Well, that's not the title of the report...the title is "Migrating Off Notes/Domino E-Mail May Make Sense in Some Circumstances" [Link updated, report ID:G00200566, price US$495].
It might just as well be written as "Migrating Off Notes/Domino Doesn't Make Sense in Most Circumstances", but that probably wouldn't sell as much consulting time.
Yes, earlier today, Gartner analyst Tom Austin published eight pages that can be basically summarized as
* We derive a lot of business at Gartner from customers asking about migration from Notes to Exchange.
* Most customers don't migrate.
* Still, for some reason, we think some will in the next two years.
* You should be thinking about the future of your email environment in the broader context of delivery options and collaboration.
With a title as provocative as this one has, you would expect to find a lot of supporting evidence inside as to why customers are considering migration and where it would in fact make sense. Instead, the analysis inside includes:
- "Clients have some legitimate concerns, but we believe IBM will continue to make investments to attract new customers for this product and to sustain the revenue stream from services"
- "Most enterprises thinking about moving away from Notes/Domino for e-mail will decide to stay."
- "IBM remains a strong and viable e-mail provider."
- "Notes/Domino customers should not worry about product longevity, at least in the two- to five-year planning period"
- and, most importantly, "IBM customers migrating to Microsoft will likely be disappointed. "
I'm sure some of you will be confronted with the strong headline of this report in your organization. My friends in Redmond are probably popping champagne bottles this morning with the FUD they can stir up. But the reality of the report is that it is more like gossip at a cocktail party -- something like, "I heard Bob say he was thinking of switching" (the report tries to document something called "business-class envy") -- than any hard evidence of anything other than due diligence in the market.
Analyst firm IDC issued their annual market share report on the "integrated collaborative environments" market last month and both IBM and Microsoft's share were essentially unchanged from the 2009 report -- deltas of fractional percentages. We had growth in new license sales for Notes/Domino in the second quarter, and our base of active maintenance seats remains solid. We're in a consistent #2 position in this market, which, considering we're competing with license bundling and other questionable tactics, I'm pretty darn confident in.
Given all of that, I'm not sure what the point of this report is, other than to get people talking. OK, if that's it, I'm on board by having blogged about it. Now, let's move on. It's going to be a busy week next week.
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- 2
Palmi | 8/6/2010 1:26:49 PM
Hope lots of CFO, CEO, CTO and what ever they are called , are reading this.
- 3
Bilal Jaffery http://www.bilal.ca | 8/6/2010 2:10:57 PM
or the folks who report to the C-suite read this! =)
- 4
Nathan T. Freeman http://ntf.gbs.com | 8/6/2010 10:44:03 PM
Where is your magic quadrant now, eh?
- 5
Peter Wilson | 8/6/2010 11:32:05 PM
@2 probably not. CxO's will do anything to get their beloved Outlook. Unfortunately IBM didn't realise of the importance of e-mail and the interface until version 8. In hindsight IBM should have kept the cc:Mail client years ago for people who JUST WANTED EMAIL !
Pete
- 6
Patrick Kwinten http://quintessens.wordpress.com | 8/7/2010 3:45:32 AM
I hate mail, but what is the alternative?
- 7
Randall Shimizu | 8/8/2010 3:38:38 PM
The report is a good sign but we need to the market dialog to "why Exchange customers migrating to Notes". Seems as though I hear about a lot tools and stories about customers are switching to Exchange. Now I know this is not the reality, but Lotus needs to get much more aggressive if it wishes get ahead.
- 8
Peter | 8/8/2010 10:35:57 PM
Gartner's advice is irrelevant now , they belong to 80's and Y2k hype ...
They recycle old ideas and news ..they run out of innovation and new advices
Gartner advise to toss a coin for product selection :
{ Link }
- 9
Frank http://twitter.com/fcseh | 8/10/2010 2:21:25 AM
Have played this, migration is very expensive, and not perfect.
Don't migrate, if badly want to get out of Notes/Domino, ditch it and start fresh.
This will be a sad bad game.
- 10
Charles Robinson http://www.cubert.net | 8/10/2010 12:28:08 PM
@Ed - Any response to this: "...from July 1 in 2009 to April 30, 116 different clients booked one or more calls with Gartner analysts seeking advice on migrating away from Notes for e-mail, and no Microsoft customers called Gartner for advice on whether to migrate to Notes and Domino for e-mail..." That was reported in a Computerworld piece: { Link } .
- 12
Deleted | 8/10/2010 1:23:03 PM
Deleted - Per edbrill.com terms of use, must post with real name and valid email address.
- 13
Timothy Briley | 8/10/2010 1:34:53 PM
@10: Charles, I read the ComputerWorld article and your comment "Have another glass of Kool-Aid® - The performance is terrible and the product is bug-ridden."
You're normally a pretty even-handed commenter. But so are most of the guys who comment here on Ed's blog and I just don't think many of them agree with you. Because if they did, I think that would be the main topic of every comment to every post that Ed makes, because if it's true, not a whole lot else matters.
Maybe we need a show of hands here, how many of you think the performance is terrible and the product is bug-ridden? Ok, hands down. Now how many here think the performance is acceptable and the number of bugs is acceptable?
- 14
Stig Andersen http://www.devoteam.com | 8/11/2010 3:21:26 AM
I believe much of the dispute between Ed Brill and Tom Austin has to do with ambiguities and uncertainties regarding what the motivations for what the catalyses for the Gartner clients’ enquiries are. The report is rather precise on that; the driver for consulting has little or nothing to do with the specific product(-s). Rather concerns has to do with access to resources, vendor dedication to the product, general fit in the enterprise IT infrastructure, and “emotions”. I shall not reveal Gartner’s conclusions and recommendations. For these you should read the report (ID:G00200566).
One other note; is it surprising that a responsible CTO of an enterprise would consult e.g. Gartner regarding email platform in a time when a prime provider releases a new version, Exchange Server 2010, alongside a horizontal information management platform (SharePoint 2010).
- 15
Lars Olufsen | 8/11/2010 3:51:40 AM
I find it somewhat "funny" that Austin feel a need to respond to Ed's post.
Is he afraid that the customers reading Edbrill.com would accept Ed's side of the story and not bother consulting Gartner at all?
If so, why hasn't he posted in the comments here and pulled people over to his blog, where he can (and does) make all his "you should really call us" plugs.
Gartner must be really pressed in the market, and it's not too hard to understand´, considering they apparently have recommended a migration with no value to at least a third of the customers considering their options.
Thank god there are better analysts out there.
- 16
Charles Robinson http://www.cubert.net | 8/11/2010 7:26:18 AM
@11 - That's pretty much my first thought, too. I know Gartner is pro-Microsoft, so I wouldn't expect people wanting to migrate away from a Microsoft stack would contact them. I was just wondering what your response would be. :-)
@13 - It's interesting to me that only myself and one other commenter on that article used our real names. The rest are anonymous. I was as even-handed as I could be for as long as possible. My experience with the 8.5.1 and 8.5.2 betas finally pushed me over the edge. I know nearly everyone commenting in the Yellowverse disagrees with my assessment, and that's to be expected. If 8.5.x is good enough for you, more power to you to deploy and support it.
I debated doing a blog post writing up my experience with 8.5.2, especially after I was so positive about 8.5.1, but decided it wasn't worth it. I don't have time to get wrapped up in the drama that was sure to follow.
- 17
Mark Davids | 8/11/2010 7:58:50 AM
@13 It depends how you define "bug", but I'd certainly say that the number of crashes and weird behaviours that I've seen in Notes/Domino 8.5.1 are beyond acceptable for quality software.
Many of these are only small details, but its the combination of all of these that add to user's perceptions of the client.
- 18
Eddie Hasicka http://fewclix.com | 8/12/2010 11:22:10 AM
When you step back from it, going through a platform migration just to "swap one mailbox for another" while often not delivering much in the way of new capability to the end user is curious. The overall cost beyond the software itself -- training, potential network changes, new hardware, software deployment resources, testing -- rarely proves rewarding in the end.
There are many ISVs out there, including ourselves, that can give a company much more "bang for the buck" in making even Lotus Notes users still back on V6 or in mixed level environments more productive at a fraction of the cost of platform migration.
But nobody ever said logic reigns inside the enterprise, large or small. So go figure.
- 19
Michel Meyers | 8/24/2010 2:40:16 AM
@17 Couldn't agree more. The number of little, stupid issues just add up and give a general bad image of the product. A few examples:
- The Reads and Adds columns in the database user activity sort correctly but the Updates and Deletes ones don't. (Users don't see this, but admins can't help but shake their heads at year one CompSci mistakes like this.)
- The Resource Rename agent fails with an illegal function call when a user puts a '*' into the subject of a reservation.
- Notes opens every single link that passes when you put your cursor into the URL bar and scroll down using the mouse wheel.
- Why is it that neither of the above bugs gets fixed when we open an SPR? Why are we paying for support anyway if the response to every bug report is always "won't be fixed ... ever". (I even provided the fix for the Resource Rename agent, which is really just a one liner, and it still wasn't done, so instead, I have to patch our resource database template for every new release that we roll out. I mean, I know that the fix will entail Q&A work etc etc but come on!)
