Domino85 vs Exchange 2010

Get the facts
Microsoft Exchange 2010 vs. IBM Lotus Domino 8.5
By
Martijn de Jong
31 March 2011

Pagina 2 van 41 www.ilionx.com
Contents
1. Introduction....................................................................................................4
1.1. About this document ......................................................................................5
1.2. About the author.............................................................................................5
1.3. Disclaimer.......................................................................................................6
2. User Experience ..............................................................................................7
2.1. Lotus Notes 8.5...............................................................................................7
2.2. Microsoft Outlook 2010 ..................................................................................8
2.3. iNotes .............................................................................................................8
2.4. Outlook Web App............................................................................................9
2.5. Microsoft’s Comparison ..................................................................................9
2.6. Conclusion......................................................................................................9
3. Enterprise Services & TCO .............................................................................11
3.1. Scalability......................................................................................................11
3.2. Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)......................................................................11
3.3. Flexibility ......................................................................................................12
3.4. Architecture ..................................................................................................13
3.5. Outsourced / Cloud Solutions.......................................................................13
3.6. Conclusion....................................................................................................15
4. Unified Communications and Enterprise Mobility............................................16
4.1. Unified Communications...............................................................................16
4.2. Enterprise Mobility ........................................................................................16
4.3. Conclusion....................................................................................................17
5. Interoperability .............................................................................................19
5.1. Active directory.............................................................................................19
5.2. Sharing of calendars and communication with third parties..........................20
5.3. Conclusion....................................................................................................21
6. Storage, Archiving and Retention...................................................................22
6.1. Restoring Mail and Retention ........................................................................22
6.1.1. Restoring Mail on Exchange ...................................................................22
6.1.2. Retention on Exchange ..........................................................................22
6.1.3. Restoring Mail on Lotus Domino ............................................................23
6.1.4. Retention on Lotus Domino ...................................................................23
6.2. Archiving ......................................................................................................24
6.2.1. Archiving on Exchange...........................................................................24
6.2.2. Archiving on Domino .............................................................................24
6.3. Storage .........................................................................................................24
6.4. Conclusion....................................................................................................26
7. Upgrading your environment.........................................................................27
7.1. Migrating Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2010 ................................................28

7.2. Upgrade Lotus Domino 6.5 / 7 / 8.0 to Lotus Domino 8.5............................29
7.3. Conclusion....................................................................................................30
8. Workflow Applications...................................................................................31
8.1. Employability of Lotus Domino .....................................................................31
8.2. Employability of Microsoft Exchange / SharePoint Foundation Server ...........32
8.3. Conclusion....................................................................................................32
9. Integration with Social Software.....................................................................33
9.1. IBM - Email is one the sources of information...............................................33
9.2. Microsoft - Email stays a separate entity.......................................................33
9.3. Conclusion....................................................................................................34
10. Conclusion ...................................................................................................36
10.1. Upgrade or migrate?..................................................................................36
10.1.1. Current Platform: Microsoft Exchange....................................................36
10.1.2. Current Platform: Lotus Domino ............................................................36
10.2. Reasons for a migration ............................................................................37
10.2.1. Ignorance...............................................................................................37
10.2.2. Standardisation on one platform / single vendor strategy .....................39
10.2.3. User-oriented choices............................................................................40

1. Introduction
The messaging market (mail and calendaring) in the corporate world is currently
dominated by two major players: IBM's Lotus Domino and Microsoft’s Exchange. Many
organizations will at one time face the choice: Should we upgrade or migrate? To make
an informed choice, knowledge of both platforms is required. Both from a technical
perspective and in terms of cost. However, there appears to be a serious lack of good
and reliable reports that compare these two platforms. Most comparisons available on
the internet are either out-dated or written with a strong bias from the manufacturer.
This paper attempts to fill this gap.
Specialists on one platform usually have (almost) no knowledge of the other platform.
Due to the lack of proper comparisons Microsoft employees or business partners will
therefore often quote information during discussions, that they found on Microsoft’s
marketing page on this subject.
Figure 1 http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/en-us/notes.aspx
Since this page, in analog to Microsoft’s anti-Linux campaign "Get the Facts1", tries to
create confusion and contains many factual errors, one might expect that IBM has
created a counterpart for this page. This however is not the case. Because of the
position that Microsoft’s page acquired from this ommitance by IBM, this page will be
used as the starting point for this document.
1 http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/6078/1/

1.1. About this document
This document provides a comparison between Lotus Domino 8.5 and Microsoft
Exchange 2010 based on factual and verifiable information. This document is an
aggregation of a series of blog articles, which were published (in Dutch) on
socialsoftwareblog2. Lotus Domino and Microsoft Exchange will be compared in several
areas. The base for this comparison is Microsoft’s Exchange vs. Domino marketing
page3. On this page Microsoft discusses several functional areas which they consider
to have a competitive advantage of Microsoft Exchange over Lotus Domino. This
document will look at how the arguments they use compare to the truth. This
document will then discuss other functional areas, which are relevant for a good
comparison between the products, but that Microsoft consciously or subconsciously
left out. It’s no surprise that most of these parts are functional areas where Lotus
Domino has a competitive advantage over Microsoft Exchange.
The areas that will be discussed in this document are:
 The User Experience
 Enterprise services & Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
 Unified Communications
 Enterprise Mobility
 Interoperability
 Storage, archiving and retention
 Upgrading your environment
 Workflow applications
 Integration with Social software.
1.2. About the author
Martijn de Jong is a senior consultant at ilionx Internet & Collaboration Solutions. He
has over 15 years of experience in writing product analyses and comparisons based on
his own research and external sources. Martijn is well known for his technical articles
on subjects regarding the IBM Lotus Software family of products. With his background
it’s safe to say that Martijn is not unbiased. As a technical consultant however the
author will stick to the facts as much as possible. These facts will be substantiated by
verifiable sources.
2 http://www.socialsoftwareblog.nl
3 http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/en-us/notes.aspx

1.3. Disclaimer
Opinions in this document are the personal opinions of the author. ilionx is an
independent ICT service provider and offers both IBM and Microsoft based solutions to
its customers.
Although in practice, Lotus Domino and Microsoft Exchange are regularly compared
with each other, it’s really impossible to do an 1-on-1 comparison. Where Microsoft
Exchange is a pure messaging product, Lotus Domino is a complete application
platform. For the price of a Lotus Notes and Domino license you get all kinds of
functionality for which you would have to use many different products on the Microsoft
side. Replacing Lotus Domino to Microsoft Exchange therefore often means a
migration to Exchange + Active Directory + IIS + SQL Server + SharePoint + Visual
Studio, etc.
Nevertheless, there are plenty of companies who only use the messaging capabilities
of Lotus Domino. When they run an older version Domino, they will have to make the
choice: Upgrade to Lotus Domino 8.5 or migrate to Exchange 2010. Companies that
run on older versions of Exchange will have to choose between migrating to Exchange
2010 (you cannot upgrade an Exchange environment) or migrate to Lotus Domino.
Both groups are therefore advised to read this document.

