Gartner: Focus on Business Issues, Not Emotions, When Considering IBM Lotus Domino

December 13 2005

Gartner has published its fourth report this year addressing their perspective on the Notes/Domino market.  The first, in January, was "IBM's Workplace Strategy Gains Credibility at Lotusphere".The second, in March, was "Is IBM's Lotus Notes/Domino a Safe Investment Platform?"  The third, in September, was "IBM at the Pivot Point with Domino 7", which recommends upgrades to Notes/Domino 7 for existing customers and consideration by non-Domino customers.

Now, the newest report is "Focus on Business Issues, Not Emotions, When Considering IBM Lotus Domino".  Per this discussion from the weekend, there doesn't seem to be a consensus on how to blog about an analyst report.  I can quote the first line of the report, which is displayed on Gartner's summary page [emphasis mine]:

Many Domino-related inquiries that Gartner receives come from longtime Domino customers actively considering a migration to Microsoft products, although few have actually made the move.
This is a very interesting report. It covers one of the key points I've emphasized over the years, which is that IBM Lotus customers who consider migrating from Notes/Domino typically do so without a solid business case.  They are responding in many cases to hype and FUD from Microsoft, which admittedly in the past (12+ months ago) was aided by confusion over the IBM product strategy.  

The new Gartner report dissects the hype and reality.  Gartner cautions that the full costs of a migration be considered, especially concerning Notes/Domino applications.  Microsoft tries very hard to convince customers/partners to separate the e-mail discussion from the applications discussion.  This frankenstein approach makes no sense for customers who have hundreds (or thousands) of Notes apps.  I've seen reports of customers spending US$500 or more per user to attempt to migrate Notes apps to the Microsoft platform, with limited success.  It's good that more and more data is getting out in the market about the realities of the technical advantages of Notes/Domino and why those apps are best-suited to staying on Notes/Domino.

Gartner also recommends that customers consider all the aspects of the two vendor strategies and platforms, including the lack of maturity in a number of the Microsoft collaboration offerings, and also in some of the IBM Workplace offerings.

I don't agree with everything in this Gartner report -- it has a market share guesstimate based on seats, which I thought we had all agreed wasn't a realistic market measurement, and they don't give IBM enough credit for the double-digit revenue growth for Notes in the last four fiscal quarters.  But overall, this report is an excellent discussion, and Gartner concludes it with useful recommendations to IBM for maintaining and growing market share.

Last night, I e-mailed the IBM Lotus messaging sales force about this report.  I told them that the message I would use with customers from this report is -- "You're considering a migration from Notes?  Are you really the kind of organization that makes decisions based on emotion and politics?"  I think what will be most interesting is that, in some geographies, we'll actually hear "yes" as an answer to that.

Ed Brill Category:  Lotus  Add/View Comments [37]

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  1. 1  Christopher Byrne http://www.controlscaddy.com/ | 12/13/2005 10:16:54 AM

    Ed,

    As you and I have discussed in the past, the decisions all too often are emotional or political (think Oklahoma State). In an ideal world where strong corporate and IT governance work as intended, no migration or acquisition of new software would occur unless it was to support a clearly identified, measurable business objective.

    But we do not live in an ideal world, and this includes IBM. If the world were ideal, would we have had to deal with IBM salepeople trying to get customers to migrate their applications from Notes/Domino to Websphere based on FUD?

    FUD is everywhere and relies on human emotional responses. So not only do we have to "sell", we need to educate everybody, including the media, customers, marketing people, and sales people!

  1. 2  Chris Mobley  | 12/13/2005 10:22:06 AM

    As we discussed in the DCNUG { Link } meeting with you last month, these decisions based on emotions and politics seems to be more prevalent in the US. While I'm sure it is not exclusive, I wonder why that is. I think someone should study this....Gartner??

    My guess would be that it is easier for MS to "woo and court" the US IT decision makers. Or it could be that they are less confident about their jobs because everyone knows "you can't get fired choosing Micro$oft."

