because they are also doing something else at the same time. They don't need us. Now that's a lower TCO!

    I'm am also certified Lotus instructor. Same wonderful problem. Repeat business is mostly on the admin side where people shift jobs and new admins need training. On the dev side, people can go numerous releases w/o retraining. Although I'd love to see more business on the training side, I am also DELIGHTED that the application platform is such where a retool from scratch is never needed. It what won me over as a VB programmer. That is also great TCO. Ed had a post a MS' claim on intangible benefits over Lotus. I just mentioned a couple that are hard to measure but at least they are tangible. They affect our bottom line. We are partly thankful that's so, because it shows yet more reasons why Lotus is a better platform.

  1. 42  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 8/2/2009 10:33:20 PM

    @38 - Graduate degrees are simply one measure. There are others. One doesn't need to have a graduate degree to pass a CPA exam, or even most professional engineering exams. There are certainly stories of people passing the bar exam without actually attending law school.

    I'm a college dropout who's sum total classroom training in computers is an internal 4-hour Notes R4 update course in 1994. I certainly wouldn't meet the criteria if it were based solely on accredited classroom coursework. But what if it worked liked PhD candidates? Getting a PhD isn't much about coursework. It's about gaining enough knowledge in a specialized subject to make a material contribution to the advancement of the subject according to people already recognized in it. That's why honorary doctorates are every bit as good as the "real thing."

    In the case of software development, why couldn't such recognition be based on, for example, the evaluation of a portfolio?

    There are some limited standards set by computer security groups and project management institutions. And those do have some meaning. But those are lightweight compared to the rigor of other professions, and more importantly, corporate departments are not held fiscally accountable for ensuring that their effort are overseen by people with these qualifications.

    It's my honest personal belief that this industry lack professional pride. We don't have a concept of "IT malpractice." And yet how blame worthy is the manager who claims he has to reboot servers weekly, or can't keep messaging servers running because they're low on drive space, or WHOOPS! lost the backup tapes!

    If the White House doctor misprescribed drugs and someone in the Oval Office had a heart attack, heads would roll. But 5 million email messages get lost, and we go "HOW FASCINATING!!!!"

  1. 43  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 8/2/2009 10:35:50 PM

    @41 - I hope you didn't take my observation to mean that I think Lotus would lose in a TCO comparison. Quite the contrary. :-)

  1. 44  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 8/2/2009 10:39:25 PM

    @42 - Speaking of lacking professional pride, I apparently can't type tonight. Insert "s" at the end of various words as grammatically required, please. :-/

  1. 45  Kevin Mort http://www.theglobalmind.com | 8/3/2009 8:52:08 AM

    While Ferris' analysis is certainly worthy of critique the bigger issue goes back to the idea that Microsoft is always right, and everyone else is just complaining. That's the essence of the comment towards the end of the piece, where they say IBM surely will respond but don't listen to them.

    @16 - Try running Domino on IBM i and it'll put that 200 days to shame. : )

    And @14 totally agree with that idea.

  1. 46  Charles Robinson http://www.cubert.net | 8/3/2009 9:15:27 AM

    @Nathan - So what are ITIL and PMP if not a certification and accreditation process for IT? And what are vendor-sponsored developer certifications? Are you dismissing those, or simply saying they -- or something like them -- should be mandatory?

    Regarding the idea of making software development more like engineering, it seems others are going the opposite direction: { Link } .

    I think this discussion has taken Ed's topic way off course. :-)

  1. 47  Dave Harris http://www.wavysworld.com | 8/3/2009 9:39:35 AM

    @45 A few years back (but post 7's release) we had a 5.0.11 app server on W2K that had been up over a year, until the customer decided that maybe some OS patching was in order

  1. 48  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 8/3/2009 11:53:41 AM

    @Charles - "So what are ITIL and PMP if not a certification and accreditation process for IT?"

    They are certification processes. As I said, there are some project management standards for this stuff, but they aren't technology-focused.

    "And what are vendor-sponsored developer certifications? Are you dismissing those, or simply saying they -- or something like them -- should be mandatory?"

    I'm not saying anything should be *mandatory*. I'm saying it should be market-recognized. Just like CPAs. It's illegal to practice medicine or law without a license, but it's not illegal to have someone without a CPA file your taxes or financial reports. However, having accreditation for your bookkeeping is rewarded by the market in most cases.