2. User Experience
In this chapter the user experience for both Lotus Notes and Microsoft Outlook are
discussed based on Microsoft's marketing page. On its marketing page, Microsoft
claims that:
Microsoft Exchange continues to deliver the leading messaging experience for end
users and deliver on the business needs of IT. IBM Lotus Notes and Domino continue
to work to add features and functionality to their software that are native to Exchange.
So what is the truth here? Basically Microsoft’s last sentence is correct, but misses one
important addition: “and vice versa”. Lotus Domino has existed for more than 21 years.
It is therefore obvious that the much younger Exchange has borrowed many features
from Lotus Domino. Right now you can see that both manufacturers carefully keep
looking at each other. Exchange 2010 finally contains a number of features that have
been available in Lotus Domino for many years. For example, with the release of
Outlook 2010 it is finally possible to view conversations in the same way as in Lotus
Notes since Lotus Notes 8 (from 2007), while the ability to integrate your social
networks in the Notes client which stems from the same release is still missing in
Outlook 2010.
On the other hand IBM has put quite a few features in Lotus Notes 8.x, which have
been available in Outlook for a while, like the possibility to save emails as .eml files.
Currently we do see that the update cycle for Lotus Notes is shorter than Microsoft
Outlook’s, which means that IBM adds new functionality to the Notes client faster than
Microsoft to the Outlook client. In the end it’s a game of tag between the two.
Sometimes Lotus Notes is ahead in features. Other times Outlook is slightly ahead. It’s
obvious though that Microsoft’s statement that Lotus Notes and Domino is always
something behind is not based on the facts.
We already mentioned the two clients that belong to each product. Next to the Outlook
and Notes client, users will also work with the web variants of both products: Outlook
Web Access and Lotus iNotes. When we discuss the User Experience of Lotus
Notes/Domino and Microsoft Exchange/Outlook we should therefore look at all four
clients.
2.1. Lotus Notes 8.5
Lotus Notes version 8.0 (released in 2007) brought a major change in the user
interface. In preparation for this version a usability team was formed that has been
involved in improving the user interface of the Lotus Notes client and work thereon is
continuing. Opinions on the user experience of the Lotus Notes client, based on older

versions of Lotus Notes are therefore simply out-dated. The Lotus Notes 8.x client has
also been built on a new framework based on Eclipse. This makes it much easier for
third parties to write plug-ins for the Lotus Notes client and this feature is used
extensively.
The Lotus Notes client has both the advantage and disadvantage that it’s the client for
an application platform. On the one hand you can do a lot more with Lotus Notes than
with a pure messaging client. On the other hand this leads to a larger memory
footprint compared to a pure messaging client and more options which might be
confusing for users who are used to pure messaging clients. The concept of the new
Notes client is to put all sources of information that help you do your work, so more
than just email, at your fingertips within the Lotus Notes client. This includes creating
connections between these sources of information. When used well, this functionality
of the Lotus Notes client can really improve the productivity of your employees.
2.2. Microsoft Outlook 2010
Microsoft released the Office 2010 suite in May 2010. Outlook 2010, which is part of
Office 2010 received a new “ribbon” interface, that we previously saw in Word and
Excel 2007. Although the ribbon interface in these Office components was quite well
received, there are also outspoken opponents. However, without a doubt it’s not a
good idea to introduce Outlook 2010 to your users without any form of education. The
interface simply changed too much. A few of the new features of Outlook 2010 are
showing conversations in your mailbox, giving you a better overview of associated
emails and an easy way to search through all mails regardless of the folder. Both
functionalities have been available in Lotus Notes since the nineties, while the way
conversations are implemented in Outlook 2010 was introduced in Lotus Notes in
2007. A nice new feature in Outlook 2010 is MailTips, that warns you when for
example you are about to send a message to a large amount of users.
2.3. iNotes
Where the Lotus Notes client is also used for Lotus Notes applications, iNotes is a pure
messaging client. iNotes is available in three flavours. The full client is functionally
equivalent to the Lotus Notes client, including right-click menus and Sametime
awareness (instant messaging).
The Lite client is for slower connections (ISDN / modem connections, etc.) or people
who simply prefer a simple mail client. The Lite client lacks the right-click menu and
Sametime awareness. Other missing functionalities in this version are - among others
- some calendar functions and the possibility to view someone else's mailbox.

The ultra-lite client is specifically designed for reading your mail on mobile devices. All
clients are fast and intuitive and are known as very mature. iNotes also supports all
modern browsers.
2.4. Outlook Web App
Microsoft has renamed the web client of Exchange 2010 from Outlook Web Access to
Outlook Web App. The functionality has improved considerably putting it on the same
level as iNotes. Outlook Web App now supports most modern browsers, which makes
Outlook Web App finally available on MacOS.
2.5. Microsoft’s Comparison
So, after this description of all clients, what does Microsoft have to say about this
subject?
Superior user experience: Don’t take our word for it, take our customers’. In a case
study by Brink's Home Security, Rob Trotter, Senior Vice President and Chief
Information Officer for Brink's Home Security, said, “Users understood the advantages
of moving to the 2007 Office release and Outlook 2007 from the very beginning. In
fact, when we first announced the move from Lotus Notes to Outlook 2007 at an all-
managers meeting, we got a standing ovation and cheers.” Exchange 2010 delivers
more for the user experience than ever before with an enhanced conversation view for
mail triage, speech-to-text transcription for voice mail and MailTips to improve
messaging efficiency and avoid accidental or unintended e-mails. Although recent
versions of Notes updated the user interface, it lags behind in key users features and
the addition of Eclipse as an underlying structure has increased both the memory and
disk footprint that has required, in some cases, new hardware to take advantage of the
new release.
Microsoft forgets to mention here that Brinks was still working with the Lotus Notes R5
client (from 1999). This situation can be compared to users who are still working with
Windows ’98 and are informed that they will be migrated to Windows 7.
2.6. Conclusion
Although Outlook certainly also has its quirks4 and its haters5, it can’t be denied that
there are many vocal people who hate6 Lotus Notes. When prompted for their
4 http://wanderingstan.com/2008-02-01/67_reasons_that_outlook_sucks
5 http://www.outlooksucks.com/
6 http://www.ihatelotusnotes.com

experiences these people’s experiences with Lotus Notes, like the users of Brinks
home security, usually stop at Lotus Notes 6.5 or even Lotus Notes 5. Regularly
versions of 10 years old are compared to versions which do meet current standards.
With Lotus Notes 8, IBM has managed to catch up with Microsoft’s Outlook client
regarding the functionality and usability aspects. Most features which users who
migrated from Outlook to Notes 8.x still missed were included in Lotus Notes 8.5.2.
Due to the relative recentness of Outlook 2010 and Lotus Notes 8.5.2 no good
comparisons can be found, but these comparisons do exist for Lotus Notes 8 and
Outlook 2007. Analysts put the functionality and usability of Lotus Notes 8.x on par
with Outlook. Even die-hard Outlook fans have to admit7 that there’s little wrong with
Lotus Notes 8. There will always be people who prefer one or the other client, but
ultimately they do not differ much from each other. Regardless of how much Microsoft
would like us to believe otherwise, Outlook is no longer a reason to migrate from Lotus
Domino to Microsoft Exchange.
7 http://teneo.wordpress.com/2009/08/20/a-second-look-at-lotus-notes/ en
http://www.sitemotif.com/blog/?p=454

3. Enterprise Services & TCO
In this chapter we focus on Enterprise Services and the total cost of ownership. On
their marketing page, Microsoft writes the following on this subject:
Microsoft delivers multi-tenant scalable solutions that provide advantages in total cost
of ownership, flexibility, and IT control. Services isn’t just about taking an on-premises
server and putting it in a data center; it’s about building in scalability from the
beginning, and Exchange Server 2010 delivers that architecture natively. IBM does not
offer this full range of deployment choices but provides only limited outsourced
solutions. And their LotusLive iNotes offering is based on their acquisition of Outblaze,
a consumer grade e-mail offering that creates a separate messaging experience for
those users. This calls into question IBM’s ability to scale Lotus Domino to millions of
users while maintaining low costs.
Language wise this is a weak paragraph in Microsoft’s story as they put together
multiple terms without describing the cohesion between them. Instead of focusing on
what Microsoft writes, we will focus on the differences between Microsoft Exchange
and Lotus Domino in the areas which they mention. These areas are:
1. Scalability
2. Total Cost of Ownership / TCO
3. Flexibility
4. Architecture
5. Outsourced / Cloud solutions
3.1. Scalability
Both Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Domino are used in both small and large
environments, so both products are scalable in that respect. However, scalability is
also about the ease with which you can scale an environment from a few thousand
users to double that size. At this point there’s a clear win for Lotus Domino. I’ll discuss
the why of this victory when we get to the architecture of both products.
3.2. Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
One of the main considerations when choosing a messaging platform is the total cost
of ownership (TCO). If you add up all aspects to do with messaging, how much do you
spend on this service when you choose for Lotus Domino vs. Microsoft Exchange.

