Still more press coverage of Lotus Notes for Linux

July 19 2006

Two more articles about the Lotus Notes for Linux announcement that are making the rounds, both by InfoWorld's Neil McAllister:

Infoworld, Lotus Notes on Linux: Time to bite?:

We're seeing the begininng of a concerted effort on the part of companies like IBM and Novell to challenge Windows for a piece of the corporate desktop. The question that remains is whether the uncertainty around Windows Vista is enough to persuade customers to bite.
Techworld, Notes breaks away from Windows:
But if you're a Notes customer who has been considering alternatives to Windows, this is big news. If you're not a Notes customer, you might consider becoming one. The addition of Lotus Notes brings a full, rich enterprise collaboration platform to Linux.

It joins the broad catalogue of mature, commercial-grade applications already available on the free OS, such as the OpenOffice.org productivity suite, the Firefox browser, and the Gimp image-manipulation program.  ...

"The year of desktop Linux" has been declared so prematurely, so often, that it's become something of an industry in-joke. But one thing I can guarantee you: This year, Microsoft won't be laughing. Not even a chuckle.

Ed Brill Madison, WI USA Category:  Lotus  Add/View Comments [23]

Post a Comment

  1. 1  Bruce Elgort http://takingnotes.openntf.org | 7/19/2006 7:55:32 AM

    Julian and I spent a little time discussing Notes 7.0.1 on Linux during Episode 25 of the Taking Notes podcast { Link }

    Bruce

  1. 2  Ben Rose http://www.jaffacake.net | 7/19/2006 8:18:36 AM

    Interesting that Novell was mentioned above.

    Is there a Groupwise client for Novell.

  1. 3  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 7/19/2006 8:36:55 AM

    @2 yes, two options, both a Groupwise client and also they bought Ximian Evolution

    { Link }

  1. 4  Philip Storry http://www.not-so-rapid.com | 7/19/2006 8:42:30 AM

    In the techworld article - they say that Lotus Notes is declining.

    I thought that it wasn't? You're often quoting reports from reputable sources like Gartner, and IBM's own sales figures, which disprove this idea.

    Will someone from IBM be contacting them to correct that minor mistake? ;-)

  1. 5  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 7/19/2006 8:47:23 AM

    @4 I don't want to sidetrack this into the marketshare discussion, but it is true that there's been very minor decline in market share year to year according to Gartner...1%. IBM's revenue for Notes/Domino has, as you point out, grown six of the last seven fiscal quarters but the analysts believe the market has grown slightly faster.

  1. 6  David Vasta http://david.davidandkelly.com | 7/19/2006 9:21:59 AM

    @ Ben - Novell/Groupwise own the Evolution Mail Client - { Link }

    So Novell has a Linux Mail Client for thier solution. I use Evolution @ home in the past and it's a great Outlook killer. I would think that a Evolution connector to Domino would have been out by now.

    I know now that I only have one app left to get over from Windows to Linux and I am done. Funny part is it's an IBM app called Client Access.

    I think Microsoft has to taking a long hard look at this move. The next 12 months should be very interesting.

  1. 7  Mike Lazar  | 7/19/2006 9:24:35 AM

    Really? The market has grown faster? That's not what I heard recently. The words I heard from 2 separate analyst firms were, "The market for new messaging customers is flat." The market for managed/hosted messaging is growing quite quickly, but the market for new seats is not.

  1. 8  Wild Bill http://www.billbuchan.com | 7/19/2006 9:46:43 AM

    The Linux Client for Notes - long overdue IMHO - is such a strategic one - that its bound to make waves like this. This new IBM "Aggressive" strategy is paying dividends, and I for one fully support it.

    Just off the phone today with a customer moving their entire data center to Linux. He mentined that SUSE 10 Enterprise server - just out this week - *appeared* to be already supported in terms of Domino (That would be a very useful assertion to have confirmed)... If this is correct (And I for one wont believe it till its publically announced) then it just shows how *hard* IBM are pushing for Linux at both datacenter and desktop, and how fast we can expect adoption.

    After all, who wants to wait for Longhorn - whatever it may actually transpire to be, and whenever it ships. The market *sentiment* has swung away from Redmond and onto open software. And if your an MS shop, can you take the gamble that mismanagement produces a Longhorn "reset" and subsequent 3 year delay, just like Vista ?

    (Granted, Notes is most definately *not* open software, but as one of the market leaders in the enterprise messaging market, its support of Linux is a significant step to breaking Microsoft's grip on the enterprise desktop).

    Now. All we have to do is see the code - and lets be careful about expectations on what will be delivered. It may not be all things to all people - for instance, its initially RedHat supported, with SUSE and Novell Desktop following closely.

    But take heart that its an actual product now, and will get better over time - just like the rest of the Notes clients have.

    I suspect we *wont* see a massive Linux desktop adoption this year - but I suspect that we will see a lot of piloting and testing on this, for a big push next year..

    ---* Bill

    (God, I wish Apple would put iTunes on Linux..)

  1. 9  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 7/19/2006 10:14:38 AM

    @6 - { Link } or { Link } if you want commercial software

  1. 10  Chris  | 7/19/2006 10:47:55 AM

    Have there been any screenshots of Notes running on Linux floating around? I would love to see what it looks like, not because it is running on Linux, but to see what it looks like running on Eclipse. Do Notes' widgets (i.e. field brackets, dialog boxes, etc.) look any different on Eclipse?

