More fun with Microsoft and Google

July 24 2009

Been an interesting week for competition in the messaging and collaboration market.  A few items worth looking at.

On the Google front -- you know, I'm glad that they and their partners are getting a little more aggressive in going after the Notes space, because all that does is bring out the realities and weaknesses of the Google GAPE solution.  Blog posts from Marie Scott (read the comments too) and a new blog by Charles Reid examine the significant gaps in the GAPE story, and a clever-but-dated view of the Notes world from Google partner Cloud Sherpas prompted some definitive smack-down in comments (apparently causing the sherpas to retreat) and other observations around the blogosphere (and some quick wit, too). All this on the heels of press last week that a compromised Google account gave up the goods on Twitter's business plan.

Meanwhile, my friends at Microsoft have offered a missive this morning on the supposed-millions who have switched to Exchange and SharePoint from Notes.  It's well-written and logical, too bad for all the lies and half-truths.  So let's take a look:

more than 4.7 million people began the switch to Exchange and SharePoint from Notes
Actually, during the earnings call and at WPC last week, Microsoft said these users "had switched".  I'm inclined, from what I know of how Microsoft measures a "Notes compete" "switcher", that "began" is the right verb here (began may mean nothing more than a verbal indication).  Too bad the financial analysts who listened to the earnings concall were subjected to the spin version.
A Ferris Research survey of 917 companies found that Notes systems can cost twice as much as Exchange 2007. But, most businesses have their eyes on the longer term productivity gains that Exchange and SharePoint deliver.
Ferris's "survey" from January 2008 was an opt-in of their newsletter subscribers (not at all random), with no validation as to whether those participating accurately represented their organization or the market as a whole.  The survey also counted every entity as a single "share", thus wildly mis-representing actual market share.  No statistician would support that survey as valid.  Further, it didn't survey ANYTHING about total cost of ownership, only acquisition costs -- and again, so few Notes customers are on Ferris's mailing list that the sample size is too small to be conclusive.   Either way, I find it fascinating that Microsoft believes that it is unmeasurable "longer term productivity gains" that are the motivation for switching...sounds promising, but the best news is that by the time someone realizes those productivity gains were a house of cards, the migration will be too far gone to remember the promises.
On the other hand, Notes customers wanting a cloud-based solution have limited options.  IBM's "Goldilocks approach" (companies cannot be too small or too big to move to the cloud as the IBM service starts at 1,000 users and stops at 10,000) and the added costs of cobbling together solutions based on different platform choices (Domino, WebSphere, DB2) give customers few choices.
I must have missed where LotusLive Notes has anything to do with WebSphere or DB2.  Also we certainly offer custom options for customers outside the 1K to 10K range that is published in Passport Advantage -- IBM has been hosting and deploying Notes/Domino environments for customers in private cloud environments for over a decade.  LotusLive Notes, especially its upcoming V2 version, will take advantage of the best SaaS characteristics to even further drive down the costs for a cloud-based messaging solution.  Microsoft might also want to check on some of the customers referenced in the blog -- I think one is bankrupt and another is still mostly running Notes messaging.
With Notes, the skills are dwindling and expensive.  With SharePoint, they are booming and in-demand.  Just take a look at the trend from Indeed.com, and you can see where companies are investing for the future.
I love when Microsoft distorts job postings on one US website as a way to indicate a "trend".  First of all, at WPC, Microsoft admitted that millions of seats of SharePoint are shelfware -- it is no surprise that demand for SharePoint skills in job posts are on the rise, because companies were sold a bunch of shelfware and are trying desperately to find enough SharePoint people to do something with their sunk investment!  Further, the indeed.com US numbers (used in the MS blog entry) tell one story, in other countries it is another:
Lotus Notes SharePoint
Indeed Deutschland (Germany) 881 610
Indeed Canada 505 398
Indeed Italia (Italy) 122 109



That's if you even think these are the best search strings...I am not sure they are indicative of much of anything other than search engine creativity.  However, there is one aspect of the job trends that I wish I knew what to do about.  I think that with all the TCO improvements in Domino 7 and Domino 8.x, most organizations need fewer Domino admins than in the past (and far fewer than are needed in the Exchange/SharePoint world).  This becomes somehow an indicator of whether you should use the product or not.  Maybe we should call ourselves Maytag?

