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Microsoft FUD: Part 3: What’s An Imploding Soufflé Got To Do With Microsoft?
A final post in the Microsoft FUD Series by Joel Waterman.
So far this has been easy.
Scrolling further down that MS article that started these blog entries you can feel the Redmond marketing team clearly warming to their subject. Their mobility and directory claims are almost clever. “Lotus Notes Traveler, Lotus’ mobile experience for Domino, which was recently rewritten to provide support for Exchange ActiveSync, provides only a basic mobile experience that analysts have said should not be deployed without “a third-party security and management offering.” Don’t believe Microsoft.
The facts are easy to discover. Lotus Notes Traveler provides a full mobile experience for iPhone, Blackberry, Symbian and Windows Mobile devices. We have recently made available for free an application to read encrypted email on their iPhone. It’s in the Apple appstore. MS seems to suggest customers need to buy an extra CAL to get Lotus Traveler. This is not true. Lotus Traveler is included into the Messaging and Enterprise CAL’s – these are the only two CAL’s we have for Notes client software.
The Gartner quote they use is, of course, old and this particular Gartner analysis of Lotus Traveler is based on earlier releases. We offer similar management capability as available in Exchange. In addition 3rd party solutions (DME, Sybase, Good Technologies) are often recommended because they offer more sophisticated solutions — as they do on top of Exchange. Off topic. Lotus Traveler. Traveler, not Traveller. I first thought it was a huge spelling error. I almost called our marketing team on it. But it’s American English. Sigh.
On Directory they say that Exchange has a ten year headstart on Domino. Granted, AD has been a good ploy boys. You score there. However; Don’t believe Microsoft. Trust Tivoli Directory Integrator. Tivoli Directory Integrator (TDI) is included in Domino 8.x for free. TDI along with single sign-on improvements provide the tools that customers really want in terms of managing directories and users. Domino has the flexibility to integrate with many different directory models, including Active Directory, LDAP, and others, all through TDI. Tivoli leads in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for user provisioning.
Storage and Archiving. Yawn.
The next one is pretty rich though: “customers are not provided with a true range of storage options to reduce costs for all users”. Hello. Don’t believe Microsoft. Look at Forrester & Gartner. Read what Gartner says: Exchange 2010′s archiving lacks support for tiered storage, which results in the potential loss of storage cost saving opportunities. Microsoft’s first release of archiving and retention policy management doesn’t match the feature richness of existing e-mail archiving products (Gartner Report G00171340). Read what Forrester says: “Many Exchange 2007 shops won’t see enough new benefit [of Exchange 2010] to accelerate an immediate upgrade.“ In their January 27, 2010 report they also remark that Exchange 2010 does still not have a single-instance storage capability for attachments (unlike Domino). Oh yeah, about that data storage argument …With Domino 8.5.1 IBM recommends using a tiered storage architecture that relies on very affordable Directly attached storage (DAS), including inexpensive SATA 2 Drives, especially in the context of DAOS. On top of taking advantage of cheaper disk drivers, and unlike Microsoft, IBM also further reduces the storage requirements by using techniques such as Data compression. Bottom line is that IBM delivers a more efficient and cheaper solution including via our support of lower cost storage devices.
An imploded soufflé.
At the end the MS-FUD soufflé implodes with their lame “As you can see, Microsoft delivers innovation and capabilities that are well ahead of our competitors in many areas, and provides real value to customer”. Pathetic. Opinion stated as fact, apart from anything else. Don’t believe Microsoft. Search the web, you don’t have to go far. The New York Times opined that “Microsoft’s huge profits — $6.7 billion for the past quarter — come almost entirely from Windows and Office. Programs first developed decades ago”. Or read Dick Brass in his op-ed in that same paper of February this year. He wrote about ‘Microsoft’s Creative Destruction’. Ray Ozzie, freshly departed from MS, seems to hint to as much in his revitalized blog. I’m not linking you to it. You can easily find it yourself. CNN Money recently showed a header with ‘The End Of Microsoft’. It was about how Cloud changes the game. The Street.com says as recently as April 2010 that ‘Microsoft Struggles to Stay Relevant’.
Therefore, “Don’t believe Microsoft. Ask the right question”.
- Does MS plan to provide full Enterprise Content Management capabilities?
- Can I take MOSS 2010 based portal offline? Cost and effort? Groove has been eliminated. What is the Client strategy?
- What are the plans for providing federated policy management support across SharePoint libraries, digital asset management support, and transactional content process support in MOSS 2010?
- What social networking capabilities has MS added to SharePoint 2010 that differentiate MS from other vendors who have been doing this for several years?
