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TECH NEWS
 IBM Customers Upgrading to Lotus Notes/Domino 6
Large companies might stretch the upgrade process to 18 months.
How does the upgrade to Lotus Notes and Domino 6 collaboration software compare with prior Lotus products, and to Microsoft Exchange?
"At first sight, the upgrade progress appears to be disappointing for IBM," says consulting analyst Marten Nelson with Ferris Research, which specializes in messaging and collaboration technology. "None of the companies with 5,000 users or more we have been in contact with has yet completed the upgrade, and only [a] few have started the process."
One factor that can affect the time it takes for a company to review version 6 and begin the process is when third-party applications support it. If an IBM customer has important utilities that don't yet support Notes and Domino 6, the upgrade isn't an attractive option. In fact, most problems that occur during the upgrade appear to be lack of support from mission-critical third-party applications, Nelson says.
Another consideration is where the product release falls in a company's fiscal year. For example, many IT departments don't review new products during the fourth quarter of the fiscal year. