InternetNews: Exchange e-mail dominance to continue (updated with MessagingPipeline input)

February 15 2005

Even if you believe the numbers, it's hard to imagine 33% of a market being "dominance".  Internetnews reports on a press release from Radicati Group claiming that Exchange will grow its market share, due to Lotus's "confusing strategy" and Exchange 2003's, uh, increased scalability.

Rocky Oliver points out some of the problems with this "analysis":

Had this come out as early as a year ago, I may have been inclined to agree with Mr. Nienhuis; however the roadmap put forth by IBM has never been more clear. ...Mr. Nienhuis obviously hasn't talked to current customers lately, nor has he looked at the current roadmap; if he had he would realize that the path for Notes/Domino customers is quite clear, and it does not contain the faintest hint of rip-and-replace.
There have been a few reports like this in the last couple of weeks.  It's like the last gasp of the last round of "Notes is dead" FUD; while mainstream analysts like Gartner, META, Burton, and Ferris have all issued positive reports about Lotus and the Workplace strategy in the last two weeks, it seems some didn't get the message.  Have to wonder if they were paying attention to Lotusphere, press reports from Lotusphere, blogs from Lotusphere, or for that matter, any of the news from the last several months.  Ah well.

Rocky also points out that the analysis is a little contradictory -- as in, how can growth come from this?
[P]eople are going to migrate from an existing messaging and collaborative platform that has a clear upgrade path and a stated long term product life (that, BTW, promises backwards compatability), to a platform that has a muddled future and no discernable roadmap?... Yeah, that sounds like good analysis.

Update: There's also this bit from MessagingPipeline:
When asked to elaborate, Sara Radicati said that she sees IBM/Lotus Workplace as an end-of-life strategy for Notes/Domino. Confronted by strong evidence, including a survey by Messaging Pipeline, and even stronger feelings from the Lotus Notes/Domino community that the product has a long life ahead of it, she said, "I have nothing against those people, I wish them well. But they are wrong."
See Alan Lepofsky's comment to this posting -- who is wrong here, exactly???

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Messaging  Add/View Comments [19]

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  1. 1  Rock http://www.lotusgeek.com | 2/15/2005 4:56:36 PM

    Thanks for the nice writeup, Ed. It amazes me how transparent Radicati's vendetta against Lotus is. I wonder if the analysts that work for Radicati are actually instructed on what the outcome of the report should be - I mean how else do you come up with a "report" like this?

  1. 2  Chris Whisonant  | 2/15/2005 7:45:29 PM

    You're kidding, right?

    This is their report: "Microsoft Exchange and Outlook Market Analysis, 2005 - 2009"

    Do they have a Lotus Market analysis? We already have suspicions that Radicati is in bed with MS - this pretty much nails that coffin shut. Ed, what was the % of customers who are still on Exchange 5.5? Yet they claim 2003 had "fast uptake"?

    IBM "seems intent on migrating them to the Lotus Workplace platform". That's not what I heard last month.

  1. 3  Alan Lepofsky http://www.alanlepofsky.net | 2/15/2005 7:52:11 PM

    All personal and obvious professional bias aside, I still think it is embarrassing that an "analyst firm", which I assume by definition are "paid professional experts on a topic" could publish something so contradictory to what the message actually is from IBM. Even assuming the "real situation" involves something such as "they dislike Lotus for whatever reason" or "MS is paying them off", still as professionals should they not attend Lotusphere (a major event in the industry they report on) and get the real story? As professional experts, if they "think Lotus has a confusing strategy" as the author states, should they not arrange a briefing with IBM executives to help them understand? Isn't that their job?

  1. 4  Gregg Eldred  | 2/15/2005 10:16:15 PM

    Based on this: "I have nothing against those people, I wish them well. But they are wrong." I guess that I live in an alternate universe. And I am quite happy.

  1. 5  Alan Lepofsky http://www.alanlepofsky.net | 2/15/2005 10:29:27 PM

    <sarcasim> Of course Sara will prove to be right at some point. I am sure IBM will stop releasing new versions of Notes/Domino one day. Then Sara can come back and tell us how correct she was! Maybe she can branch out into other industires, and her clients can pay for other bold predications such as: "One day <insert auto company name here> will sell different types of cars than they do today." </sarcasim>

  1. 6  Notes Fan  | 2/15/2005 11:16:09 PM

    I just don't get it. Who are all of these people who are 'confused' by the future plans for Lotus Notes/Domino and IBM Workplace? It has made sense to me from the very beginning. I think it's a great strategy, always has been. Yes, I'm glad IBM/Lotus cleaned up the marketing a bit, but anyone with a clue who pays attention should never have had this amount of confusion about the roadmap.

    I ... just ... don't ... get ... it.

    (Must be ingrained or something) ;)

  1. 7  Wild Bill http://www.billbuchan.com/web.nsf/d6plinks/DOMM-68LF5A | 2/16/2005 3:22:08 AM

    I vote for Darwin here. Darwin postulated that it was "survival of the fittest". I choose a more Dilbertian/Darwin Award slant of Darwin - "Stupid people die sooner".

    By die of course, I mean the business. I have no personal or even professinal grudge against *that* firm, I just feel that they've not evolving as the market is evolving. My personal view is that they've not made it to opposable thumbs yet.

    The great thing is that they've actually made this position clear over the last 12 months, so the rest of us can leave them in the evolutionary dead-end and get on with our happy lives.

    Or think of them as the cheerleaders at the football game, slavisly supporting the "other" side. No-one expects them to do differently. No-one expects them to form intelligent analysis. And certainly no-one should go to them for any clearly formed, rational, business advice.

