Thanks for your even-handed report on Lotus vs. Exchange. I'd like to share with you my perspective about your comment that, "Exchange is catching up. Some reports and press releases show it as having caught up already."
I have to tell you, I've been hearing this line for years. Time and time again, after the two systems are reviewed, it's almost always "Notes is 18 months ahead of..." and the technology gap never seems to lessen.
But technology and marketing are two different angles. My company supports both Exchange and Notes. Over the last 18 months, our Lotus involvement has increased by a triple-digit amount. I've heard for years how Exchange (or SMTP) is catching up to Notes, but I haven't seen it.
Lotus Notes continues to dominate worldwide. (IDC, 6/01, "Worldwide Integrated Collaborative Environment Software Total Users.") It continues to expand into European, South American, and Asian markets over Exchange by a wide margin. The U.S. market has pretty much stabilized into a neck and neck, two-horse race.
Zero viruses to date with Lotus. Considering that IBM/Lotus is a larger company than Microsoft, and Lotus Notes is more globally deployed than Exchange--why is it that there have been no viruses? The CIA e-mail system is Lotus Notes. The FAA is moving to Notes. The local Embassy of El Salvador is Notes. There is an article here, isn't there?
Enterprise stability and scalability. As far as large installations go, the Fortune 1 company Exxon Mobil is a good reference. Notes runs on l-a-r-g-e systems. Notes supports fail-over and load-balancing clustering between disparate hardware and network OS.
Return on investment. The most recent Radicati study gives Notes 5 the thumbs-up for ROI over Exchange 2000. This is a pretty big switch from the last time Radicati ran their analysis. You mention that recent study, and your points are well taken--nevertheless, Notes comes out looking pretty good.
Notes is more than the Notes client. Lotus iNotes allows the Outlook 2000 client (or IE) to interface with a Domino back-end server. Other sites are using Domino for POP3 or IMAP4.
Honestly, I don't see any "lead increasing." Instead, Exchange 2000 has been a disappointment to many administrators. The Web-storage feature (crucial to building sophisticated applications) was dropped between the final beta and the production release. The storage system for Exchange is changing again, with a SQL Server backend. Did you know that you can actually open and run a Notes version 2 database under the latest version of the Notes? IBM and Oracle are both targeting Exchange deployments with heavily promoted advertising because they recognize a solid opportunity.
Jack Dausman
ICI Systems, Inc.