The image to the right gives a good overview of
what is considered part of the TCO. Microsoft
claims on their page that Microsoft Exchange
"offers advantages in terms of total cost of
ownership". They didn’t mention compared to what
product that advantage would be and available
sources suggest that there’s certainly no advantage
when you compare the TCO to Lotus Domino.
Applicable8, a company that specializes in both
Microsoft and IBM solutions compared the TCO
based on customer cases for both products and
found IBM solutions to be 52% cheaper on
infrastructure and user support costs. IT
comparison9 shows in their report that Lotus Domino
has a significant lower TCO than Microsoft Exchange.
In these comparisons Microsoft Exchange 2007 was compared to Lotus Domino 8.
With version 8.5 IBM introduced DAOS10 and the ID Vault11 that both significantly
reduce the TCO. Although Microsoft introduced some new features in Exchange 2010
that could lower the TCO, these by no means close the gap. When we talk about the
TCO, Microsoft Exchange is more expensive than Lotus Domino. One of the reasons
for this higher Total Cost of Ownership is that on average Microsoft Exchange needs
significantly more servers12. More servers means higher costs for maintenance,
backup etc. The picture above also show that a large portion of the TCO is in planned
and especially unplanned downtime. In this area Lotus Domino has a better track
record than Microsoft Exchange.
3.3. Flexibility
Microsoft indicates that their solutions offer advantages in terms of flexibility. You
should however mainly read this as the flexibility to integrate with other products from
Microsoft. Integration with products from other vendors is not on the menu. This
strongly contrasts with IBM Lotus Domino and Notes, that run on about every
imaginable platform. The Notes client can also easily be extended with plugins from
8 http://www.applicable.com/news/Pages/TCOWhitePapersComparingIBMandMicrosoft
DeploymentCosts.aspx
9 http://itcomparison.com/Mail/Exchange2k7vslotus8/Exchange2k7vslotus8.htm
10 http://www.socialsoftwareblog.nl/blog.nsf/dx/daos-wat-is-het-en-wat-levert-het-
op.htm?opendocument&comments#anc1
11 http://www.ineco.nl/members/ineco.nsf/forum/viewtopic/007ppedh-server-nieuw-in-lotus-
notes-85-id-vault.html
12 http://www.wissel.net/blog/d6plinks/SHWL-83KM3V
Figure 2
http://www.abraxax.com/html/tco.html

third parties in addition to the possibility that the Notes client always offered to
customize your templates to your own needs.
3.4. Architecture
Services isn’t just about taking an on-premises server and putting it in a data center;
it’s about building in scalability from the beginning, and Exchange Server 2010
delivers that architecture natively.
It’s not completely clear what Microsoft tries to say with this line, but it’s a good
moment to take a look at the differences in architecture.
Microsoft Exchange contains one or multiple message stores to store messages. Lotus
Domino (and Notes) uses the Notes Storage Format (NSF) containers. The main
difference between the two is that Microsoft stores multiple mailboxes in one message
store (in Exchange 2010 these are called databases), while Lotus Domino stores every
mail file in its own nsf file.
The number of message stores/databases per Exchange server is limited, while there’s
no limitation on the number of nsf files in Lotus Domino. For reasons of performance
the size of an Exchange message store is also limited. Several sources13 advice to keep
the size of an Exchange message store limited to 100 GB.
These restrictions limit the maximum number of mailboxes per Exchange server.
Larger organisations will therefore need multiple Exchange servers. Scaling up capacity
in Exchange environments is not always easy. Increasing the number of users or
increasing the total storage per user, may necessitate redesigning your Exchange
environment.
Although Exchange 2010 supports more users and storage per Exchange server, the
principles described above haven’t changed. Lotus Domino’s scalability is a lot better
in this area. Lotus Domino allows you to use large Unix or Linux based servers, that
allow you to support more users with larger mail files per server. Adding a Domino
server to an environment is also very easy and this can usually be done without
redesigning your environment. Lotus Domino is clearly the winner when it comes to
scalability.
3.5. Outsourced / Cloud Solutions
IBM does not offer this full range of deployment choices but provides only limited
13 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Exchange_Server

outsourced solutions. And their LotusLive iNotes offering is based on their acquisition
of Outblaze, a consumer grade e-mail offering that creates a separate messaging
experience for those users. This calls into question IBM’s ability to scale Lotus Domino
to millions of users while maintaining low costs.
These last lines discuss the possibilities to host your mail environment of premises.
This can either be in a hosted environment or in the Cloud. There are multiple parties
that offer hosted Exchange environments. In the Netherlands they outnumber the
providers offering hosted Domino environment by a fair bit, though the latter exist in
increasing numbers, too. A hybrid format of hosting consists of environments that are
hosted on hardware at the customer site, but are maintained by an external party. In
this category Lotus Domino gains ground due to the success of the Lotus Foundations
server14.
When you think about hosting your messaging environment elsewhere, the current
portfolio of Cloud solutions offers a viable alternative to the hosted environments
mentioned above. IBM offers both LotusLive15 iNotes and Lotus Live Notes16.
Microsoft’s remarks on IBM’s offering in the Cloud are completely out-dated. LotusLive
iNotes offers simple email and calendaring possibilities which can be accessed through
a web browser or by any mail client which supports the IMAP or POP protocols.
LotusLive iNotes includes virus/spam protection and support for mobile devices. With
$3,- per user per month for a 25GB mailbox, IBM offers the cheapest commercial email
service of the main three cloud providers (IBM, Microsoft, Google). For a richer mail
and calendaring experience including the use of the Lotus Notes client, and Sametime
chat functionality, IBM offers LotusLive Notes which is based on Lotus Domino (8.5).
Prices per user per month start at $5,-.
Microsoft offers Exchange Online17 as their messaging offering in the cloud.
Interestingly enough this service is, 1½ years after the introduction of Exchange 2010,
still based on Exchange 2007. Prices start at $6,- per user per month.
From this information it’s clear that in the area of hosted environments and cloud
services, Microsoft can’t stand up to their claim. IBM does offer a full range of
deployment options and their messaging offerings in the Cloud are both more feature
rich and cheaper.
14 http://www.ikwijsdeweg.be/
15 https://www.lotuslive.com
16 https://www.lotuslive.com/en/services/notes
17 http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/en-us/exchange-online.aspx

3.6. Conclusion
In this important part of a messaging product, IBM scores solid points on scalability,
total cost of ownership and flexibility. Microsoft historically has been trailing in these
areas and although Exchange 2010 contains some good improvements they haven’t
succeeded in closing the gap.
TCO is an important focus area for IBM in their development of Lotus Domino and IBM
has succeeded in lowering the TCO of Lotus Domino with each release. This makes it
unlikely that Microsoft will catch up anytime soon.