  1. 3  Laura Ferrario N/A | 12/13/2005 10:41:03 AM

    Ed,

    I have never posted on your website before and I am sure you will not agree with my comments but here goes. I am currently a PCLP Admin/Developer and I have worked with Domino for 10 years. I am currently learning .NET and Java because I believe if the trend goes on, the Notes market will be significantly reduced in few years as I believe Notes to be in terminal decline. Now I know both yourself and your Domino Bloggers refuse to except this, but its a fact. Whilst Notes I believe to be a far better product then Exchange it still does not change the fact that more and more large companies are migrating to Exchange. Exchange is far simplier to use for the average user and at the end of the day this is what counts, not the blogging opinion of Domino Experts. On a side note, I have been working with Sharepoint and it bothers me to say it but its a far better solution then Quickplace. As a person that loves working with Domino I have excepted that Exchange is the future. Despite all your enthusiasm I believe one day you and your fellow bloggers will have to except that too. Kind Regards

  1. 4  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 12/13/2005 10:57:26 AM

    Laura -

    Normally I'd delete your comment as you didn't provide a valid e-mail address. But I'll let it go because it's an important comment.

    First, "terminal decline" is hard for me to believe when the business has been growing 10%+ for the last four quarters. My sales team has been winning net new customers all year long in 2005, including some wins in the 30,000 seat range. Are there customers migrating? Yes, both ways.

    Second, is EXCHANGE simpler to use or is Outlook? If we're talking about Outlook, then that's exactly why the next version of Notes is being designed for major improvements to usability and innovation. I'd find it harder to believe you truly feel Exchange is simpler to use.

    Third, SharePoint and Quickplace aren't really competitors. How about SharePoint vs. core Notes/Domino apps, or Workplace Services Express?

    I accept a lot of market realities. I accept that Microsoft will always have a better ability to focus in this market. I accept that they will always be able to bundle with their monopoly products. I accept that the Microsoft brand will always carry a different cache because of their consumer and desktop presence. But accepting the decline of MY business? No way, not when we're growing revenue, winning new customers ,and still standing after ten years of competing with MS.

  1. 5  james governor www.redmonk.com/jgovernor | 12/13/2005 11:50:26 AM

    the majority of decision making is driven by emotion. the rest is window dressing. Gartner would be screwed if customers made fact-based decisions because they would no longer need Gartner to support their "gut" decision. you make a decision and the rest is so much CYA.

    Java versus Windows

    Exchange versus Notes

    Windows versus Unix

    these are all religious arguments, with their own priesthoods and so on.

    Interesting to see gartner acknowledge the issue, which is a core element of RedMonk's world

  1. 6  Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 12/13/2005 12:11:31 PM

    @4 - "more and more large companies are migrating to Exchange". I hear this quite often and I reply with the simple question... "oh really, who?". And then I sit back and listen to the excuses for why they can't provide any names. Yes, I'm sure some companies have moved to Exchange, but as Ed points out it isn't one-way traffic, not by a long chalk.

    The important point here is the title of Gartner's report - business issues, not emotions. Of all the Domino customers I've spoken to who have said they're considering a move to Exchange (with an extremely low of actually doing it) I have not yet heard one single good business reason. Not one. If I hear "all our users like Outlook and use it at home" one more time... Okay, so that tells us Microsoft have got the client right (well, they've won the beauty contest anyway) and Lotus need to spend a bit more time on that aspect. Again I have a retort to "all our users like Outlook" - I simply ask to see the report that was written up after their study into user preference and home computing habits. What? You don't have one? So you're not really sure that 5,000 users prefer Outlook. Are you still going to bet a $2 million decision on that?

    Customers who move to Domino cite good business reasons - security, resilience, return on investment potential, fewer "upgrade" headaches every few years.

    As for SharePoint - typical Microsoft offering. Looks nice, shame about the rest. You can do much more with QuickPlace in terms of customisation and tailoring to a business solution before the developers have to be dragged in. Why is it that Microsoft ask for development skills for anyone working in SharePoint pre-sales? Answer: because that's what's needed to get the product beyond the basics.