    "Regarding the idea of making software development more like engineering, it seems others are going the opposite direction: { Link }."

    Yeah, they want it more like craftmanship, and I'm okay with that, too. Carpenters, plumbers, and electricians all have unions that provide accreditation, and they'd all be considered "craftsman." And if you do your own electrical or plumbing work on your house, it can affect the market value. So that's a great example of my point.

    "I think this discussion has taken Ed's topic way off course."

    Ed can tell me to stop any time he likes, and I'll be happy to accommodate his request. :-)

  1. 49  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 8/3/2009 11:56:47 AM

    Really, you can discuss in whatever direction you like -- I am mainly interested why it's after the open of business on Monday and we still have nothing but crickets coming from the US west coast.

  1. 50  Kevin Mort http://www.theglobalmind.com | 8/3/2009 7:07:04 PM

    @47 - Not saying it doesn't happen...and W2k was a decent release....just saying in my experience I've seen more uptime in i environments is all. : )

  1. 51  Denny Russell http://www.sherpasoftware.com/blogs/SherpaBlog.nsf/ | 8/4/2009 7:46:32 AM

    Not sure if anyone saw their latest post ({ Link } ) but I found it interesting all the hidden cost of moving to Exchange 2010.

    * The archiving features of Exchange 2010 require enterprise CALs. If you are not already using enterprise CALs, then you must pay the additional cost to upgrade.

    * To use Exchange 2010 archiving, you must also upgrade to Office 2010. This will ship six to nine months AFTER Exchange 2010 ships. This will add a significant cost to an organization that has Office 2007 deployed and does not wish to upgrade all of its desktop machines. Without Office 2010, you can’t leverage the archive functionality.

    See this is why I LOVE Domino. Next week, my plan is to upgrade our production servers to 8.5. I'll be done in just a few minutes and I don't have to worry about all these extras.

  1. 52  Dan Lynch  | 8/4/2009 9:00:40 AM

    Ferris' research in this case would not stand up to the statistical scrutiny of any freshman stats student at any university in this country, it's merde, simply, the sample size is so riduculously small to be of zero value for drawing conclusions of any kind. Many software vendors not only bend the truth, they twist it in ways that only are unravelled

    I've spent alot of time over the past 2-3 years tracing Gartner's footsteps in the Enterprise Archiving market, and have researched each and every potential candidate in the magic quadrant on same a couple times, and I've found, in factual terms, many of the qualitative assertions they make about many of the players in that market, seem rather far off target, except those instances where there are published facts such as revenue that they are simply parroting. My former employer was in the midst of a large muti-company merger and they brought Gartner in to help us determine what mail system to use-- they concluded Notes/Domino. After some pushback from the Exchange-loving types in the legacy companies following a Notes pilot, they brought Gartner back in (and paid them again!), and Gartner then magically concluded that Exchange was the way to go.

    These "research" groups make qualitative judgements on things, and I've seen that they will say what you pay them to say. To their credit, it is not always easy to get accurate information from Software vendors, and in some cases the true facts may only be known after the vendor requires confidential paperwork. That is not research in any sense of that word. Software companies do use that information to sway the opinions of folks who do not have the time, people or expertise to learn facts.

    We've done the heavy lifting, actual math, have spoken to an Exchange architect, and compared implemeting Exchange here vs Domino (incumbent) here and the Exchange 2007 solution required roughly 56 servers globally vs 6 (partitioned) Sun hosts in the US and 5-6 wintel-based Domino servers around the world. A huge ongoing cost difference in all realms. I'd be happy to share the facts of what we found, with anyone who may want to see them.

  1. 53  David Hablewitz - Notes guy in Seattle  | 8/4/2009 11:43:20 AM

    To address their claim head-on, here is a real-world experience of the costs of a rather typical example of a migration. This was a migration moving email for 1500 users from Notes/Domino to Outlook/Exchange. First, why did this migration happen?

    1. This was a merger. The parent company had 1700 users on Exchange, the acquisition had 1500. The two systems lived harmoniously for 4 years after the merger while the connectivity was managed by the Domino team. However, the parent company did not have knowledgeable Exchange staff. They were unable to properly support the Exchange connector for Notes that they installed and frequently made changes that caused disruption in services between the two systems.