4. Unified Communications and Enterprise Mobility
4.1. Unified Communications
A single unified communications platform: Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 continues
to address users’ needs by providing new capabilities for unified messaging,
integrated e-mail, voice mail, instant messaging (IM), Short Message Service (SMS) text
messages, and mobility management. All of these capabilities are provided within a
single Exchange product compared with the multiple, disparate products that an IBM
deployment requires.
We have to grant Microsoft points here. Exchange 2010 offers integrated voicemail and
sms services, for which you would need Lotus Sametime Unified Communications
server on the IBM side. Despite what Microsoft claims above, Exchange 2010 does not
offer instant messaging. You need the Microsoft Lync Server for this. IBM has divided
the functionalities mentioned above (except for voice mail and sms messaging) over
Lotus Domino, Lotus Sametime limited and Lotus Notes Traveler. Both extra products
are for free with a Domino Enterprise license. The installation of these products is so
simple that you can easily build three Domino servers including Sametime and Traveler
in the time it costs to build one Exchange server, while the administration of these
products is integrated in the Domino Directory. Smaller organizations can even choose
to install all products on a single server (as your only server). This is not possible with
Microsoft Exchange.
4.2. Enterprise Mobility
Built-in enterprise mobility: In Exchange Server 2010, mobile users can access their
messages from a truly universal inbox with SMS text messages, e-mail, voice mail, and
saved IM conversations. IT administrators can control the devices that connect to their
networks though a block/allow list to ensure that only approved devices connect to the
Exchange Server messaging data.
The best part of mobile access in Exchange Server 2010 is that it is all built into
Exchange Server. You do not need to buy extra servers and client access licenses
(CALs) from third-party providers or manage another, separate system for mobile
access.
In contrast, 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.18” Exchange has 47 mobile policies to
manage and protect information and security of the devices that connect to your
network.
In the past IBM left the support for mobile devices to third parties like Commontime's
mNotes19. However, a small company like Commontime doesn’t have the same
bargaining power as Microsoft, which meant that the support from providers for
Microsoft Exchange exceeded the support for Lotus Domino by a large margin.
IBM recognised this and as the importance of mobile devices grew, they decided to
take matters in their own hands with the introduction of Lotus Notes Traveler in 2007.
They’ve been working hard on Traveler ever since and have managed to almost close
the gap. The most used smartphone businesswise is currently RIM’s BlackBerry. Their
BES server has always been available on both Lotus Domino and Microsoft Exchange.
For other devices, Microsoft created a de facto standard with their ActiveSync protocol.
For this reason, IBM licensed ActiveSync and implemented the protocol in Lotus Notes
Traveler. Through this protocol Traveler supports almost all platforms that support
Microsoft Exchange. IBM has also improved the security options of Lotus Notes
Traveler and brought them on par with the security options in Microsoft Exchange
including encryption and remote wipe.
The report from Gartner that Microsoft refers to is dated December 17, 2007. At that
time, IBM had just released the very first, indeed functionally limited version of Lotus
Notes Traveler. IBM has introduced many new versions since then which have
invalidated Gartner’s remark.
4.3. Conclusion
When we take the above in consideration we have to conclude that although Microsoft
Exchange enjoys better support from mobile devices, the difference is a lot smaller
than Microsoft would like us to believe.
Popular devices like the Blackberry, iPhone/iPad, Android devices, Windows Mobile
devices, Symbian devices and most non-Symbian Nokia devices are fully supported
through Lotus Notes Traveler. Security options for mobile devices like a remote wipe in
case a device is lost or stolen and sending data over encrypted connections are
supported by both products. IBM is still working hard on further improving the
features and support of Lotus Notes Traveler. An advantage of keeping this
18 http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?ref=g_search&id=565418
19 http://www.commontime.com/

functionality in a separate add-on is that IBM can and does release new Traveler
versions separate from Lotus Domino.
On Unified Communications Microsoft scores points with the integration of voicemail
and sms services in Exchange, but loses points on the absence of instant messaging
features. In Lotus Domino the instant messaging functionality is also in a separate
product, but where IBM’s Lotus Sametime Limited is free with Lotus Domino,
Microsoft’s Lync server is not.

5. Interoperability
5.1. Active directory
Single, industry-leading directory interoperability: The Exchange team built the first
native active directory application, Exchange 2000, almost nine years ago. IBM
announced this feature for Domino 8.5.x releases20, and by the time it is shipped,
Exchange will have a ten-year head start on interoperability with the leading directory
service in enterprises today, providing rich, powerful experiences to end users and IT
Pros alike.
The above claim from Microsoft is ill founded. Their reference is a page on the blog of
Ed Brill, director of Lotus Software, about new features in Lotus Domino 8.5.x.
Nowhere on this page is there any mention of plans to use the Active Directory for
Lotus Domino 8.5’s configuration. The idea of swapping the Domino Directory, the
base for the complete configuration of the product, for Active Directory is rather
absurd and untrue. IBM Lotus in Domino version 8.5 still uses the Domino Directory
with which they have over 20 years of experience.
The confusion of Microsoft’s author is probably caused by an initiative by IBM for Lotus
Domino which is called “Directory independence”. An idea in this initiative was to
create the possibility to move person and group data to another LDAP directory, which
would create the opportunity for companies who use company-wide LDAP directories
to maintain all person and group data in one place. Person and group data are
relatively separate from the configuration of an environment.
Nevertheless IBM decided to simplify ID management in another way21. The Directory
Independence initiative was part of a broader Identity Management strategy that
cumulated into the ID Vault and Notes shared login in Domino 8.5. Notes shared login
replaces the Notes ID password by a hash made up of a combination of the Windows
machine ID and the Windows user ID. This way a user who is logged in to his machine
(which can be through his Active Directory account) can start Lotus Notes without
logging in again. Unlike the previous client single logon functionality in older versions
of Lotus Notes, Notes shared login works independently from the Windows password
and therefore continues to work as your Windows password changes.
A new feature in Lotus Domino 8.5.2 is the support for the Simple and Protected
GSSAPI Negotiation Mechanism (SPNEGO). This mechanism, which is also supported by
20 http://www.edbrill.com/ebrill/edbrill.nsf/dx/notesdomino-8.5-in-one-page-on-ibm.com
21 http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=899&uid=swg21416004

Outlook Web App, allows a user who is authenticated against an Active Directory to
authenticate to a web application without logging in again.
Apart from this new functionality Lotus Domino offer the possibility to authenticate
web browser users through other LDAP directories (among which Active Directory)
since version 5 (released in 1999). Microsoft doesn’t have this kind of support for
Outlook Web App.
5.2. Sharing of calendars and communication with third parties
Delivering tools for the global economy: Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 includes the
ability to share calendars with users outside your organization and associate
permissions that you are comfortable with. In this release, secure messaging is not
only supported within your organization, but for external users as well. Microsoft
Exchange Server 2010 now enables secure communications with vendors, partners,
and customers who previously required third-party tools or separate account
management.
What is striking here is that a direct comparison with Lotus Domino is missing.
Microsoft is presenting an improvement over Exchange 2007. Exchange 2010
introduced "Federated sharing” which makes it easier to grant calendar access to users
outside your domain. It’s no longer necessary to give them access to your entire Active
Directory. The condition is that the organization of these people also uses Microsoft
Exchange and that a link is established between the Active Directories.
The ability to chat is not in Exchange 2010, so this remark by Microsoft is not correct.
To chat with Outlook, you'll have to install Microsoft Lync Server (formerly known as
Office Communications Server or OCS) or Lotus Sametime. These are separate
products. The possibility to send secure messages to other businesses that use Lync
server/OCS was introduced in OCS 2007 R2 (which was released in 2009). Lotus
Sametime has been offering this possibility for a while and using the Sametime
Gateway it is also possible to safely exchange messages with other instant messaging
systems.
Lotus Domino always had the opportunity to share data of any kind with other Domino
using organisations with the help of cross certificates. Lotus Notes 8.5 added the
possibility to share calendars with others through the iCal standard22. Outlook
supports the iCal standard since Outlook 2003. iCal, or iCalendar, is a standard
22 http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/library/notes85-icalendar/index.html?ca=drs-
&ca=dgf-ip

internet calendar format that enables users to synchronise electronic calendars across
different computers and different programs. The Lotus Notes calendar can display
multiple iCal calendars in an overlay in a single calendar. This option also allows you to
share calendars between Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Domino.
5.3. Conclusion
If we look at both aspects we see that on interoperability there aren’t that many
differences. Lotus Domino has the advantage that browser clients can authenticate
against multiple LDAP directories, but Exchange users are unlikely to experience any
limitations in having to authenticate against the Active Directory. For exchanging
information with third parties, both products have built-in methods to do this in a
secure way. We didn’t discuss the possibilities of the clients (Notes & Outlook) here to
interoperate with third parties. As we saw in chapter 2, Lotus Notes does win in this
area.

