Tech Update: So, let's go to TCO, because you mentioned that several times. In your war against Microsoft, your Web site, and your PR personnel have been busy citing recent studies by the Radicati Group that compares the TCO of Microsoft Exchange to Lotus Notes and is based on a survey of enterprise deployments. Lotus and Microsoft both sponsored the study. It is also the number one headline on your site today.

Zollar: Yes.

Tech Update: The headline says "It's official: Lotus Notes more cost-effective than Microsoft Exchange." [Editor's note: The headline was reworded shortly after this interview.] However, the headline only covers half of the TCO criteria that were used in the study. In fact when all the criteria are included, the study concluded that the TCO over a three-year period was lower for Microsoft Exchange than it was for Lotus Notes.

Zollar: Yes. It was only by a few bucks.

Tech Update: Right.

Zollar: Three dollars out of two hundred.

Tech Update: Right.

Zollar: So, less than a percent.

Tech Update: So, it wasn't by much. Nevertheless, you excluded the criteria that leveled the playing field. You focused in on three of the six criteria of a study you sponsored. Don't you think that's a bit of a disingenuous take on the study?

Zollar: Well, I would encourage people to read the study. Because what they'll find when they read the study is that, indeed, they're pretty much equivalent in terms of this three-year-cost that they talk about. But there are a number of factors that we provide that Microsoft cannot do. So, you can do certain consolidations within an Exchange environment. But, you're landlocked in the Intel roadmap. So, if you have the ability or have a belief that you can get greater efficiency out of a Unix or Linux architecture, or an IBM zSeries, or some other architecture, these are the sort of consolidation alternatives that we can present. We also present more value. We have greater collaborative capability than Microsoft has. So, when you look at the collaborative capability which we have and Microsoft, in general, doesn't have with their Exchange deployments, if the cost of ownership is roughly the same, the value that we deliver is far greater. And the options that we give our customers around total cost of ownership--again using Unix or other kinds of systems--is a possibility for server consolidation that is far greater than Microsoft's. So, I would encourage people to read the report, and then, when they look at what we deliver as value on top of it, I think that they'll come out with the scales tipped in our favor.

Also, we can run server consolidation in the Intel architecture as well. We have a lot of Intel deployments. But there are some customers--many customers--who believe that greater efficiencies can be attained with other server architectures. We provide that alternative.

Tech Update: When you said that some of the collaborative features of your solutions are not available in the current Exchange deployments, I just want to make sure that we correctly characterize Microsoft Exchange Server. The newest version of Exchange Server has many of those collaborative features.

Zollar: Yes, they now have many of the same.

Tech Update: But you're saying not the same as the one that you say is still widely deployed [Exchange 5.5]? It's a subtle but important difference. Is that what you meant?

Zollar: Yes, so two things. I talked about the Exchange 2000 deployments. Getting through the Active Directory has been really challenging for many of Microsoft's customers. I haven't found one of them who said "boy, Active Directory--that is a walk in the park." So, that is one of the reasons that a lot of their deployments are gated. Yes, they have the promise of these collaborative capabilities. But we demonstrated it. Furthermore, I will challenge Microsoft any day of the week to a benchmark of how fast you can build a collaborative application in the Notes-Domino environment versus the Outlook Exchange environment. We've done test after test, study after study. We beat them hands down.

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