facts and figures you have discussed on your blog even the

comments are very fruitful and helpful in enhancing the

knowledge regarding the topic.

Nice review. I believe Lotus got a great potential specially when run on Linux. A great comparison which show more of the competetive information between Lotus and Exchange 2007 can be found at: IBM Lotus Domino 8 vs MS Exchange 2007
I believe reader of this blog would love the information there as it is quite fair to both Microsoft and IBM and the site writers accept comments and revise their comparisons when a reader point a mistake and prove to be correct. I hope that comparison help show who lead this mail competition.
Enjoy,
VMguru007

After using ms outlook, it was like going from day to night. Lotus does not provide the simple ability to move a lower level folder to an upper level folder by drag and drop…. this is a simple windows function. Copying and deleting email is exteremely slow.

everytime I sign in to slowtus, I wish our company would go back to outlook.

Migrations are another topic, and I’ve done them both ways. Just as a FYI, they never, ever go neatly.

There is really good support for Blackberry on Domino. there’s a really simply install of the server and it also supports Sametime Instant Messaging and presence awareness on the handset (with photo business cards)

And some answers to some follow up questions, like when did this upgrade occur(i.e. last year or this year) as well as what is the nature of their organizational structure? Are they centralized, regional, or global?

I suspect that security was the major reason for the migration.

Was the client happy? What was the major selling point that pushed them towards the migration instead of an upgrade?

how long do you think it would take to upgrade from 7 to 8? about 1000 users on one domain?
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As long as it takes for you to make a backup(honestly IMHO not necessary, but better safe than sorry), down the Domino server, install from the EXE and boot the box again.

Seriously, upgrading Domino is a joke! Really easy.

The biggest thing is figuring out the compatibility of Norton Antivirus and any Notes apps you’ve got running.

Domino is ALWAYS backwards compatible in terms of mail files. Of course you need to be aware of any custom agents and custom mail templates before going ahead.

It wouldn’t hurt to do a hot copy of your server and do an install on a dev box to see it work through and make sure that the apps work.

After that you can upgrade the clients and their mail files at your leisure.

We are a Notes shop. Have been since 4.6. We are currently using 6.5.1 and as stated, 7 was not a compelling reason to upgrade despite some new functionality. But with what I’ve seen so far in 8…we should be upgrading after it goes live.

Jesper:

Thanks!! That is actually great news that Sametime now runs off of an open OS. I would move my Notes box to Linux in a heartbeat if I could…but right now I can’t.

From what I’ve heard, you’d have your work cut out moving to Exchange 2007.

At least moving to ND8 will give you plenty more for your efforts, not to mention the choice that it’ll give you!

it shows that Sametime runs on
Windows, AIX 5.3, iSeries – i5/OS , Solaris 9 and 10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0 and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10.0

There may be some misunderstanding with the numbers – you wrote:

‘IBM has more than 130 M licensed clients, and an independent study has estimated the the accounts will “grow to 606 million in 2011.”‘

The study actually states that “Notes/Domino’s share of the market is expected to dip slightly from 20% this year to 19% by 2011. The total number of e-mail boxes is expected to grow to 606 million in 2011 from 513 million this year.”.

The 606 refers to the total corporate messaging market, of which Lotus may reach 112M.

The reason this is less than the current number of 130M is discussed here, but basically 130M is a cumulative license count – so that’s all licenses sold in the past 20 years; as opposed to real active users.

One of you has indeed helped on this front already. Jack Dausman, who recently moved to one of those corporate customers, has been passionate about Notes 8, especially Notes 8 on Linux. A few days ago, he commented on a blog he reads about Notes 8 running on Ubuntu being a best-in-class alternative to Microsoft Exchange/Outlook. The blog’s author didn’t know a lot about Notes 8, and offered to let Jack have a voice on his own site. Jack didn’t site idly by…he wrote “IBM Lotus Notes 8 is a Linux Killer Application”, an excellent and succinct analysis of what makes Notes 8 great. He got Notes 8 some visibility in a Microsoft-oriented blog , and the comments (so far, at least) have been very favorable. Thank you, Jack, for your effort.

the slothman i would like to hear about your evaluation process and what you are looking to switch from currently?

any blackberry support?

So I hate you in envy. :-D

With that said, I am evaluating ND8 right now. 7 was never a compelling reason to swtich from 6. The better functionality of Sametime and integration was nice…but not a ‘must have’.

Notes 8 though….is a paradigm shift in Lotus technology. I’ve been with Notes since 4.6. Domino is a tad gangly, and difficult for people not trained in it to learn to manage, but once you get into it…you WILL love it simply because of the security alone.

It allows me to sleep better at night, every night, knowing that my end users can do whatever they want with Notes and even if they execute a bad attachment on their desk/laptop, my mail server will not be compromised!

One question…Sametime only works on a domino box installed on Windows. Same with RIM’s BES server. This sort of pigeonholes you into using Windows as the OS as opposed to Linux.

With that said, you also get so much more functionality than anything Exchange could ever dream of, as well as IBM/Lotus offers a lot of add on applications that can further increase the functionality of Notes/Domino to the enterprise and I have to say….IBM/Lotus’ licensing is cheap in comparison to MS.

Great article and thanks for the resources.