  1. 7  Chris Whisonant http://cwhisonant.blogspot.com | 12/13/2005 12:32:04 PM

    Ed, is this the elusive Gartner report stating that "52% of all corporate mailboxes" run on Exchange? That is, if you can confirm or deny the existence of these figures in the report...

  1. 8  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 12/13/2005 12:36:44 PM

    @7 Chris - Over on Channel9, John W. from Microsoft gamely tried to respond by saying no, there isn't a Gartner report that says that MS has greater than 50%, but the other analysts (and "analysts") say so. Still no retraction forthcoming.

  1. 9  Kevin Pettitt www.lotusguru.com | 12/13/2005 1:10:31 PM

    @2, I was also at the DCNUG meeting and would echo Chris on the need for some sort of study about the global variation in IT decision-making styles. I would specifically like to see such a study take on the issue of corruption in the IT decision making process.

    Corruption for this purpose can be defined loosely as a situation where the objectively "correct" decision is overridden by a decision maker who has personally benefitted from the largesse of the winning vendor. Examples could include direct kickbacks common in many third world countries, or lavish gifts or paid entertainment that are more common here in the US (e.g. golf outings, skyboxes, etc.).

    Note that I am not limiting my definition just to government business deals, where such behavior would typically be considered criminal. I would also include any corporate, academic, or non-profit examples which might not be "illegal", but nevertheless have a corrupting effect on organizational morale. After all, what IT professional wants to work someplace where their well-considered recommendations are arbitrarily tossed out by "corrupt" leaders who then waste millions of $$$ on some boondoggle project and therefore can't pay their IT people what they're worth?

    It disturbs me to think that the US seems so susceptible to this sort of corruption, since corruption is typically a defining characteristic of a third-world country.

  1. 10  Susan Bulloch http://notesgoddess.net | 12/13/2005 1:24:37 PM

    I heard buddy Chris Miller say something like this last week in a presentation. He said to a customer: "Will moving to Exchange make your <insert your product here> cheaper, faster or better?"

    Good point IMHO. If it does, then by all means, go - but do include all the costs of going. In the grand scheme of things, most companies make widgets or services of some sort, and only use computers to facilitate the process. If a different piece of software makes your product better, the decision is easy. If there's no net impact on the price or quality of your product or service, why bother?

    Agree with @5 - if its not based on the bottom line, its a religious war. We with our noses in computers forget that we are not usually the product, just the process.

  1. 11  Chris Whisonant http://cwhisonant.blogspot.com | 12/13/2005 1:30:36 PM

    @8 - Yep, he finally responded... It appears he was trying to say that the Gartner report didn't say that MS had >50% but that all the other reports did! Interesting since none of the others did.

  1. 12  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 12/13/2005 1:35:02 PM

    @11 to be fair, the other reports do in fact say that MS has greater than 50%. but the numbers are widely varying.

  1. 13  Chris Whisonant http://cwhisonant.blogspot.com | 12/13/2005 1:44:52 PM

    Gotcha! Speaking of this, the following just showed up at devWorks - I was going to search for something else and saw this at the top of the list...

    https://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/nd6forum.nsf/DateAllThreadedweb/10f7f23f3b228619852570d6006bdd2a?OpenDocument

  1. 14  Paxton McVoy  | 12/13/2005 2:10:01 PM

    @4 Ed, Since this figure gets referred to fairly frequently...does 10% growth over the past 4 quarters refer to sales growth just within the Lotus brand, or does this number include some sales of software from other IBM brands or products included as well, specifically workplace.

    Also, why accept that Microsoft has a better ability to focus in this market? IBM isn't short on resources, and you have a better product?

  1. 15  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 12/13/2005 2:22:46 PM

    @14 wondered if anyone was going to challenge me on that.

    Microsoft has a better ability to focus in this market -- because when Microsoft calls on a CIO, they have two or three things to talk about. Windows Server System, Office System, .NET. That's it. They aren't sell XBox360, natural keyboards, MSN.

