Roger Rowan: Lotus Notes and Email Alternatives

May 12 2010

A few weeks ago, Roger Rowan commented on this blog that he had done a financial analysis of whether it made sense for his company to migrate from Lotus Notes/Domino to Google Apps or other alternatives.  Roger kindly offered to post that document for sharing, which he has now done.

I read it, and it reads like a solid, unbiased, easy-to-understand conclusion:

At any given time you can find variations in the numbers however at the end of the day if you look fairly at all the alternatives you'll find that if you've done your job to leverage Lotus Notes to benefit your company to solve your business problems, then moving to something else just does not make economic or business sense.

Find Roger's analysis on SlideShare:
Lotus Notes and Email alternatives
View more documents from Roger Rowan.

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Messaging  Add/View Comments [6]

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  1. 1  Pierre  | 5/12/2010 12:02:24 PM

    Hi Ed,

    ... if you've done your job to leverage Lotus Notes to benefit your company to solve your business problems...

    Sadly, many organizations are using Lotus Notes as an email client only. They have not even trained their employee to use the "Calendering" features. We saw this so many times. So those people are now considering others avenues for their emails, wich have become a basic need throught the years.

    At the decision level where IBM/Lotus plays, the decisions are not always based on features, performance, RIO, etc. but often on a political decision to switch. So now that every business have emails, switching to another platform is, I beleive, often a political decision not a rational one.

    - Pierre

  1. 2  Eric Mack http://www.NotesOnProductivity.com | 5/12/2010 1:39:28 PM

    Pierre, I see this too. That's where Lotus BPs and IBM can help customers get more from Lotus Notes.

    IBM has LCTY and I think they still have the software catalog they announced at LS2010 although I have not seen it promoted. (I may not be looking).

    At the end of the day, it takes boots on the ground, both Lotus BPs and IBMers to help show oranizations how to "...leverage Lotus Notes to benefit your company to solve your business problems..."

    For me, I know that if I can get 10- min with someone -- Admin, Developer, or Sr. Exec, I can show how I get value and help others. The challenge of course is getting the audience...

  1. 3  Rajan  | 5/12/2010 4:10:24 PM

    I agree with Pierre. Company that are making the decsion to switch/switched is not based on feature or something wrong with Lotus Notes.

    Upper management thinks Microsoft is the golden product and can do magic.

    Any CTO/CIO with this mind set is not even going to look what Lotus Notes can do better with little or no further investment all.

  1. 4  David (The Notes Guy in Seattle)  | 5/12/2010 7:01:31 PM

    @3 You are right about the "golden product" concept. The common misconception is that it is a "political decision" which translates into "their decision is not logical <to me>". Until the logic of the factors influencing the decisions is understood (yes, their decisions really do follow logic) it will appear to be a "political" or "emotional" decision and they will be unstoppable. If you want to learn about those influences, check out the book "Influence, the Psychology of Persuasion" by Dr. Caldini. I highly recommend this book for technical people (or anyone else) who wants to understand how people are influenced.

  1. 5  BenH  | 5/13/2010 9:39:11 AM

    Just found a hurdle while trying to only travel with my 3G iPad, Slideshare does not work on the iPad. Traveler is working fine though, just need more feats for setting up meeting and we will be set.