Last night, I started noticing tweets about CRN’s article on Lotus Foundations winning over Microsoft Small Business Server. I reserved my post to gauge the community response and as suspected, folks are passionate about Lotus Foundations. I guess, once you go Foundations, you don’t turn back.
CRN writes,
And while some may dismiss IBM’s claims as marketing hype, interviews with a number of solution providers that carry both the Lotus and Microsoft products say there’s some truth to IBM’s assertions.
Be advised that the quotes in the article are not from our previous press release. CRN researched and interviewed the business partners themsleves and quoted them.
“We’re seeing a big increase in the number of customers moving to the Foundations server,” said James Sulfare, owner of Solinkit, a Chambersburg, Pa.-based solution provider. Solinkit works with both Foundations and Microsoft SBS and in an interview Sulfare said both “are excellent products.”
“About 80 percent of the situations we walk into now are a Foundations solution,” said Tim Miller, executive vice president of intellectual property at EnVision Solutions, a Raleigh, N.C.-based systems integrator that sells Foundations and Microsoft Small Business Server.
Solution providers also say cost has been a factor in their embrace of Lotus Foundations over Microsoft SBS. (Well, during a recession, one cannot expect to have unnecessary expenses. Patch Tuesday anyone?) Miller at EnVision Solutions said customers would bump up against the 50-user limit of Microsoft SBS and faced sticker shock when told how much it would cost to upgrade to standard Windows Server, Exchange and other Microsoft products.
“We were very short on options to offer solutions to customers,” Miller said. He cited one customer in Richmond, Va., that was using SBS to support 46 employees until earlier this year and needed to expand, a move Miller said would cost nearly $50,000. “The director of operations looked at me and said, ‘Are you insane,’” Miller said. An EnVision engineer had been testing Lotus Foundations and suggested the customer try it instead — a plan that ultimately saved the customer about $10,000 in up-front licensing costs and $20,000 a year in ongoing expenses, according to Miller.
Last year Microsoft began offering Windows Essential Business Server, a server package designed as the next step up from SBS with support for 300 users and/or devices.
Miller said he has considered offering customers the Essential Business Server package. But he said it still requires significant costly hardware and software upgrades.
Solinkit’s Sulfare also said Lotus Foundations is a less-costly solution than Microsoft products. Other advantages: Foundations is capable of running Microsoft applications including the Outlook e-mail client, he said, and the number of third-party applications that take advantage of Foundations’ self-installing capabilities is growing.
Said Sulfare of Foundations: “It’s channel-centric.” And of Microsoft: “Just offering the Microsoft server is not what the future holds.”
Well, there you have it folks. This is as real as it gets. If you haven’t tried Lotus Foundations, check out the free 30 day trial.