6. Storage, Archiving and Retention
Storing, archiving, and retention: Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 addresses the needs
to specify what data is stored and for how long with native e-mail archiving and robust
retention policies that provide the tools you need to meet increasing compliance
requirements. Exchange Server 2010 also enables powerful cross-mailbox searching
capabilities that can be delegated through role-based access control, to ensure that
the right people have the right tools to protect your organization. Domino provides
only limited archiving and in most cases requires third-party products, with additional
cost and complexity, to achieve the compliance capabilities that Exchange Server 2010
delivers natively.
6.1. Restoring Mail and Retention
6.1.1. Restoring Mail on Exchange
Storage, archiving and retention are traditionally the Achilles heel of Microsoft
Exchange. Exchange administrators struggle daily with the procedures for restoring
accidentally deleted emails. The problem is Exchange’s architecture with its message
stores/databases. Because there are multiple mailboxes in a database, to restore some
mails from one mailbox, the administrator first has to restore the entire database from
the backup. This database is easily 100 GB in size, but officially may grow up till 16 TB.
When this database is finally restored the administrator will have to copy the mails
back into the user’s mail file. Users can’t do this themselves.
The good news for Exchange administrators is that Microsoft has improved this part
considerably in Exchange 2010. Backups are now created as snapshots on disk,
making it very quick to attach them to the Exchange server. Using scripting commands
in the Microsoft PowerShell the administrator can copy mails from the snapshot to the
mailbox of the user or even another user. For less recent mails, the backups will
probably be no longer online in which case the administrator is out of luck as the mails
will have to be restored the old way.
6.1.2. Retention on Exchange
Because of these problems with the restoring of mails, retention was always a big
problem with Microsoft Exchange. When the security department requested several
mailboxes for a forensics investigation this meant overtime for the Exchange
Administrator. However, Microsoft has introduced a new feature in Exchange 2010
which improves this situation considerably. In Exchange 2010 you can specify that mail
should be kept for a certain retention period, e.g. one year. This means that any mail
sent and received is kept, even when the user discarded it. When this mechanism is

used, users can also restore accidently removed mail themselves. In addition, people
with a certain role (e.g. a security officer) can see and search all mail that was sent and
received in the organisation in the set period.
Obviously this is a huge benefit for forensics investigations. This feature however does
have a downside. It comes at the expense of disk space and performance as all mail for
a particular user needs to be stored in the same Message store as where the mailbox
of the user is located. All mail stays in the message store for the chosen retention
period. Also the “will you join for lunch”-mails or mails with funny movies. Even when
the user immediately deleted the mail. The Exchange server needs to keep these mails
indexed at the cost of performance. Another downside is that as an administrator you
lose all control over the size of the Message stores / databases. Normally the
administrator can set quotas on mailboxes and by limiting the amount of mailboxes in
a message store he will have a good idea of the ultimate size of this message store.
When the retention feature is used, there’s no limit on the size of the mailbox as even
when the users stays within his quota the deleted documents will add to the size of the
message store.
6.1.3. Restoring Mail on Lotus Domino
Due to Lotus Domino’s architecture where each user’s mailbox corresponds to a
physical .nsf file, Domino historically always had the upper hand regarding restoring
mail and retention. Where with Exchange a corrupt message store leads to problems
for many users, a corrupt mail file in Domino means a problem for just one user.
If a Domino mail user has mistakenly deleted mails, the administrator only has to
restore the mail file for that user, which would usually be no more than a few hundred
MB. The mail file can be restored directly to a directory on the Domino server to allow
the user himself to copy missing mails back to his current mail file.
6.1.4. Retention on Lotus Domino
Retention on Domino can be implemented using the Mail Journaling functionality
which ensures that every incoming and outgoing mail can be stored in one large
database. This feature has been around since Lotus Domino 6 (released in 2004). In
addition, companies that need this kind of functionality have often created or
purchased extra applications that extend this functionality for them, handily using the
fact that Lotus Domino is an application platform.

6.2. Archiving
6.2.1. Archiving on Exchange
Exchange 2010 features a new archiving ability called Personal Archive. It enables
users to easily archive mails to a special archive folder which shows in their normal
mailbox. Searches which are performed on the user’s mailbox will still find mails that
are in their archive folder, so from a user’s viewpoint this is a neat option. From a
technical perspective however, this option doesn’t have much value at all. The archive
folder is physically stored in the same message store/database as the user’s mailbox,
which means this feature has the same flaw as the retention feature e.g. no control
over the size of the message store (unless the administrator puts quota on the
Personal Archive with negates it goal). It also means that archived mail can’t be put on
cheaper storage. Seeing these limitations one might wonder why one would implement
this archiving functionality at all instead of just removing the quota of user’s
mailboxes and let them keep all their mail in there? Surely users would prefer this over
any archiving solution. The answer is twofold:
 Performance of the Exchange server. The archiving folder doesn’t need to be
indexed as often as the normal mailbox, which saves the Exchange server
resources.
 The Personal Archive can also be used to assemble mails that were archived in
the past using 3rd party solutions, .pst files stored on the desktop etc.
6.2.2. Archiving on Domino
Lotus Domino’s native archiving solution allows mails of a certain age, defined by
policies, to be automatically archived to a separate .nsf file which, unlike Exchange,
can be on another server with cheaper storage. Users can also archive selected mails
themselves to this archive. The archive is easily accessible for the user through a link
in their mail file. The one downside of Domino’s native archiving solution is that users
can’t do a multiple mailbox search to search for mails in their normal inbox and their
archive at the same time. Third parties have jumped on this omission and provide
archiving or search products that do provide this feature.
6.3. Storage
With Microsoft Exchange 2010 customers can choose cheaper, lower-cost storage
types including DAS, SATA, and JBOD without sacrificing reliability or performance. IBM
provides Domino attachment object store (DAOS), but customers are not provided with
a true range of storage options to reduce costs for all users.

DAS, SATA and JBOD are expensive words for simple storage mechanisms. What
storage options a middleware product like Exchange or Domino can use is dependent
on the operating system that the product runs on. What Microsoft tells us here would
be the same as when IBM would tell you that Domino now also works with cheap
DirectX 9 video cards. The one has nothing to do with the other.
To understand what point Microsoft tries to make we have to look at previous versions
of Microsoft Exchange, which brings us back at Exchange’s message stores. The
chosen architecture led to the situation where previous versions of Exchange
generated that many input/output operations per second (iops) that larger Exchange
environment only reached acceptable performance levels on expensive storage
solutions like SANs and fast RAIDs23 or were severely limited in the amount of users
that could be supported per Exchange server.
Microsoft worked hard in Exchange 2010 to optimise the Message store, which now
theoretically can reach acceptable performance levels on cheaper storage. Lotus
Domino with their Notes Storage Format (NSF) containers never suffered from the
performance problems that plagued Exchange. Therefore it has been possible for years
to run larger Lotus Domino environments in combination with cheaper storage
solutions. Nevertheless with each release Lotus Domino technicians have found more
and more ways to even further reduce the use of resources by the Domino server, with
the result that in the past 10 years upgrading your Domino server to a new release
gave organisations the possibility to host more users on that same server on the same
hardware than before the upgrade.
Contrary to the techniques that Microsoft mentioned, the Domino Attachment and
Object Service (DAOS)24 is a feature of the middleware. DAOS separates attachments in
mails from the mail file and makes sure that every attachment is saved only once per
Domino server in a way which is completely invisible for the user. This results in
effectively less bytes on your disks. Without DAOS the same mail files already use less
space on a Lotus Domino server than on a Microsoft Exchange server25. DAOS saves at
least another 30% in disk space and that pays off in lower storage costs, lower costs
for backup, etc.
23 http://www.windowsitpro.com/article/compliance/a-first-look-at-exchange-2010.aspx
24 http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/library/domino-green/
25 http://blog.darrenduke.net/Darren/DDBZ.nsf/dx/mail-file-size-domino-vs-exchange.htm