    2. The parent company was provided grossly incorrect literature (outright lies) from Microsoft comparing the two products.

    3. A recently hired IT manager at the child company with a strong Microsoft background, but no understanding of Lotus Notes saw an opportunity to make a name for himself.

    Ironically, NEVER in this process was COST considered. In fact, when I started putting together a cost analysis including Total Cost of Acquisition (the cost of migrating) and Total Cost of Ownership, I was shut down: "That won't be necessary." I was told. The original project given to the Domino administrator and the Exchange administrator of each company was to determine which mail platform to move to. When the facts being gathered appeared that it was going to be most cost effective to move to Domino, senior management stopped the project and made the decision WITHOUT WAITING FOR THE INPUT FROM THEIR TECHNICAL EXPERTS FROM EITHER PLATFORM.

    The following Email explanation was sent to all employees from the CIO regarding the migration decision. Note again, cost was not a factor:

    ______________

    Dear All,

    After a detailed analysis, soul searching, productivity loss and a lot of patience the <child company> Senior Management and <parent company> Senior Management have concluded that the Global <combined companies> community cannot communicate optimally on two different Email/messaging and Calendaring systems i.e. MS Outlook and Lotus Notes.

    Some key issues:

    Scheduling meetings, travel, matching calendars is very difficult and time consuming

    Very Difficult to keep the two address directories in synchronization

    Erratic translation of email formats and presentation

    Erratic non delivery/confirmation of Emails and documents

    Email and calendaring has become a very essential tool in the fast paced global economy. Governments, Private Enterprises, Legal Systems, etc. consider email communications as legal documents admissible in litigation. <parent company> is required to archive and retrieve the relevant emails in trials and litigations. It is almost impossible to archive and retrieve emails across two different systems.

    Globally MS Exchange is by far the dominant Email/Messaging system. Inherently new employees who join the company and employees of new acquisitions are experienced/trained in MS Exchange suite of applications.

    Global IT team is tasked to facilitate the Lotus Notes email/messaging migration to MS Outlook system. This will be done in phases/stages over the next 6 months. Please give your co-operation and support to the implementation team which is headed by <name withheld>, Manager IT Global Systems. (*See point 3 above)

    Current and future LN Applications and Databases will be accessible through the Outlook menu via direct links. Any workflow applications e. g. Time & Attendance, vacation approval, etc. will also be linked seamlessly through Outlook. Lotus Notes client will reside in the background on every <child company> computer.

    Professional training resources and materials will be available to our end users to ease the transition from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Outlook. Training is of utmost importance to our organization and we will provide the best available training. We will have internal and external trainers conducting in-house training.

    Feel free to contact me or <IT Manager> if you have any questions or concerns.

    Thank you.

    <name withheld>

    CIO <parent company>        

    ______________________

    The real costs. (the information the decision-makers never saw before deciding)

    TCA:

    1. Server hardware. The migration required the purchase of 8 additional servers: 2 additional domain controllers, 4 front-end Exchange servers, 2 back-end exchange servers. (no Domino servers were removed because they continue to host applications)

    2. Server software: Windows server licenses for the above additional servers and Exchange 2003 (Exchange 2003 was chosen over 2007 for compatibility with the existing exchange 2003 environment at the parent company.) All Domino servers will continue to be licensed.

    Also, software was purchased from a third party vendor to facilitate the migration of mail and user accounts.

    3. Client software: Outlook licensing for 1500 users. Nearly all users will continue to run to require Notes licenses as well to give them access to Notes applications and Sametime. (OCS was not in use at the parent company, but Sametime was heavily used by the child company. There was no interest in deploying the Sametime plugin for MS Office.)

    4. Training: All employees were given access to online training. System adminstrators had to be retrained in the new software. Developers were also to be trained in Sharepoint, though that has not yet happened and they will continue to need Notes developers for maintenance of the existing databases.

    5. Staff: No change in staffing related to this transition, though staff was reduced by 10% corporate-wide due to a decline in sales which included staff in IT.