And those are just the little, silly things I've seen here, don't even mention functionality things like being able to enter a birthday into your contacts and then not having an option of displaying that on your calendar. (I know why that's the case technically, but the users do not care about that and I have a hard time explaining to them why Notes can't do this and Notes can't do that.)
The overall impression is that the product is lacking features, is full of bugs and IBM has zero interest in improving any of it.
That said, I'm not convinced Outlook/Exchange don't suffer from similar issues, not to forget that the whole applications side of Notes/Domino really has no viable substitute elsewhere which makes migrating off of it extremely tedious and expensive.
Note: This comment would normally be removed as the user has not provided a valid email address. I'll leave it for now. --Ed
- 20
Mark Davids | 8/24/2010 3:17:42 AM
Ed, if you're still listening, @19 mentioned the biggest problem I have with Lotus products.
Every time that I file a bug report, it is reported back to me as "Lotus Notes is working as designed".
The support staff seem as irritated by this as I am. It sounds like when any issue gets as far as development they always report that it's not a "bug" and that I'm basically asking for a new feature. And the new features never come.
- 22
Michel Meyers | 8/24/2010 10:42:56 AM
Me again,
Forgive me for not providing my actual e-mail address (the one I use here does work though, even if it is not private to myself and doesn't get checked often) but I do not see in which way it would help IBM/Lotus change their policies on support and development.
That said, my above rant probably won't be of any help in that regard either, but it felt good to get it off my chest nonetheless.
In case you are investigating any of the mentioned issues (all of which should be easily reproducable by anybody running R8.5.1), SPR JKEY7SUDS4 concerning the defective resource rename agent would be the one dearest to my heart (the other ones are more of a nuisance than big faults).
The fix is to change this line:
If Instr(datestimes, "*") <> 0 Then 'if it was reserved by AA, put ReservedBy to next line
to this:
If (Instr(datestimes, "*") AND InStr(datestimes, "Requested")) <> 0 Then 'if it was reserved by AA, put ReservedBy to next line
- 23
MarvinK | 9/30/2010 3:02:56 PM
This sounds like an interesting read in it's entirety. I'm not sure why Gartner is so proud of their articles to charge $500, but I'm sure we aren't the only company who struggles with the Notes vs Outlook pressure at their company.
The user annoyances do add up--and create a lot of pressure to look at alternatives. We get more of the '..quality engineers are aware of the problem..' than new feature feedbacks, though.
- 24
Greg Francis | 8/10/2011 10:54:53 AM
First, Ed, well done as usual. It would be nice to use your title on that report. I would love to see some case studies about a medium or large company (NOT a gov't agency) moving to the cloud.
@22 I believe that you have found some minor bugs, but I have had a number of bugs fixed by opening an SPR with IBM over the years. The specific bug about having an asterisk in the subject for a meeting for a resource that then gets renamed is such a rare thing, that is probably why it is way down the list to be fixed, even with you providing them with the solution. They will not just incorporate your changes without the usual software programming change procedure. One other nice advantage is that it is very easy to make simple programming changes in Notes databases, which you obviously did in the template in your case. The tougher part I'm sure was figuring out the code change in the first place. To accuse IBM of never fixing anything is just plain wrong, check the fix list for any new release and there will usually be hundreds of fixes listed for all but minor upgrades. Do not forget adding some new features along the way as well. The primary source of bugs in 8.x simply must be because the entire system had to be rewritten from scratch in Eclipse. It would be impossible not to have bugs in that amount of code for such a complex system. 8.5.2 seems pretty stable, but I'm sure that minor bugs will continue to crop up.
- 25
Marty | 3/7/2012 8:36:10 AM
There are rumours in our organisation of a migration to Exchange/Outlook, and current vendors we use are actively being asked whether their products will operate/co-exist with MS Exchange, Outlook and SharePoint, so there are no doubt moves afoot.
MS are pretty agressive in their approach in here - as are Force.com - but we rarely, if ever, see or hear about our IBM Lotus Notes account manager scheduling a meeting, looking for ways to help us, finding out what our issues are.
Changes in the IT organisation here mean new guys at the top, wanting to shake things up... I just hope that the due diligence is carried out by the right people, the "cost to change" cases made and presented, but as @18 said, I'm realistic enough to know that's not how things really work.
As @19 stated, there are plenty of things which still don't work properly or as the user and Admins and Devs expect them to, in 8.5.2, but I still believe the product has a place in the company. For how much longer, I ain't so sure.
Thanks Ed. Who should I make the check out to? Are you charging more than $495 for your version because you have made the analysis more concise?