Y’all did such a good job on the last report....

July 30 2004

This has been one of the most incredible weeks for me professionally.  It is like being on the Aerosmith roller coaster at Disney-MGM -- really really fast out of the gate, in the dark so you have no idea what's coming next, sensory overload, and yet great for the adrenaline rush and racing heart.  You'll know more of why I say so come Monday.
For now, though, there's another interesting report in the wild.  A few bloggers have noticed it already.  The Microsoft Exchange site (forgive me again that I am just not going to link there) has a new TCO study, comparing costs for Domino and Exchange in SMB customers.  The report was authored by "META Group", though the specific authors (nor what department at META) are not disclosed....nor is the sponsorship.
I am once again going to hold my formal commentary for any response that IBM publishes.  (Aside -- on the previous report, one is still coming)  I have been debating for two or three days whether to even blog this, because it's clear that the report hasn't been widely distributed yet (and as such, I'm giving it free publicity).  But after reading what Michael Sampson had to say about this META report, along with blog entries by Rich Schwartz, Tris Hussey, and others, I believe it is better for the Lotus community to see this now.  And yes, for the Microsofties and Waggener-Edstrom people who are reading this blog to know that I know it's out there.  And that it's not going to be taken lightly.
I'm going to be watching the comments again carefully, folks.  I'm getting close to publishing IP addresses, which those of you who are honest and ethical obviously won't have problems with.  Heck, aljazeera.com does it -- and they have some pretty fascinating discussions there.

Ed Brill Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Lotus  Microsoft  Add/View Comments [10]

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  1. 1  TheOldGit http://www.theoldgit.com | 7/30/2004 7:15:44 PM

    Well, as another "watcher and listener" from the other side of the pond who's sad enough to be up at 01:15 on a Saturday morning scanning through blogs, it surprised me too to see blog entries of ANOTHER report along the lines of the one from the Radicati Group (although I do have to say I haven't read this one yet).

    First I read it on Richard Schwartz's blog. Then on Michael Sampson's blog.

    Is Tris Hussey's take on it that M$ are feeling under threat and influencing analysts close to the mark or is EVERYONE reading to much into it?

    I guess only time will tell.

  1. 2  Nathan T. Freeman  | 7/30/2004 7:35:57 PM

    ...but the most important one is really simple. How can someone publish a TCO study in this day and age, and NOT include figures on the impact of spam and viruses? When major corporations (eg: Sony Electronics) have to TURN OFF Internet mail access for 3 days because of MyDoom, is there really any other issue facing administrators that's even close to that important? Check out Rich's mention of the costs: { Link }

    I don't know if Meta has published any figures of their own, but I bet they have. And if it's consistent in any way with other figures, it's in the neighborhood of $800/user/year. That's 3 TIMES the highest cost of the platforms they evaluate! How could you leave that out? Is it their believe that the impact of spam and viruses is identical to workers on both platforms? Wouldn't finding that out be the single most important metric they could publish?

    Ah... wait a minute. There are no Notes client viruses in the wild. I get it now.

  1. 3  Mike Brown  | 7/31/2004 3:14:53 AM

    "The reader should note that participants’ messaging system performance and uptime levels are not reflected in the findings."

    Says all you need to know about this report.

  1. 4  Oliver Regelmann http://www.n-komm.de/blog.nsf | 7/31/2004 4:48:20 AM

    Wasn't it Matt Cain from exactly that META group who talked about Deutschmarks in May at the DNUG conference in Germany? More than a year after the introduction of the Euro? At this moment he lost completely his credibility.

  1. 5    | 7/31/2004 4:49:23 AM

    Sorry, more than _two_ years of course.

  1. 6  Michael Sampson www.shared-spaces.com | 7/31/2004 9:19:16 AM

    #4 (Oliver) ... Matt Cain did not write this paper. As I suggested in my formal response, it was someone on the consulting side of META. Someone at Microsoft AR told me yesterday that it was Matt Cain, so I emailed him with a copy of my paper. He replied and said it was someone on the consulting side. I haven't heard anything from the author yet.

  1. 7  Andres Gorostidi www.gorostidi.net | 7/31/2004 9:40:16 AM

    Can■t believe that someone can take a TCO study seriously when they do not reflect a detail of the cost. The categorize each cost, but do not give details about each topic they are evaluating. For example... Miscellaneous hardware... What■s that ? For Example, they may be comparing Central storages (NAS drivers for .NSF) with distributed ones (loca drivers with PST), withouth taking in account the adventages of each approach. Or may they are comparing anti-SPAM software or Filtering contents withouth taking into accoun that on Domino is not so necessary since it has already some feautures about this shipped on the box. And what about software and licences cost ? May be they are comparing Windows Software versus Solaris withouth taking onto account that we can shoose Linux instead. And so on.... For example, administrative & staff cost... May be people on Domino is also doing administrative cost for hosting, or for applications, etc... (remeber, Domino is more than e-mail if you want).

    To give this study some credibititly I need to known what issue was studied versus what issue. And exactly on the same circunstances (how many users versus how many users, and what options I have on each side, please do not compare intel machines versus sun, or local drives versus NAS/SAN, etc...)

  1. 8  Ed Brill  | 7/31/2004 10:48:12 AM

    Some comments posted last night on the e-Pro Lotus Informer Blog:

    { Link }

  1. 9  David Bell  | 8/2/2004 4:06:56 PM

    "The reader should note that participants■ messaging system performance and uptime levels are not reflected in the findings."

    Yet later in the report it mentions that "service levels" were included.

    Did I miss something ? When did uptime drop out of the service level scope ?

  1. 10  Tim Rattray  | 8/18/2004 7:50:10 PM

    Cards on table: - I have worked with Notes since the release of R3.0. Love it. Live it. Have it at home. (Hate it at times too...:-)

    The PDF had a document properties field, which says Dee Anthony is the author. This could mean nothing (perhaps just the end user who pdf'd the source document) or it could be the author. Umm, I really have to do some work now, so I won't google his name.