I hadn't really planned on a competitive discussion on the blog today, but this Microsoft blog entry pretty much asks for my response.  Now I will go back to reviewing plans for upcoming Lotus activities, analyst presentations, and reference efforts.  More about that in my next blog entry.

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Microsoft  Add/View Comments [21]

Post a Comment

  1. 1  Scott  | 7/24/2009 10:48:00 AM

    I would think that showing more jobs are available for something like Sharepoint would indicate more support is needed for it and/or less people actually want those jobs.

    But I also believe that less support is actually needed for Domino/Notes due to it being that easier to administer. I'll admit, that I've now spent more time administering a domino/notes environment then I did an exchange environment (yep, i've been on 2 different teams now... assumingly like many others). But I look at it this way:

    I administer 45+ domino servers in as many different geographical locations with 2200+ users. I do all the server upgrades, issue automatic upgrades (smart upgrade). I create all the documentation. I do have liaisons to do user setups and some of the small fixing here and there, but for the most part, I end up as the go-to guy.

    And to think I only started in the Lotus Notes game as a first time Notes user with 7.0.1 client. (We're almost all on 8.5 now.... still lots of 8.0.x clients). ... Could I do this running exchange/outlook.... maybe? maybe not? I don't know.

    I guess what I'm saying is... showing more job postings one way or the other doesn't say much. If there's 10,000 apples and 50 oranges... of course there is going to be more more jobs for apple-peelers (assuming that is a job).

    different note: Ed Brill, your blog is visually ugly. Please get something more appealing to the eyes. Just sayin... :)

  1. 2  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 7/24/2009 10:58:32 AM

    @1 I've had a blog redesign in queue for several months. I agree it needs help. Maybe I need to run a contest for redesign, with a Lotusphere ticket as the prize :)

  1. 3  Scott  | 7/24/2009 11:06:16 AM

    Or you could use/promote the very nice new blog template

  1. 4  John Head http://www.johndavidhead.com | 7/24/2009 11:54:01 AM

    @3 Scott, Ed is running the new blog template. He just happens to use a theme created in the original Domino Blog template, before IBM included it in the box. That is the power of the blog template that ships - you can make the look of your blog anything you want. The last thing we need is 50 blogs all using the same default theme :-)

  1. 5  Volker Weber http://vowe.net/about | 7/24/2009 12:12:26 PM

    The theme was created as part of Movable Type which was powering edbrill.com 1.0. { Link }

  1. 6  Henning Heinz  | 7/24/2009 12:50:00 PM

    Wouldn't the correct search against Sharepoint be QuickR and/or Quickplace?

  1. 7  Rory Wohl http://www.rorywohl.us | 7/24/2009 1:24:52 PM

    You can't go by indeed.com searches for number of job openings. The same job could be posted by 14 recruiters making it seem like there are 14 jobs when there is really only 1.

    When you consider the Microsoft-Lotus mindshare gap, the numbers get more distorted. Everybody and their uncle will list an MS job, not so many a Notes job. So, if you've got 14 recruiters listing 1 SharePoint job and only 7 recruiters listing the 1 Notes job, you'll get numbers like what MS cites.

  1. 8  Christopher Byrne http://www.controlscaddy.com/ | 7/24/2009 1:38:17 PM

    Interesting. I left a comment/question on the Cloud Sherpas blog yesterday, and it is not there now.

  1. 9  Jim Casale http://www.jimcasale.net | 7/24/2009 1:41:44 PM

    @8 Maybe it's hidden/lost in the clouds ;-)

  1. 10  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 7/24/2009 1:59:41 PM

    @8 are you sure it was "approved" or is it awaiting moderation?