- Why am I paying dual costs for Microsoft Online Services when I am already licensed for Exchange and SharePoint?
- Do I pay for desktop operating system upgrades in the Microsoft Enterprise Agreement when I have already paid for it when I purchased the hardware (as part of the OEM contract)?
- What is MS approach to open standards? Why is there such a push for OpenXML vs support for ODF ?
- How are MS apps and collaboration services based on SOA?
- Why did Microsoft end support for certain document formats in several Office service packs over the past 2 years? Can I expect this for Office XP?
- What does it take to migrate to Exchange 2007 from current versions of Exchange? Why wait for Exchange 2010? What will a migration from 2003/2007 to 2010 require?
- Why are 64bit servers required/recommended to run Exchange 2010, OCS 2010, MOSS 2010? Cost case?
- What is the track record for upgrading/migrating applications in SharePoint? What investment protection do I have with applications I build on MOSS now? What is the future roadmap for app. Development?
By the time you get an answer to these question we have been to Mars and back (I say ‘Mars’ on purpose because I think Richard Branson may prove me wrong if I had said ‘been to the Moon and back’). Don’t believe Me …. and Pay.
Microsoft FUD: 2nd in Series: Nice Work If You Can Get It
This is second in series of guest posts by Joel Waterman, Program Director at Lotus.
Nice Work If You Can Get It
Licensing. Almost laughable.
Almost laughable is MS claim about licensing costs. I said ‘almost’ because unfortunately, for us, MS licensing policies are devilishly clever. They link everything to everything so customers end up so confused that they are paying for what they don’t need or already own. Nice work if you can get it – I can hear Sinatra sing it now. Don’t believe Microsoft. Understand the detail of their licensing conditions. A CRN Article compared Notes 8.5 with Exchange 2010. It concludes: “By the time an enterprise has purchased Exchange and the CALs for it, plus the Windows Server license and CALs for Windows Server, costs begin to snowball. The edge in pricing, when all is factored in, goes to Lotus. You simply get more bang for your buck.“
Reference: http://tinyurl.com/y8msznp
Exchange requires OCS for Unified Communications. In order to get a full function OCS environment, you need the following: 4 clients on every desktop (Office Communicator , Screen Sharing Client, Live Meetings, Persistent Chat). All are installed, maintained and versioned separately; OCS Standard CAL, OCS E-Cal, OCS Server, SQL Server, Active Directory, 64 bit hw, Windows desktops, Windows Server… And whilst we are on the subject of OCS and telephony. Try to unify telephony into OCS…. imagine you’re a bank and you have 1,000 branches with a PBX is each one. With OCS you would need to deploy mediation servers, in pairs, in each branch (more mediation servers could be needed depending on call volume). OCS doesn’t have a PBX abstraction mechanism that you can centralize. Lotus Sametime Unified Telephony does. The instant messaging and telephony features can be integrated into the Lotus Notes client. To do the same a MS customer needs to install two separate clients, Outlook and Office Communicator.
I can go on about licensing. Let’s see if we can quote you some Notes customers. “We would probably have to buy eight different products and combine them to do all the things that we do with Lotus Notes and Domino.” says Troy Fulkerson, Director of Information Technology, Kentucky Baptist Convention. Or “Moving to IBM Lotus Notes and Domino from Microsoft Exchange and Outlook reduced software licensing costs by about 50%.” according to Dr. Tariq Marikar, Director, Product Development & CIO, Suntel Ltd. Lastly, “By choosing IBM, we don’t need a full-time IT person running around to make sure our servers are up and working properly.”, you got that right Gregers Bisgaard, sales manager, Simi A/S. People. Don’t believe Microsoft. Watch this; www.youtube.com/watch?v=H72yHHdFCIA
ROI. TCO.
Forrester concludes in a report that Notes can provide a 3 year risk adjusted ROI of 147%. See http://tinyurl.com/yzs3p5d. Whilst we are on the topic of TCO…we support scalable hardware platforms such as Power7 so customer need fewer servers and can lower operating costs. We also support cheap and scalable operating systems such as Linux – we have many customers that use only 4 Intel servers to provide email to +/- 40.000 users. Find out how you can potentially save 40% on your enterprise agreement by going to Project Liberate; see http://tinyurl.com/7oxevs
Before I forget. Check the Applicable guys. They did extensive research and concluded that IBM is up to 52% cheaper than MS. 52%! That’s a lot. You can do something useful with your savings. http://www.applicable.com Sept, 2009
Associate Director, Marketing - Digital Strategy @ Bell. Digital Strategist. Speaker. Marketing Leadership. Management. Bus Dev. Startups. Challenge. Innovate.Earned, not bought.
