December 13th, 2005
Gartner: Focus on Business Issues, Not Emotions, When Considering IBM Lotus Domino
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.
Originally by Ed Brill from Ed Brill on December 13, 2005, 6:51am