6.4. Conclusion
Storage, archiving and retention have always been weak points in the architecture of
Microsoft Exchange. Microsoft has acknowledged this fact and has tried to improve
this in Exchange 2010 and they certainly succeeded. However, IBM also has been busy
and with Domino 8.5 they succeeded in improving both server efficiency, allowing your
Domino server to support more users on the same hardware, and considerably
reducing the required storage with DAOS. Microsoft has built a very nice feature to
help with retention policies. This retention functionality in Lotus Domino is currently
not as extensive. The way Microsoft has implemented this feature, however, ensures
that high costs are associated with its use. You need significantly more storage and
Exchange servers if you want to use this functionality. Time will tell if companies are
willing to accept this extra cost. In the field of storage and archiving Lotus Domino is
definitely the big winner. In terms of retention, there is a small functional benefit for
Exchange, but with a clear "but".

7. Upgrading your environment
The next three chapters describe components of the two products that Microsoft chose
not to discuss on their marketing page. The fact that they didn’t, means there’s a good
chance that these are not Exchange’s strongholds. However, to compare Microsoft
Exchange and Lotus Domino you should look at the total picture and that does include
these components. We start off with the difference in upgrading your environment to
the next major release.
Companies have to deal with an upgrade on average every two to three years (when we
omit service packs). In the past 10 years, Microsoft has released a new version of
Exchange on average every three years (2000, 2003, 2007, 2010).
IBM was a bit faster with 6 major versions in the same period (R5, 6, 6.5, 7, 8, 8.5).
Although companies sometimes skip a version, this is not always smart. The costs you
save by not upgrading, you often more than lose by not being able to use the
improvements in the new version. Especially the upgrade to Lotus Domino 8.5 has a
return on investment of less than a year26.
To compare the upgrade procedures of Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Domino, I’ll list
the official information of both manufacturers on how to perform an upgrade:
26 http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/offer/forrester_webcast.html

7.1. Migrating Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2010
Microsoft has extensive online documentation27 on how to proceed with an upgrade
from Exchange 2003 or Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2010. This diagram gives a good
overview:
In short the upgrade comes down to this:
1. Buy new hardware for the Exchange servers
2. Install Windows 2008 R2
3. Upgrade the Active Directory
4. Install Exchange 2010
27 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd638158.aspx
Figure 3 Upgrade diagram from Microsoft

5. Move the mailboxes from the old servers to the new servers
6. Change all references (dns addresses etc.) to the new servers
An in-place upgrade is impossible with Exchange. Extra hardware is always necessary
during an upgrade of Microsoft Exchange. Because of this we speak in this section of a
migration and not of an upgrade. Many Microsoft consultants, when questioned on this
situation will try to explain that it’s good for the stability of your messaging
environment to redesign this environment every now and then. Although it surely
doesn’t do any harm to take a good look at the architecture of your messaging
environment from time to time, it’s questionable whether this should be done every
two to three years. It is amazing that a middleware product is so dependent on an
operating system that each release is accompanied by an investment in new hardware
and new operating systems.
7.2. Upgrade Lotus Domino 6.5 / 7 / 8.0 to Lotus Domino 8.5
IBM also has extensive documentation28 on how to perform an upgrade of a Domino
environment. IBM lists four options to upgrade your environment:
1. Upgrade your existing Domino server(s) – This is the easiest method
2. Move existing servers to new hardware
3. Install new Domino servers (inherit identities)
4. Install new Domino servers (new identities)
If you have no problems in your current Domino domain there is no reason not to do
an in-place upgrade. This is the procedure for the upgrade of a Domino environment:
1. Upgrade the Domino Directory of your administration server
2. Upgrade the Domino code of your administration server
3. Upgrade the other servers in your domain
4. Upgrade the ODS (On Disk Structure) of your databases (including the mail
files)
5. When the Notes clients have been upgraded, upgrade the mail files to the latest
version of the mail template
Such an upgrade will take only a fraction of the time of the migration of an Exchange
mail domain and when your mail servers are clustered this can even be done without
any downtime. As Domino deals more efficiently with its resources with each new
version, it is not necessary to upgrade your hardware if there previously were no
problems with the performance. Sometimes with an upgrade of your Domino server to
the latest version you can even delay an upgrade of your hardware. Domino also hardly
28 https://www-304.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21406047

has any OS dependencies so there’s usually no need to upgrade your server operating
system for a Domino upgrade.
7.3. Conclusion
When we compare the differences in upgrading to the next release between Microsoft
Exchange and Lotus Domino, the latter makes Exchange look very pale. Where Lotus
Domino always allows you to do an in-place upgrade, Microsoft once again failed to
deliver this option with Exchange 2010. Microsoft is aware of the fact that this is a
weak point in Exchange29. They blame the strongly modified database schema for the
new mailbox stores. Lotus Domino 8.5 however also contains many modifications to
the On Disk Structure (ODS) of the Domino databases, but the ODS upgrade can be
done in-place. You can even delay upgrading the ODS till after the upgrade.
For upgrades, Exchange is also plagued by the strong integration with the server
operating system. Exchange 2010 only runs on Windows Server 2008, while most
organisations have Exchange 2007 running on Windows Server 2003. In that case an
in-place upgrade wouldn’t have been possible regardless of the database
You do not see this problem with Lotus Domino. Domino is supported on many
platforms and runs on even more including all versions of Windows 2000 to 2008. The
result is that where most Domino environments currently run at least Domino 7 and
most run Domino 8.x, there are still a lot of Exchange 2003 environments.
Even Microsoft themselves have not dared to upgrade their Exchange environment up
until now: Exchange-Online, the hosted Microsoft Exchange environment is still on
Exchange 2007, 1½ years after the introduction of Exchange 2010.
Microsoft sales consultants will try to avoid talking about the tricky part of upgrading
to a new version as much as possible in sales calls. When it does come up, they will try
to downplay the issue. Especially for larger environments, the costs of an upgrade
however are an important factor to take into consideration. These are recurring costs
that may have a significant impact on the Total Cost of Ownership of the product. The
cost of an upgrade of Lotus Domino easily is a factor of 10 lower than for Exchange
and this is contributes significantly to the lower TCO of Lotus Domino compared to
Microsoft Exchange.
29 http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/49129

8. Workflow Applications
In the disclaimer we mentioned that a comparison between Lotus Domino and
Microsoft Exchange is a comparison
between apples and oranges. Where
Exchange is a pure messaging product,
Lotus Domino is a complete application
platform. Although there are many
companies that only use the email
functionality of Lotus Domino, the fact
that they have a product that when used
properly can increase the productivity of
the employees substantially without any costs for additional licenses, should not be
discarded. Let’s look at how an organisation could benefit from this functionality.
8.1. Employability of Lotus Domino
A good start for a company would be to use Lotus Domino for simple applications like:
 Leave requests
Enter a leave request electronically where emails are automatically sent to your
manager who can approve or reject your request with a simple push on a
button. Other employees can easily see who is on leave and when.
 Travel requests
Request visits to conferences, clients or offices abroad via an application,
where the workflow of requesting approval from managers, booking of flights
and hotel rooms etc. is all done through the application.
 Reserving meeting rooms and resources
Book your rooms, beamers, projector screens, whiteboards etc. directly when
planning a meeting in your calendar. Of course, a room can be booked only
once for a particular time slot, so there won’t be multiple groups standing in
front of a meeting room discussing who has the right to use it.
These are a couple of examples of processes that in many companies are still done
using paper calendars or application forms. Lotus Domino makes it very easy to
automate such processes and make them more efficient. The above examples are very
generic, so templates for these applications are often free or available at low cost. An
application for reserving meeting rooms and resources is shipped with Lotus Domino
and is called the Resource Reservation database. For other applications, you can take a
look on OpenNTF.org, where more than 100 applications are available for free, or you