    6. Labor: The migration required planning and preparation by 10 people for 4 months. It required 2 months just to clean up the existing Active Directory and improve the network to handle the additional resources, including replacing 2 domain controllers. Users' work was disrupted for several hours while they were migrated and spent additional time for retraining and lost productivity as they made the transition. The process took longer for the 600 users who work on the road full time. Help desk call volume also increased dramatically. Total time consumed by the migration for users was estimated at an average of 3 hours per person or 4500 hours. IT staff spent an additional 5000 man-hours working on this project.

    TCO:

    1. Hardware: All hardware purchased for the Exchange servers will have to be replaced in order to migrate to Exchange 2007 which requires 64 bit processors. (An Exchange 2003 server cannot be upgraded)

    2. Software: Ongoing licensing costs for both Notes and Outlook. Lotus Notes will continue to be a mission critical application for years to come at this company.

    3. Training: New hires will continue to need training in the mail system software. In today's world, very few people use Outlook as their personal email client. Gmail, Yahoo mail, or email provided by their ISP are used instead.

    4. Labor: The will continue to need experts in both Domino and Exchange.

    In summary, the cumulative costs of the project were well in excess of $1M. Significant for a $300M revenue business. Ongoing costs will persist for years, maintaining dual systems. The Domino team attempted to prepare a cost analysis prior to the project, but management was disinterested in the costs. Ironically, the report which was drafted, illustrated that a migration of the parent company from Exchange to Domino would have resulted in a net DECREASE of 4 servers and would have provided those users with immediate access to the Domino applications already in use at the child company. (The child company had a far more sophisticated set of Notes applications already in production than the parent company.) In the end, after 10 months of work by most of the IT department, after disruption of work and lost productivity during and after the transition for 1500 people, what did they have? Email. How refreshing.

    When it comes to migrating Email systems, it is very rare that a migration of any sort, from any platform to any other, will prove cost-effective or provide a return on the investment for many years.

  1. 54  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 8/4/2009 1:52:44 PM

    @53 sadly these emails are not unique enough that they divulge what company it was.

    Interesting that this post has had thousands of pageviews in just two days, double the number of hits from microsoft.com IP addresses than a "normal" edbrill.com day...and still, crickets.

  1. 55  Charles Robinson http://www.cubert.net | 8/4/2009 2:12:20 PM

    @Nathan - Well based on that I would say we're already where you want us to be since there are already numerous layers of certification, accreditation and validation. You're obviously not satisfied with that, so what exactly are you asking for?

    I'm not trying to be obtuse, I truly don't understand where you're going with this. :-)

  1. 56  Jim Casale http://www.jimcasale.net | 8/4/2009 2:30:28 PM

    @Ed, You really don't expect them to respond do you? The last thing they want to do is to admit they ----. That would be like a certain management team admitting their assumptions had no basis in fact.

    You remember the story about Dennis Rodman and the girl "falling out of the ceiling" when he got caught cheating(at least this is how I remember the story). That was his story and he stuck to it even though everyone knew he made it up. So consider the Ferris report as having fell out of the ceiling and they are going to stick to it no matter what :-)

  1. 57  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 8/4/2009 2:44:24 PM

    @55 - The difference is that there's no expectation by investors or business partners that a company will have IT staff with competency certifications. If you were looking to business with somebody and asked for financial reports, and they gave you unaudited results, you'd look at them in a totally different way than if they gave you reports with a CPA's signature. And it'd be even different if they had E&Y's or PWC's stamp on them.

    I think it's an exaggeration to say there are "numerous layers" in IT today. There's.... what... 3 or 4 recognized non-vendor specific certifications in this industry?

  1. 58  David Hablewitz - Notes guy in Seattle  | 8/4/2009 2:54:11 PM

    @54 You are quite right. I should have Left the CIO's name in the signature of the email, and I should have identified the IT manager who didn't even want a cost analysis. And for the former employees who were laid off and for those who were not, but instead received a collective $1M pay cut, and for the stock holders of [company names removed at comment owner's request], I should have broadcast the guilty parties. oops.

  1. 59  Kevin Mort http://www.theglobalmind.com | 8/5/2009 10:12:49 AM

    FWIW - Ed, I'd say there's no peep out of Redmond because they know darn well you're right, but they knew that from the start.