    IBM calls on a CIO and has hardware, software, services, business consulting, training, outsourcing, financing, and just about everything else to talk about. We may have brand leads and specialists, but that's more moving parts to the discussion.

    This is just the way it is. (And this could be a whole blog entry by itself)

    The last four quarters of growth has been reported variously as Notes as well as Lotus Software...but specifically Notes revenue has been reported as growing 10%+ in each of the last four quarters. There's no Workplace, Portal, or anything else in that number (though there is in the reported Lotus software numbers).

  1. 16  Frode Danielsen  | 12/13/2005 2:52:43 PM

    There is something wrong with the marked when Gartner puts out a report named "Is IBM's Lotus Notes/Domino a Safe Investment Platform?"

    I recently read a book called "In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters" - where one of the points made was that a company selling two products that does allot of the same are shooting themself in the foot. Like Notes/Domino vs WSE or WCS. Isn't this was we are hearing about IBM sales reps now? They push WSE or WCS because thats CONSIDERED the newest and hottest? I guess this is gives IBM a dillema. Continue and say both are great and have cutomers not understand the difference or what to pick - or to say that they will merge in the future and have the rest of the world scream notes is dead again...

  1. 17  david racicot  | 12/13/2005 3:39:14 PM

    First: I agree with Ed. Notes is selling and it's comeback is going to slap a lot of people who bet on it's demise. R6 was good. R7 is good. The future looks good.

    Second: Recent conversation I have had with people implementing Websphere confirm it is a cumbersome exercise. Updates are horribly complex etc. So. I haven't changed my position that Notes is a superior platform regardless of what anyone says.

    Third: I haven't seen any yellow boxing glove ads lately in any of the Canadian IT newspapers I've come across. The last one I just looked at had 3 ads for Websphere. This pisses me off. See point 1.

  1. 18  Craig Wiseman  | 12/13/2005 4:02:07 PM

    @17 I like the boxing gloves ads, but if they're like this one sitting on my desk where the Brontosarus head is labeled "Lotus", them I'm not sure they help....

  1. 19  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 12/13/2005 4:13:49 PM

    @17 we've fixed that.

  1. 20  Luke Kolin www.deltava.org | 12/13/2005 4:19:12 PM

    The problem I have with this entire discussion is that it's based around two points of comparison: Notes vs. Exchange/outlook for e-mail and then Notes vs. Websphere for application development.

    If you want to say that Notes is alive in the e-mail space, absolutely. But I spent a good half decade as a Notes Developer - just go try and find work in that field noawadays. I am lucky to see a single Notes development opening in Atlanta; whereas there are dozens of J2EE openings every day at six figure rates of pay. Notes IS dead as an application development platform in the sense that very few new development projects are being based around it, and those that are, are usually in existing Notes shops. Many of them (one of my former employers) were explicitly moving away from Notes back in 2001.

    The Notes vs. Websphere question misses the point that Websphere is not the only J2EE application server out there, just one of the more expensive and complicated ones. There are dozens of folks building things with Tomcat, mySQL, Postgres and other free tools that have less complexity than Websphere and a much more attractive price tag. A Tomcat 5.0 to 5.5 upgrade on BSD took me around 15 minutes; just unTAR the archive, copy the three XML files needed and you're off to the races.

    In a lot of development shops you may see Websphere (or to be fair, Weblogic) as the production environment, and all of the developers are busy using Tomcat as it provides equivalent functionality with superior performance and cost. After a few months the logical question "why don't we use this in production?" comes up and you see cases where Websphere instances on OS400 get replaced with Tomcat on Linux.

    If you perceive the strategic threat coming from Outlook or Websphere, you're missing the most dangerous adversary of all.

    Cheers!

    Luke

  1. 21  Craig Wiseman  | 12/13/2005 4:22:37 PM

    @19. Cool. I was going to scan & use it when someone asked me why the had labelled the dinosaur Lotus....