can ask your IBM Lotus Business Partner. This is by no means to say that Lotus Domino
would only be suitable for simple workflow applications. Some companies run their
core applications on Lotus Domino. An example of a famous public web site that was
originally written on Lotus Domino is Kieskeurig.nl. However, these are not the type of
applications to start with when you currently use your Domino server only for mail and
want to start making better use of your investment.
8.2. Employability of Microsoft Exchange / SharePoint Foundation Server
For similar functionality in terms of applications on the Microsoft side we have to look
at SharePoint. Although a comparison between SharePoint and Lotus Domino is beyond
the scope of this paper, I’ll briefly discuss the free version of SharePoint: SharePoint
Foundation Server. A statement that in contrast to Microsoft Exchange you get a free
mature application platform wouldn’t be fair if we disregard the free offering from
Microsoft. Apart from the limited functionality of this version however, this offering on
further investigation turns out to be not as free as it seems. To be allowed to use the
Foundations server, the right license for Windows Server 2008 is required. This comes
down to that for each person who will use the SharePoint Foundations server you need
a Windows Server CAL (Client Access License). Since you do not need these licenses for
Exchange, these costs are the additional costs to use SharePoint. You don’t have such
extra costs with Lotus Domino.
In addition, Lotus Domino has the advantage of the Lotus Notes client, enabling
applications to seamlessly integrate into the mail environment, e.g. with forms with
special formatting stored in a mail, buttons in a mail with extensive executable code
(which the Execution Control List deems as safe), and additional fields sent along with
an email, which can be visualised with computed text. These possibilities have great
advantages for workflow applications. Microsoft offers nothing comparable in this
respect.
8.3. Conclusion
When comparing Lotus Domino and Microsoft Exchange it’s tempting to ignore
Domino’s capabilities as an application platform. After all, the focus is on the
messaging functionality and not on the possibilities as an application platform, which
Exchange lacks. However, this leads to a crooked comparison. Lotus Domino is
characterized as an application platform that has a low threshold for developing
applications. Many useful applications are out-of-the-box with Lotus Domino or can
be found on OpenNTF. Chances therefore are very high that Lotus Domino as an
application platform can play a useful role in the company to automate processes in a
simple and inexpensive way. Although this possibility in a direct comparison is difficult
to express in monetary terms, it is important to realize that you lose this option when
you choose Microsoft Exchange.

9. Integration with Social Software
IBM and Microsoft have distinctly different visions regarding the future of information
exchange and this difference reflects on Lotus Domino/Notes and Microsoft
Exchange/Outlook. When choosing one of the platforms it’s therefore good to take
this visions and the implications it will have for the future of both products along in
your decision.
9.1. IBM - Email is one the sources of information
The central elements In IBM’s vision are the interaction
between people and the relationship between
information. People can communicate with each other in
different ways. Via email, but also via the telephone,
face-to-face, instant messaging and via social networks
like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn or through internal
social networks (such as a Lotus Connections
environment). You probably recognize the situation that
you know you have discussed something with another person, but you don’t remember
through which medium. As people start mixing more media to communicate, this will
occur more and more often in the future. Young people hardly use email.
Communication is done via Hyves, Facebook or MSN. In IBM's view, the boundaries
between mail and other forms of information is fading, making it important to bundle
these different sources of information and display them in one clear overview. This
concept is outlined in "Project Vulcan". Project Vulcan is a blueprint for what is to
become the next version of Lotus Notes (which is expected in the first half of 2012).
Information from different sources is bundled in this client and is tagged to persons or
subjects. To visualise this is, imagine that you receive an email from a contact from
another company and as you read the mail you automatically see relevant news about
that company in a separate part of the window, and the latest status messages of this
contact in Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. In this vision, email is combined with stored
chats, messages through social networks and other information that is available on a
person or topic to give you a complete picture.
9.2. Microsoft - Email stays a separate entity
Microsoft is much more conservative in this area. They see the increased use of social
networking sites, but see no added value to the current status of emails. There are
Facebook and LinkedIn connectors for Outlook, but these just display the status
updates of your contacts in a separate part of the screen, similar to the widgets for the
Lotus Notes client. Creating connections between different forms of information is
currently not available in Outlook and there are no indications that this will change in
the near future. For the next few years, Outlook will remain an email / calendaring

client with integrated chat client, RSS feeds and possibly Facebook and LinkedIn
plugins, where these components are all independent of each other.
9.3. Conclusion
In the area of social software both IBM and Microsoft are seen as leaders by research
firms like Gartner and Forrester.
Both Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and Lotus Connections 3.0 are very good platforms for
a social enterprise. According to Gartner, the difference between the two is in
"Completeness of Vision" and this is reflected in the messaging systems of both. Where
IBM Lotus Notes is an integral part of its social platform strategy (which doesn’t
require you to have Lotus Connections), Microsoft's social software aspirations are
limited to SharePoint. Outlook remains a mail / calendaring program. IBM's strategy
seems to be better prepared for the future. The current youth live with social media.
They regard email as out-dated. When they enter the labour market, they will feel
more at home and efficient with a platform that supports this social way of thinking
and working than when they are forced to use out-dated, as they see it, techniques.
The choice however, is also determined by the company culture and how you
communicate using electronic media. Companies that mainly manufacture goods and
where email is used for top-down communication have little added value from IBM’s

approach. Organisations where knowledge and knowledge sharing is important will
benefit.

10. Conclusion
When we look at the various areas that were discussed in this paper, the differences
between Microsoft and IBM Lotus are small. By many Microsoft’s Outlook client is
regarded as more user friendly when used solely for email and calendaring. The
differences with the latest version of Lotus Notes however are small and Lotus Notes is
the better client when it comes to combining different sources of information.
Microsoft scores points with the slightly broader support of mobile devices and the
new solution for retention. IBM scores points in the areas of storage, archiving,
interoperability, scalability, ease of upgrading and working with social software. In
addition, it should not be forgotten that next to a messaging platform Lotus Domino is
a powerful application platform. The largest victory however is scored by Lotus
Domino in the Total Cost of Ownership. Independent sources indicate that Lotus
Domino has a significantly lower TCO than Microsoft Exchange.
10.1. Upgrade or migrate?
In the end both systems are a good choice to build a stable messaging platform.
Nevertheless many organisations will ask the question at an upcoming upgrade:
Should we upgrade or migrate? Let’s look at the different scenarios.
10.1.1. Current Platform: Microsoft Exchange
The costs of a migration from an older version of Exchange to Exchange 2010 are
quite high. As indicated earlier, you need extra servers to build the new Exchange
environment. Because the user interface of Outlook 2010 has substantially changed
from Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2003, some form of education should take place to
familiarize users with this new interface. However, the cost of migrating to Lotus
Domino will still be much higher. Although these costs due to the lower TCO of Lotus
Domino will be earned back on the long run, a migration to Lotus Domino mainly
makes sense when Lotus Domino is also used as an application platform.
10.1.2. Current Platform: Lotus Domino
The costs of an upgrade to Lotus Domino are relatively low. When the environment is
running well, the servers can be upgraded in-place so this can be done very quickly.
The biggest costs will therefore be in upgrading the Lotus Notes clients. Lotus Notes
8.5 when compared to Notes 7 contains so many changes and new functionality that it
is advisable to offer users some form of education.
Given the many enhancements in Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5 an upgrade to this
version makes a lot of sense. A migration to Microsoft Exchange never does. Such a
migration is, compared to an upgrade, very expensive, while the associated costs can
never be earned back due to the higher TCO of Microsoft Exchange.