    Why else would have put that little gem at the end of the piece where they say "No doubt IBM will respond by saying this blog post is just FUD" - a sad attempt at dismissing IBM's reply before it's given.

    They also know there are plenty of customers who they can fool into believing the Microsoft interpretation of "fact."

  1. 60  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 8/5/2009 10:44:33 AM

    True, Kevin. Let's just say I don't think this is over yet, though.

  1. 61  Kevin Mort http://www.theglobalmind.com | 8/5/2009 11:09:43 AM

    Oh, not by a long shot. Yellow gloves at the ready. : )

  1. 62  Jérôme Deniau http://www.inform-france.com | 8/5/2009 5:20:16 PM

    Why should we make all that fuss around Microsoft, we do all know that Microsoft is dead now, We hardly know Ferris Research in Europe, probably a bunch of junkies?

    But nevertheless thanks very much Ed for your clear analysis of such a stupid report, when it comes to figures you can ask them to tell anything you want, analysts are paid for that.

  1. 63  Frank Paolino http://blog.maysoft.org/ | 8/6/2009 9:22:56 AM

    I have heard about a Microsoft tactic where they shuffle license prices around to be "cheaper" when there is a competitive situation. So, Exchange is discounted while Office or consulting services are not discounted. Has anyone seen this? This could account for some of the alleged price differences?

  1. 64  Dennis  | 8/6/2009 12:25:27 PM

    Companies migrate to MS because someone simply wants to. Analysis’s like this is an Excel flight of fantasy for smaller companies. It was expensive for us to migrate to Exchange last year and there were noticeable gaps in functionality that the MS solution does not address. Included were:

    MS Exchange 2007 server license

    MS Office 2007 to get the Outlook 2007 client (most users want Office 2003 back)

    Client Access license for Outlook for the right to use Outlook

    Replaced our integrated Notes CRM program with a bolt-on low end contact manager

    Exchange specific backup solution

    Total cost was around $80,000

    Cost of a Notes upgrade (including new server hardware) – around $8,000 or 10 times the cost

    You get email and calendaring – a few users like the new client, most expressed wondered why we spent the money. We did not buy software assurance for all the various pieces. The time I spend administrating the system is a wash. I figure it will take about 25 years to break even for the software maintenance we were paying to IBM. ...oh and we still run two Notes applications that cannot migrate.

  1. 65  Jaclyn Dunn  | 8/6/2009 3:28:04 PM

    What about the Gartner report? I suppose that is rubbish too because it favors Microsoft over IBM??

  1. 66  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 8/6/2009 5:02:23 PM

    @65 - Who knows? Those of us with critical thinking skills evaluate such things on the merits of the individual report, not the outcomes. Did you even read the original post?

    The failure on the Ferris report isn't that it favors Microsoft over IBM. It's that it doesn't have enough data to reach a valid conclusion, and even the data that it does have doesn't actually favor MSFT over IBM except in the extremely marginal area of "license cost," which nobody has considered a relevant metric in IT for the last 10 years.

  1. 67  Nazeer Aval  | 8/16/2009 3:50:53 PM

    @33 Luigi - For your information. One of the IT Manager at MS shop asked me once "Why his Exchange Administrator is always busy managing / troubleshooting the system? Why can't he spend his time for new projects". Another Exchange Admin said "With Exchange, you always needs to be closer as with your new born baby!". For MS partners, although they know all these crashes / instabilities, this is the only way they can continue to eat customer budget in terms of rip and replace upgrade, new HW selling etc.

    Starting from Notes 8, it has been evolved into a new era. Many of the existing customers did not go back to Notes 7 although little bit crashes happened initially. Now with Notes 8.5 it has become much faster and stable.

  1. 68  A horrified european  | 9/13/2009 2:45:23 PM

    Hello, I stumbled across Julia White's blog post about the notes switcher etc. and found the link to this blog in the third comment from Andre H. After some minutes of reading both blogs, I decided to do a search about Julia White. So by simply entering "microsoft Julia White" into Google, I hit the first link result, which is a short video

    { Link }

    I guess the video tells its own scary tale. :( After watching this, I was and I am still horrorfied. How can someone be so unscrupulous? It is what we call selling your own grandmother - pure evil! Faked / unreliable reports/researchs or not, I would not believe in anything this woman express.

    Good night.