MS TechEd: Exchange today and tomorrow
May 25 2004
Bold-faced, brazen, and audacious -- words
in my head walking out of the Exchange keynote here at TechEd. MS
VP Dave Thompson's coming-out party among the Exchange customer base was
certainly interesting. Using a Q&A format, the session addressed
questions on the minds of many Exchange administrators and their management.
But one pair of questions featured a stark and remarkably gutsy (or
maybe gutless) contrast.
Question #3: "I'm a Lotus customer, should I consider Exchange"
During the discussion of this question, Mr. Thompson asserted that
"it's very important to understand the roadmap of where your vendor
is going." I agree! He further went on to say that "Domino['s]
future is uncertain", and that this is a reason to migrate to Exchange.
He had a couple of other tepid reasons -- #1 on his list was "best
support for Outlook and Office." Pretty sad when your first
(and third and fourth) reasons for suggesting a migration have nothing
to do with the capabilities of the destination product.
Anyway, the reason I call this all audacious is that question #1 (they
went in reverse order) was "What is the roadmap for Exchange?"
And when the slide for that one came up, I couldn't contain my laughter.
Why? Because Microsoft made no commitment to a next
version of Exchange Server, and seems to have dropped discussion
altogether around "Kodiak", the SQL Server "Yukon"-based
version of Exchange. The chart had "today" which includes
Exchange 2003, Outlook 2003, and E2003 SP1, a 2005 column which includes
Exchange Edge Services (a new product hoping to target spam issues), and
a "future" column which discusses such exciting innovations as
a separate resource model instead of having to create pseudo-users for
room/resource reservations (amazing!). What it didn't have was anything
about "Exchange 200x", or any specific vision around when a new
version of Exchange might ship.
I'm trying to retain professionalism here -- but the word "cajones"
just keeps echoing around in my head. How dare Microsoft criticize
the IBM roadmap, when Notes/Domino 7 is in beta and IBM has made
public commitments to the timeline for that release, plus talked about
features and general timeline for Notes 8...when they offer their installed
base a bunch of general future feature goals.
Now the other day, weren't we saying something about people who live in
glass houses....
Update: I guess Peter
O'Kelly was expecting this rant.
;)
Post a Comment
- 2
| 5/25/2004 11:07:55 PM
Ed,
Now with on-line blog technology you can really strike hard and fast at any FUD spread by M$ or any competitor. I think it's great that someone can document the Cr@p being espoused and then counter it, (with the facts), before the (FUD) session has even finished.
- 3
Neil Gower www.ngower.me.uk | 5/26/2004 3:06:09 AM
The funny thing is companies will still go out an buy Exchange, even with a totally muddled strategy, and functionality being added and dropped on a seemingly monthly basis.
Although you cant blame MSFT for taking a pop at IBM's strategy for Notes/Domino, yes now the commitment is clear, but for a year or so IBM's muddled strategy ( or articulation of that strategy - Notes descried as "Legacy" anyone..), handed MSFT a pretty big stick, I am not surprised they are beating IBM with it. It takes the focus away from their lack of strategy.
The other thing is that although MSFT seem to have no strategy for exchange, they do not have another product which is their "NextGen" version, I am not going to get into the debate about Workplace/Domino etc as it is not productive now the strategy is clear (to me at least), but I bet many are thinking, MSFT may not have a strategy for Exchange, but they are not selling/proposing a potential replacement.
Its not a great arguement for choosing Exchange, but I can see how it eould come about.
- 4
Irv Schor www.carescience.com | 5/26/2004 8:20:05 AM
I'm a Notes Admin who has gotten ursurped (now twice) by either a new management regime or company takeover which both resulted in the replacement of Notes for political reasons. In both cases, the new (Exchange) system proved far less reliable, however it never seemed to matter. My concern is that it appears MSFT's strategy may be more in line with a sucker punch approach embedded in the Office System 2003. If you look carefully, InfoPath is included (only) with the Volume Licensed version of Office 2003 Pro. Since this is the closest MSFT may come to visually demonstrating something similar to Lotus Notes, might they not decide to say 'we've got that too, but its free', etc. My guess is that based upon the FUD, they may be successful - especially when the decision makers rarely see the full picture of the additional requirements (servers, etc.) to run and operate the MSFT systems.
Sincerely,
Irv Schor
- 5
Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 5/26/2004 9:16:33 AM
If you've watched my webcast "Why Lotus rocks in collaboration"(links/resources, left column), you know that I spend a fair amount of time describing Office System 2003 and what it means from a collaboration perspective.
In my opinion, that's why it is so important to see Lotus as part of IBM - and work with IBM to ensure your executives are educated on the Lotus and IBM software story.
If you're currently in a situation like this and need help, you can also always email me ed at edbrill.com and we can discuss offline.
I visited the Exhibit hall and had a similar conversation with Microsoft employee that I am friends. I hasked about the version of Exchange and he indicated that the roadmap was NDA. This seems a little strange to me. On the otherhand this seems like a good thing for Notes. If Microsoft's holds true then Notes will have a considerable lead time.