  1. 22  Peter de Haas http://www.peterdehaas.com | 12/13/2005 5:01:01 PM

    Ed,

    I was just about to comment to your questions over on Richard Schwartz' blog.

    The report you are highlighting hereactually includes this double digit number I was referring to. I will make my detailled comment (despite the blinking screens) over on Richard's blog.

    I do think you make it sound a bit to easy : "They are responding in many cases to hype and FUD from Microsoft, which admittedly in the past (12+ months ago) was aided by confusion over the IBM product strategy"

    I would say it takes a bit more than that. Many organisation are (re)considering their messaging and collaboration platform and evaluating whether or not it still meets their needs.

    Microsoft provides a viable alternative for Lotus Notes, which it didn't a few years ago. IBM themselves created confusion about their product strategy, can you really blaim Microsoft for taking advantage of that ?

    As for the emotions and politics ... isn;t that what you "the boss loves .." presentations are all about. Let's face it it is part of the game if you like it or not.

  1. 23  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 12/13/2005 5:23:40 PM

    My "Boss loves Microsoft" session is all about how to RESPOND to the emotions and politics. The answer is typically technical superiority, but it's also a healthy dose of how to debate.

  1. 24  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 12/13/2005 5:44:30 PM

    For those keeping score at home, Peter refers to this thread on Richard Schwartz's weblog:

    { Link }

  1. 25  Ed Maloney  | 12/13/2005 7:25:59 PM

    @20 - Luke's comments are on the money. What I can't figure out is who is downloading the tens of thousands of templates from Openntf if the Notes developer market is dead. Bangalore development centers perhaps?

  1. 26  Richard Schwartz http://www.rhs.com/poweroftheschwartz | 12/13/2005 11:04:55 PM

    @22: I've fixed the flashing in IE. I had to disable comment preview for IE users to do it though.

  1. 27  Randall Shimizu http://is-perspectives.blogspot.com/ | 12/14/2005 12:26:31 AM

    Microsoft relies upon FUD as a tool influence politics more so than any other company. Because of this it is vital that IBM increase marketing for Lotus. The 10% growth rate of Notes is great, but the question is this just a lull until the release of Exchange 12. Now is the time that Lotus must maximize market share gains while Exchange is weak.

  1. 28  Thomas Schulte  | 12/14/2005 2:08:07 AM

    @25 Yes Ed we would like to know that also, having a pure Notes application there (not webified not portalized) that got downloaded more then eightthousendfivehundret times in general and more than twothousandsevenhundret time with the last release.

  1. 29  Alan Bell http://www.dominux.co.uk | 12/14/2005 4:52:02 AM

    I can understand why some companies and governments would move to Open Source software thoughout, but I can't think of any reason for moving from one expensive proprietary feature rich platform (Domino) to an expensive proprietary feature weak email server (Exchange) when you could go to a Free Open platform with whatever features you want. I can see migrations drying up between the proprietary solutions in future. Personally I would advocate OpenOffice.Org + Thunderbird + Firefox + Notes on Windows until the Notes client comes out on Linux then move to Linux on the desktop, with Domino on Linux at the back end.

  1. 30  Nathan T. Freeman  | 12/14/2005 5:42:01 AM

    LOL

    @28 & @25 - I guess I could just go look up the names of the users who downloaded and trace their source IPs. Maybe they're all MS employees trying to figure out how to implement those tools in Sharepoint or something.

  1. 31  david racicot  | 12/14/2005 9:18:14 AM

    @19. You mean more ads! Cool. Is there an online place I can view them?

    @29. Absolutely right (isn't that a song?). Except I'd stick with Notes for mail. Linux desktops (Suse) with FireFox, Domino Web Access for mail/apps, OpenOffice, Linux servers, Domino for app dev, DB2 express.

  1. 32  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 12/14/2005 10:39:56 AM

    @31 IBM adjusted the ad mentioned so that the logos are more appropriately positioned. The other ND7 ad, as previously discussed here, is at

    { Link }

  1. 33  david racicot  | 12/14/2005 11:59:39 AM

    @32. Ah. What about actually puiblishing them in IT papers and mags of recent? What about continuing the theme (especially perhaps targeting smb)? The solution sets mentioned @29 and @31 are a knock out!