When we look at the complete picture it basically comes down to the following:
In general it’s best to stick to your current platform and upgrade this platform to the
latest version. When you are currently using Microsoft Exchange there could however
be reasons to seriously consider a migration to Lotus Domino.
10.2. Reasons for a migration
When we look at this conclusion, it’s surprising that there’s currently an opposite trend
in the market. Although there are organisations migrating from Microsoft Exchange to
Lotus Domino, there are currently more organisations migrating the other way. Why do
these organisations make this choice? We have looked at a couple of these migrations
to try to figure out their reasons and evaluate if these would hold under scrutiny.
These are some reasons we found on why companies migrate from Lotus Domino to
Microsoft Exchange:
10.2.1. Ignorance
Ignorance is not a nice term to use, because it suggests that companies didn’t do their
homework before making a decision. Nevertheless a lot of migrations appear to be
based on ignorance. This is not so strange if you take into consideration the lack of
information regarding comparisons between Lotus Domino and Microsoft Exchange.
This lack of knowledge culminates in herd behaviour. When you hear of another
company that migrated to Exchange, it seems safe to do the same under the
assumption that the other company did their research. A good example of this is the
migration at Achmea.
Apart from the fact that this program manager seemed unaware that many similar
companies do use Lotus Domino as their messaging platform, this remark clearly
reveals that the options haven’t been thoroughly investigated. A comment by an
30 http://www.computable.nl/artikel/ict_topics/ecm/3090410/1277020/twee-emailsystemen-
naast-elkaar-is-geen-optie.html#ixzz0yvW46eNN
Following the merger with Interpolis insurance company Achmea decided to migrate
its messaging environment from IBM Lotus Notes to Microsoft Exchange. "It was an
easy choice" says program manager Steph Berghuis. "Exchange is the de facto standard
in similar companies30.
Yet, not every employee is equally pleased with the new system. "I would welcome it if
we went back to Lotus Notes" says Maud Hamel, who manages the hiring of external IT
personnel for Achmea IT. Mail Program Outlook works fine but I miss the database
features of Notes. A lot of acrobatics are required to use our databases with Outlook.
"Hamel sees the transition to the new program as a step back. "You can’t even
simultaneously send and archive a mail!"

employee in the article further proves this:
Too little thought had gone into the integration with Domino applications. The clearest
assessment on this migration, however, is stated in the comments by someone who
was closely involved in the migration:
This leaves no room for doubt. With this migration, based on ignorance, Achmea /
Interpolis wasted a lot of money, while their new environment is less capable than their
old one.
There’s a clear role here for the salespeople of IBM and their business partners to
make sure their customers receive the right information to make a well informed
31 http://www.computable.nl/artikel/ict_topics/ecm/3090410/1277020/twee-emailsystemen-
naast-elkaar-is-geen-optie.html
Nice story of Mr. Berghuis, but I do not share his perception. How do you explain to
someone that you phase out an environment that completely redundant (in case of
server failure) without any interaction of individuals, without mail quotas, delivers
more than 6000 applications.
What did the organisation get in return?
Mail quota and a lot of extra costs for system administration and maintenance (now by
Getronics and Atos, which works out very cheap or maybe not?)
A SharePoint solution that’s still in its infancy is not capable of hosting the applications
that Lotus Domino hosts.
The already mentioned TCO made us cry when we saw how many servers had to be
equipped during the pilot phase.
The current environment of Achmea at the time of the merger with Interpolis had more
than enough headroom to host those extra 5000 users with a bit of extra storage!!
If you had phased out the Exchange platform, you would have had direct savings.
Users would have been saved from their 10 MB mail file, yes 10 MB default, and they
would have had direct access to 6000 applications. Did you say quick win?
You may explain to me “without problems worth mentioning” a bit more. That’s not
what I remember. I only remember the loss of a great solution for the organisation31.
A former project teammember and former Achmeaan.

decision. We also hope that this paper will help to make it easier to find correct
information regarding these two platforms on the internet.
10.2.2. Standardisation on one platform / single vendor strategy
Frequently organisations express the desire to standardise as much as possible on the
platform of one manufacturer. If a manufacturer can offer a product on every level
there are some clear advantages. Products usually work better with other products
when they come from the same manufacturer and if there are problems, there is only
one manufacturer responsible so parties can’t start pointing fingers. Because of
Microsoft's monopoly on the desktop, this single vendor strategy usually boils down to
a choice for Microsoft and this has initiated many migrations of Lotus Domino to
Exchange.
It is however questionable whether this is a sensible strategy. Among the youth,
Microsoft's Windows monopoly is under fire. In America, students are increasingly
opting for a MacBook with MacOS. Some sources even quote 70% of new students. This
is a trend that is bound to occur worldwide in the near future. When this group joins
the workforce, they will prefer to use an OS in their work environment that is familiar
to them and that will no longer be Windows.
The alternative to the single vendor strategy is the "best of breed" strategy. Although
Microsoft’s products are in general of good quality, they are not considered “best of

breed” in every area and it’s unlikely that this will change in the future. Frans Nauta32,
chairman of the former Dutch innovation platform and columnist for radio program
“BNR denktank” mentioned Microsoft in his column33 as an example of a company that
has lost the power to innovate. On SocialSoftwareBlog34 we also discussed this.
This means that a choice for Microsoft as single vendor holds the risk that your
competitors who do use a "best of breed" strategy will have a competitive advantage.
When your competitors do have a competitive advantage with their “best of breed”
strategy it’s hard to switch. Jon Brodkin of Networkworld describes Microsoft’s 2010
software as the 'most complicated lock-in decision in years'35. A choice for this path
will mean that when Microsoft decides to significantly increase the license fees, like
they have done in the past36, you have no other choice than to pay.
10.2.3. User-oriented choices
It has been said that "directors do not want Exchange. Directors want Outlook". There
is no doubt that Microsoft's client enjoys a greater popularity than Lotus Notes. "My
employees use Outlook at home", is also frequently mentioned. For a migration
however, this is a sophism. The latest Outlook Express client came with Windows XP,
while the Outlook client is not provided in the standard consumer versions of Office.
Young people rarely use Outlook at home. They use Gmail, Hotmail or other Web-
based mail clients.
Employees who come from other companies will often know Outlook, but they likely
won’t know Outlook 2010, while the user interface of this version has changed so
much that knowledge of Outlook doesn’t mean that one can get started with this client
right away. On the other hand, when it’s about a migration, people are familiar with
Lotus Notes.
Another problem surfaces in this reasoning: Many organisations don’t see the need to
offer any form of user education to their employees for the choses messaging
platform. Many user frustrations however are caused by not knowing what the tricks
are for a particular client. From a broad experience I know that a course of 1½ hours
32 http://www.nauta.org/
33 http://www.bnr.nl/static/jspx/play.jspx?url=http://streaming.bnr.nl/
csStreamingAudio/columns/y2010/m07/d06/nauta_20100706.mp3&titel=Frans Nauta
34 http://www.socialsoftwareblog.nl/blog.nsf/dx/microsoft-nu-als-het-ibm-van-
1985.htm?opendocument
35 http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/072910-microsoft-lockin.html?hpg1=bn
36 http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/desktop-os/2008/05/14/windows-small-business-server-
prices-almost-double-39417160/

for Lotus Notes 8.5 makes a huge difference in user’s effectiveness to work with this
client. The same goes for Outlook. This is therefore an investment with a very short
return on investment period.
When we look at these reasons, it shows that the trend to migrate from Domino to
Exchange is an unhealthy one. The expectation would be that many organisations in
hindsight regret their decision to migrate. This is also what Gartner describes in their
latest report37: IBM customers migrating to Microsoft will likely be disappointed.
37 http://www.edbrill.com/ebrill/edbrill.nsf/dx/gartner-says-ibm-customers-migrating-to-
microsoft-will-likely-be-disappointed

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