The fight has begun. There are a lot of users that want to switch to Outlook/Exchange and have been complaining about Notes on a daily basis. So, management is looking for some concrete reasoning why we should change over. As someone else mentioned in an earlier posting -
" I want to come up with some killer comparative reasons, of which I know there are many, but I am looking to you, my follow Domino Devotees for help! Perhaps you can share ideas that I might not have thoought of?"
Has anyone:
Been through this at their place of employment?
Was it successful? If yes, why? If no, why not?
Any general information I can refer to. What “questions” should I ask to compare Microsoft to Notes/Domino, (email, Admin, Development, etc.?)
Thanks in advance to all who can help! I am looking for current information and detail. The types of complaints I hear from users are… Notes is slow…they call them databases, but they aren’t really databases… there aren’t a lot of third party vendors that have plug-ins for Notes.
If you use more than just the email features of Notes, then there is no business case.
Go and Survey the annoying users and ask them why they want to switch to outlook.
Come back and do a new topic (Since many of our RSS readers are only looking for new topics due to the number of postings in this forum).
Give us a list of the top 10-20 reasons for moving to outlook. If they’re things that Notes can do, then we’ll help you with links/info on how to do them.
How much Notes training have your users had - probably the same as most of ours… none. You should tell them not to make costly platform decisons based on emotional triggers and that the first step is to see if you can get what you want from your existing infrastructure.
Subject: RE: Countering Microsoft - Give us Reasons
The ‘survey’ is already in progress by mgmt. It was put in place because we are currently looking for a new spam fighting appliance. And, our engineers who hate Notes complained about how there isn’t anything that works directly with Notes on the client end. We didn’t want anything that would sit on our domino servers. So far, we have only come across one that has a plug-in for Notes.
Anyway, mgmt did state in their request for reasons that a move should be based on the following only:
If your looking for a SPAM solution take a look at SPAMASSASSIN (www.spamassassin.apache.org) - It free. This assumes you utilize front-end mail relays that could support it.
You’ll have Spam headaches with both products. Best to fight Spam prior to hitting Domino servers.
Same for virus protection…hmmmm now which product actually is more prone to viruses??? TIMES UP!! Brought to you by Remond Washington!!! By the way, virus protection comes with SPAMASSASSIN as well!!
Don;t forget mail restores! With Domino … just bring back a single user’s NSF… with Exchange you’ll need a separate server to restore the entire Single Object Store to and run utilites to “restore” a given user’s mail…nasty!! and costly!!
Definitely look into what is “slow” in your environment. Is it poor server performance/architecture, is it over crowding, is it a slow network? (Maybe setting up Replicated mail might help the latter.
If you are at 6.5 give the users Integrated Messaging - it’s free!! No Sametime meeting support but Chat is handy!!
Dick, I would never bring mail restores if you are trying defending Notes vs. Exchange. You do not need separate exchange server to restore single outlook mailbox since 2003 in fact Exchange 2003 allows you to restore in-line to running exchange server single email message to mail box not only single mailbox… so not a good point. companies specializing in backup software do much better job on integration and usability with exchange then with notes. I think only legato has backup software that allows you to restore single email documnet in notes mail box all others requires restoring entire nsf file even if you need to restore singlr message, so again not a good point.
Subject: RE: Countering Microsoft - Give us Reasons
Your engineers are wrong.Spam should be stopped before it reaches your domino infrastructure or any other email server. There is no need for special integration with Notes.
You need solution that allows you to create central quarantine, which automatically updates antispam/antivirus definitions, solution that “knows” what email address is good and when it has to say “no such mailbox here”. You need sth that integrates with Domino Directory not with notes.
All you need for Notes is button in mailbox → this is/is not spam that sends copy of email with all headers to some place if it has not been quallified as spam. And possibly agent or rule that moves email to special folder if it e.g. has modified topic by antispam software. Can be easily done, can’t it?
About solutions:
Symantec has 8xxx series appliances that integrates with domino via ldap. They have special agent you can deploy/upgrade your users mailboxes (this button).
F-Secure has such appliance, as well.
Barracuda networks-> appliance that allows LDAP directory integration and notes integration if you want (button)
However we run our entire company on notes from Sales, CRM, Time and Accounting, Quoting, Sales orders, the whole enchilada. We do Run M$ Great Plains for their compliance and reporting features as that would be costly to reproduce. Therefore we prefer to have the spam engine be outside of notes so it frees up our Domino Engine performance for internal apps.