  1. 11  Charles Robinson http://www.cubert.net | 7/24/2009 2:04:39 PM

    Ed - So what you going to do about it? :-)

    @7 - I agree, number of job *posts* isn't an indication of anything due to the repeats. It's frustrating, to be sure.

    @8 - It's moderated and they're a little slow on getting comments posted.

  1. 12  Christopher Byrne http://www.controlscaddy.com/ | 7/24/2009 2:08:24 PM

    @10...Dunno

  1. 13  Jake White  | 7/24/2009 4:23:35 PM

    @6 -- Is Microsoft saying that 4.7 million switched from QuickR? Or is that they're saying that now Sharepoint can provide a mail infrastructure.

    C'mon.

  1. 14  Peter Wilson  | 7/24/2009 5:44:17 PM

    I was wondering if other industries spin their sales and products as much as the IT industry.... It's probably harder to do where the outputs are far more tangible such as construction, heavy engineering.

    ie. "more than XX people began the switch to buying our tractors than your tractors"

    I guess the only real comparison above the 'noise' is each companies balance sheet :-)

    Pete

  1. 15  Henning Heinz  | 7/24/2009 6:09:08 PM

    Well a search of Lotus Notes against Sharepoint does not make much sense but a search for Lotus Notes will probably get many hits (although Connections seem to be even more popular). Maybe they are not much indicative of anything. But I find 4.7 million users quite impressive even if those have not switched yet. I hope that IBM will respond.

  1. 16  Vitor Pereira http://www.vitor-pereira.com | 7/25/2009 6:54:32 AM

    @14 Yes, other industries do it too and in some it's even easier. The auto industry requests government registration for cars which were never sold.

  1. 17  Abraham V  | 7/25/2009 10:38:34 AM

    A comment that some people make about administering Domino takes more time that Exchange\Sharepoint does not make sense to me, most of the Domino admin i do is because of applications, comparing jobs would be what a Domino admin does related to email only compared to Exchange, i don't do much admin only related to email, only with delivery failures and so on, but i don't recall a single time it was Domino fault.

    Other point is how they think that moving to MS is a cost saving measure? we also run Sharepoint in the environment, i that thing runs on a failover environment that needs, 2 servers for front end, one indexing server, plus the cluster of sql, that is like 4-5 servers, all those together means clustered email for 2-3 of our locations in Domino. The only cost saving measure i can imagine is in training, the learning curve for notes users is longer that it is for MS outlook, and i think is comprehensive, Notes is not only email. Maybe IBM needs to give away computer based training with new licenses... or something similar.

    As many has commented here, why does IBM falls in the game of comparing apples with oranges?

  1. 18  Roberto Boccadoro  | 7/25/2009 5:26:02 PM

    @17 - as Ed repeatedly said we usually refrain from doing this kind of comparison. Ed's number of posts like this has been decreasing year on year. The point is that sometimes lies become too big so we have to respond.

  1. 19  stephen  | 7/26/2009 8:25:17 AM

    @17: "The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it"

    - Josef Goebbels (and others....)

  1. 20  Karen Hooper http://www.drnotes.com.au | 7/26/2009 10:14:00 PM

    @17: Re training learning curve. I have recently been training end users who have moved from Outlook to Notes 8. I am now convinced there is an assumption that Outlook users do not need training or very little training. All the people I trained were very excited with all the NEW features that Notes had that Outlook didn't! I didn't have the heart to tell them that Outlook does have those features but because they had never been trained they didn't know about them. There are a lot of Outlook users out there doing things the long & wrong way!

  1. 21  Abraham V  | 7/27/2009 12:12:13 PM

    To my training point i mean that most of email users have use outlook somewhere, which is natural for them to use it at work, for Notes.. i have only seen this on large enterprises which users don't have a clue on how to work with it, from the users perspective , users open outlook and the email is there, in notes, you open it and you have a welcome page with a bunch of options.. there is where the training need starts.

    I'm in no way in favor of outlook or MS at all, i really think that Domino is far superior on many aspects, but as an admin here and as a responsible of the email service, i am talking on behalf of my users, they need training to manage Notes.