  1. 11  Rob Ingram  | 7/19/2006 11:56:31 AM

    @8)Bill Domino 7.0.2 will officially add support for SLES 10 both 32 and 64 bit OS)- 7.0.2 is due out Sept. Hope your customer can deploy this version.

    Good news re Linux taking off. Any more Linux deployment stories others have would be great to hear about.

  1. 12  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 7/19/2006 11:57:51 AM

    @10 reminder that no anonymous comments are allowed.

    BUT

    I posted a picture in my flickr stream last week,

    { Link }

    @6 "I would think that a Evolution connector to Domino would have been out by now."

    Why would you think that?

    @7 this is why I so dislike the conversation... in software, what do you measure? New seats, renewals from existing seats, straight revenue, etc. I think that the overall market revenue is growing even if there are not huge numbers of new seat opportunities.

  1. 13  Samuel deHuszar Allen  | 7/19/2006 12:12:20 PM

    @12 Also, in what segment of the overall market are there no prospects for new seats? A lot of small-medium sized businesses are just starting to grow to the point where it makes sense to set up a messaging / collaboration / back-end management network and are looking at these competing platforms. Are they being counted? Or do they not have a big enough target on their back, even if there are 100s of 1-10 employee corporations for every single 1000 employee corporation?

    A lot of these corporations go with Microsoft because MS Office came with their Dell and it seems like the only sensible option to just extend their environment with an Exchange server.

    I know I've beaten this dead horse several times here, but it seems to me that's the growth market, and most of them have no idea what Lotus Notes is or does if they've even heard of it.

  1. 14  Roger Hintz  | 7/19/2006 1:14:23 PM

    @13 Dead horse or not, you've hit the nail on the head. This is my situation more often than not. I work for a small IT consulting firm that specializes in SMB customers. Nearly all of our customers are less than 1000 seats and I seem to be fighting that uphill battle to get a little education out every day in the search for new prospects. There is definitely growth potential in the SB market.

  1. 15  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 7/19/2006 1:25:01 PM

    @13 - I agree with you 100%. It's a major market that Lotus is completely missing.

  1. 16  Mike Lazar  | 7/19/2006 2:10:20 PM

    Ed, you know I think revenue is a better choice for measurement, but what I was getting at is analysts are saying most companies that are going to deploy a messaging infrastructure have already done so. So, if you increase revenue for ND, that means you are most likely stealing from Exchange or Groupwise. As for the SMBs, the push there is exactly what I mentioned, hosted/managed services. The market for hosted collaboration is growing massively, and the market price point is coming down to a level that is attractive to smaller firms. Those guys might have been using Yahoo or Hotmail before, or the free iMail service from their ISP to download via POP3. Now they are moving to a hosted collaborative system. While that is more seats, per se, it's not enough to affect the overall growth numbers. To summarize this long diatribe, seat counts are not growing quickly so if revenues are up, that means you are either taking customers from your competition, able to charge more for your product, and getting a small boost from the hosted world adding some seats (but not enough to really warrant calling the market a "growth market").

  1. 17  iiq374 http://iiq374.blogspot.com | 7/19/2006 3:06:08 PM

    @10 - I argee, I think the most exciting thing about this release for me is the sneak peek at Hannover :D

  1. 18  Notes lurker  | 7/19/2006 3:42:42 PM

    *coughs*

    Someone jumped the gun on the Passport site. The linux client is now available for download.

    File is 378MB and comes as a .zip file.

    Installation is a bit convoluted and involves extracting the contents of a zip file, then moving a setup file to a very deeply nested directory.

    I've attempted an install on Ubuntu, just for kicks, and was kicked out of the setup program early on when it checked the Mozilla version.

    I'm still building a Red Hat box to test it out properly.

  1. 19  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 7/19/2006 4:02:33 PM

    @16 - What are you calling "hosted collaboration"? If you're talking about an ASP kinda thing, I don't know anyone who uses a hosted service other than e-mail through their ISP. Granted my exposure is pretty limited, but I've not seen a rapid uptake on people jumping on that bandwagon.

  1. 20  Silvia Garcia  | 7/19/2006 5:39:27 PM

    @18,

    download is avaiable else where or only on passport site?

    Oh men, can not wait to test it !! Did not see anything about it yet on notes.net, and unfortunately; i have no access to passport advantage!

  1. 21  Mike Lazar  | 7/19/2006 6:53:00 PM

    @19 - I am talking about managed/hosted servers. Outtasking/outsourcing. Customers are saying more and more that they don't want to manage their own infrastructure, it's not cost effective, and it's not my core competency. Firms like mine & Chris Miller's are seeing exponential growth in this area. The managed messaging addressable market in the US & Canada is well over 500M. Believe me, more and more companies are moving away from running their own servers and letting skilled 3rd parties do it for a fixed cost with true SLAs to back it up.

  1. 22  Ralf Petter  | 7/20/2006 1:24:53 AM

    @6 Client Access is available for Linux for a long time. Are you using some special functions which are not available in the linux client?

    { Link }

    Ralf M Petter

  1. 23  Josef Prusa  | 7/21/2006 8:23:31 AM

    @18 - definitely not on OUR passport advantage! But the RH - only setup is really bothersome. Could we get some decent RPM package? I'd love to try alien on it to move it to my Ubuntu box

  1. 24  vowe dot net http://vowe.net/archives/007495.html | 7/24/2006 4:43:41 PM

    After all this hype, I just had to look at the "Notes client" for Linux. Here is what you get: a 390 megabyte zip file. Yes, that's right. A zip file. If you unpack the zip file, you get a 170 megabyte binary with the Notes plugin, a 200 megabyte...