Subject: RE: Countering Microsoft - Give us Reasons
Barracuda is what we are currently testing. The buttons in the mail template are not working properly. Barracuda reproduced the problem on their end has numbered it as a bug and are currently working to find a fix. We are unable to select multiple messages at a time to mark as spam.
Subject: RE: Countering Microsoft - Give us Reasons
Lori,
Do you get SPAM that much? None of our clients have permitted to tag message directly on the Barracuda appliance. They were using black/white list in cunjuntion with spamhaus related lists .
There are a lot of threads in this forum talking about this. Here is one I was involved in.
You might call a lotus BP and bring them in to try and increase server performance.
What type of plug-ins are you looking for? Notes is a very generously supported environment in computing. As well it’s a very integrate-able environment supporting today standards and beyond.
Here are some IBM blogs that may help you frame the argument.
One of the BIGGEST things I am excited about is the inclusion of ODF support in Lotus Notes Version 8. This will mean that you can give some of you users Lotus Notes v8 and not be required to license an Office suite for them. It will be built into notes(A Document Editor, Spreadsheet and Presentation Application)
While this might not be OK for your CEO it certainly should be functional for your warehouse employees, Temps, some Admin and Clerical people. This will also reduce support costs as their will be one application to support not many.
I agree with previous responses, and I’ll add this:
Every piece of software has good points and bad points. The trick is to find software that is mostly good for what you need, and then you live with the bad. That’s not a good PR thing to say, but it’s honest and if you’re going to have an honest talk at your company, then that’s the starting point.
So then I would ask folks to sit down and come up with the 10(?) most important things we need this software for. One might get a list like this:
Fast user experience for mail
Ability to run mission critical apps x, y, and z
Low cost to implement/maintain
And then you have something to work with, right? But of course people complain, and they complain no matter what software we have installed because none if it is perfect for all causes. Personally, I think Notes takes a big hit for the user experience in mail being slow, and that’s because the template has gobs of functionality in it that many people don’t use. That’s just a tough break, I think. Also, many companies don’t stay up to date on performance tuning so the servers often get a bit bogged down and mail files get too big, have too much mail in their inboxes, etc.
What are their complaints? Can they be addressed in some way? Will Outlook even satify them? Won’t you have a whole other set of people that will complain about Outlook when you switch?
That’s part of the problem - I have not been given their exact complaints from mgmt. What I have heard has primarily involved the UI. Another part is that new employees are coming from companies that were using Outlook. I’m sure that there will be another set that will complain about Outlook.
I’ve never had to go through defending Notes v. Outlook/Exchange but I can tell you some of the usual talking points that I hear when attempting to justify keeping Notes over Exchange
Cost/ROI–The new version of Exchange will only work on a 64-bit architecture. So in addition to the expense of your Exchange server and Outlook CALs, you have to buy expensive hardware to boot. Domino 7 will run on a Pentium I running Windows 2000 if you want. I believe the next generation Domino will also run on 32-bit architecture, so you are not stuck buying bleeding edge hardware
Security–Notes has a security model that is tried and true going back to v1. There is a database security model(ACL) as well as a client security model(ECL). I have yet to see anyone who didn’t have access to one of our DBs get into it. They try, but never succeed.
Extensibility–Domino does one thing that I know Exchange does not…it allows you to develop custom workflow application that really leverage Domino’s messaging abilities. We have several mission critical workflow apps that we run here that have implications not only for the business but for SOX. I challenge you to show me an exchange server running change management apps.
They aren’t that different–Notes 6.5 adapted the OpenNTF.org mail template and made it an out of the box template for Notes users. what was the mission of the OpenNTF.org mail template? to create a mail template that worked exactly like outlook! Sure there are minor differences, but they both have the same capabilities.
I have yet to have a user do usability testing with Outlook v. Exchange. What exactly do they mean by “slow?” Can they give you metrics? if not, that argument doesn’t hold water, because they can’t think of any better reason why you should abandon the Domino platform.
In the end it’s going to cost you to migrate to Microsoft Exchange, both in software, hardware and maintenance costs, as well as training and employee salaries, etc.