In 2006, the entire State of New Jersey decided to go to Exchange. Previously, many of the agencies within the state were using Notes, and my project at the time was a large Domino Document Manager project.
When the State OIT office started making noises about mandating Exchange for all agencies, regardless of budget, costs, etc. I tried to run that information up the ladder at IBM. I spoke with the regional sales reps, who said that they would pass the info along.
Unfortunately, the calls went nowhere, IBM dropped the ball, and they will be fully migrated by 2009, resulting in the loss of tens of thousands of seats, not to mention the associated data systems and integration efforts. It only makes it worse when you look at the number of applications that now get converted to .NET, and the loss of Notes opportunities.
IBM has taken the Denial approach, and while they are all saying that Notes is great, their lack of marketing expertise and sales efforts is starting to erode their government installed base.
The downstream effect of this is that the Notes Business Partner community is disappearing as well, as the Notes shops disappear, and a snowball effect starts to take place.
The net result is that I have witnessed at least 50,000 seats disappear in the last two years, and I am not seeing any increased IBM marketing efforts.
IBM\Lotus what the hell are you doing…