  1. 34  Luke Kolin www.deltava.org | 12/14/2005 12:21:50 PM

    @28/25 - I wouldn't disagree with the download numbers at OpenNTF, but it's puzzling to me why the forum there is so quiet. If we're dealing with tens of thousands of downloads that are turning into implementations in some significant proportion, you would expect to see significantly more feedback on the site - questions, suggestions and interaction. As it stands, there's approximately three dozen posts in the past month; about one a day.

    I'm just an observer in the Lotus/IBM space now, but the vibrancy in the appdev space just doesn't seem to be there.

  1. 35  Thomas Schulte  | 12/15/2005 2:34:28 AM

    @34 Well Luke it is quite funny that we have reactions from Sweden, Germany, Denmark, Austria, France and some other European countrys and there is another discussion forum over at atnotes.de which is quite vivid. We know 15 companys direct with roundabout 10000 users overall who use !!Help!! and have been notified by some business partners that they use it as a source for their customers.

    So i think, yes there is some vibrancy in this appdev space.

    But what makes me wonder is that this we get only european responses and zero from the American or Asian world.

  1. 36  Paul Evers www.dsscorp.com | 1/4/2006 9:20:19 AM

    Interesting discussions here. Gee our Lotus practice is growing like crazy including significant application development and emails migrations to Lotus. Our customers like the fact that Domino will run on almost any platform while Microsoft products run on, well, Microsoft. If Notes is dead, someone should tell IBM because they keep enhancing it, adding to it, etc. And someone should tell the full house at LotusSPhere..they think its alive, well, and GROWING also!

  1. 37  Brian Vincent  | 1/18/2006 4:12:48 PM

    This is in response to Laura's comment about Notes being in terminal decline: I say that has to do with how IBM handles Notes over the next 2 years.

    Migrating corporate groupware systems requires immense cost. This prevents any landslide migration event. Right now the battle is a tug of war and nobody is in the mud yet.

    This bodes well for both IBM and Microsoft as the merits of their products do matter. Currently, exchange has the convenience of integration with windows networking, the better client UI, and frankly the (in)famous Microsoft name. Notes has the ability to work across multiple platforms, better reliability, and rapid application development going for it. This creates a draw.

    IBM can maintain or even grow its market share depending on how they position their upcoming “Hanover” release. In my opinion IBM will have to focus on the following:

    1. Overhaul the Notes UI and make it a rewarding experience for users. Currently users find Notes draining to use; too many options, awkward terminology, and a lack of gentle ui guidance. CEOs and CFOs are the ones making migration decisions and are users (the kind least likely to attend training or read the manual)

    2. IBM must clean up Notes / Workplace confusion. News still makes it look as if Workplace is meant to phase out Notes and/or force Java as the development environment. Uncertainty will send decision makers to the perceived stability of the MS product line.

    3. Features should do what is expected, without the "well, in Notes it works like this" explanations. This plagues users, developers, and administrators in all 3 environments. Researching and working around Notes quirks is costly and frustrating (hence the emotional responses Ed talks about.)

    4. Better relational database capabilities without expensive middleware products. The future is real time against huge central data stores. Notes is either part of that in 2 years or it looses some viability as a RAD platform.

    5. Make inroads with small and medium businesses as well as academic institutions. These are the places where executives and professionals are incubated (currently with outlook.)

    These all sound simple, but IBM is a large company with many ambitious executives, products, and agendas. These create many “shirt tail” decision makers and lots of conflicting requirements resulting in less than ideal compromises. Fortunately for IBM Microsoft has reached critical mass is now also having similar internal issues. Successful products require a PM team strong enough to keep outside executives and requirements from hijacking their product, but smart enough to see where successful synergy can be attained.

    Notes is definitely not dead, but if it doesn’t make a big move in Hanover there will be mud involved.