    Nail polish yes, collaboration infrastucture, no. Meanwhile, sit back and enjoy the entertainment.

    There. Two metaphors for the price of one.

    (Oh. I can imagine a number of good reasons they didnt appear at Lotusphere with their company names on their badge)

    ---* Bill

    P.S. Sara - my bosses name is Ashley and she can be found at Ashley at Ashley Buchan.com.

    P.P.S. I *do* apologise for any readers for whom I've just given a really horrible mental picture involving pom-poms. "My Eyes - they Burn...."

  1. 8  Ben  | 2/16/2005 3:51:20 AM

    Sara - "But they are wrong"

    According to who exactly Sarah? What mysterious facts and figures do you (and only you apparently) have at your disposal to make such a grandiose statement? Maybe it came to you in a dream. Or maybe you read tea leaves. Does it not bother you that almost everyone disagrees with you?

    She really seems to have the impression that we're all so blinkered that we're just sticking our heads in the sand and hoping all this nasty talk about Notes/Domino dying out will go away. She appears to think that she can talk down to us by "wishing us well" in a rather patronising tone but telling out that we are plain wrong.

    If we're all so wrong then why does the Domino community gleefully highlight Radici's doom and doom reports whenever they appear? Because we know they're not worth the paper they're printed on. This would almost be funny if it were not for the fact that some people will be taking them seriously.

  1. 9  Alan Bell http://www.dominux.co.uk | 2/16/2005 3:57:31 AM

    Phrases like this are not ones that an independant analyst should be proud of.

    "No one will be surprised to find . . ."

    "Typical of Radicati's outlook. . ."

    I think they have lost a lot of credibility with the press.

  1. 10  Paul Mooney http://www.pmooney.net | 2/16/2005 4:12:58 AM

    Could I suggest that IBM request an analyst firm investigate and report on the obvious vendetta of Sara Radicatti and her little firm over the past twelve months. Surely at this stage, the "squeaky wheel" of radicatti needs to be addressed. We all know what they are doing, but unfortunately the masses wont. How about a little more public, professional action in responding to these guys. Or... would that just give them the publicity they want.

  1. 11  Tim Leach  | 2/16/2005 4:19:37 AM

    Radicati's insistence that Notes is dying, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, would be hysterical if there were not the risk that some, less-informed readers might actually believe these reports.

    Sara Radicati reminds me somewhat of "Comical Ali", the Iraqi minister of information, swearing blind that there were no Americans in Baghdad, when in fact the city was surrounded by them.

    With every press conference that he held, Ali lost more and more credibility, until the day when the facts could no longer be ignored.

    Radicati seems to be following a similar path, and with each "Notes is dead" report that she produces, the more she appears to be living in a parallel universe where black is white, and 2+2 = 5.

    My hope is that people will eventually see through the nonsence and half-truths that she produces and stop subscribing to/buying her reports.

    P.S. We're "wrong" and she is right ? Is that really the best argument that she can come up with ?

  1. 12  Kit Davis  | 2/16/2005 5:48:11 AM

    I particularly like the quote from Nienhuis - "There's a lot of Domino and Notes applications these customers have written, and moving them to a new platform could be messy. A big chunk of customers will hang on to what they've got as long as they can." - That sure sounds to me as if Notes/Domino customers clearly intend to stay with what they have. Only a fool would believe that migrating all of these domino applications to an Exchange environment will be preferable to leaving them in Domino and accessing them down the road via the notes plug-in.

  1. 13  Mark  | 2/16/2005 8:00:18 AM

    Have you seen this new Microsoft Stage Dance???

    { Link }

  1. 14  Danny Lawrence  | 2/16/2005 8:53:14 AM

    "The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common, instead of changing their view of the world to fit the facts, they try to change the facts to fit their world view -- which can be a problem if you are one of the facts that need changing"

    I will leave it to the reader as to which catagory the folks at Radicati fall into

  1. 15  Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 2/16/2005 8:54:00 AM

    I find it amazing that some analysts believe they're better placed to describe the future of the Lotus roadmap than the people who actually develop the roadmap within Lotus.

    I did a briefing a couple of weeks ago re. the future of Notes / Domino. Afterwards the customer was elated, saying that they believed that ND7 would be the final version. Why had they come to that conclusion? "That's what Microsoft told us".

    I prepared to believe that Microsoft won some Domino customers last year, although I didn't hear any good solid business reasons (just "our parent company uses it" and "our new CIO likes it"). However Radicati seem to be unaware of how many customers moved from Exchange to Domino, and are probably unaware of how many are still in serious discussions.

  1. 16  Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 2/16/2005 9:01:29 AM

    @13 - I was wondering, the CIOs of these large Exchange customers who've been battling against poor scalability for years... will they be doing the same dance of joy when they see that the "Exchange roadmap" essentially leaves them with the same ol' unscalable object store for the foreseeable future? I know one company who saw the now-canned SQL-based version as the answer to their scalability problems. I'd love to be in the room when their Microsoft account manager comes a'calling.

  1. 17  Christopher Byrne http://www.controlscaddy.com/ | 2/16/2005 3:34:34 PM

    @13 - I wonder if Howard Dean was his teacher:-)

  1. 18  Adam Osborne www.taet.com.au/ab.nsf | 2/16/2005 3:47:04 PM

    Just remember that software doesn't die, it just fades away.

  1. 19  Chris Whisonant  | 2/17/2005 1:13:10 PM

    @17 - I sent the link to monkeyboy to some people internally and was asked if that reminded me of Dean!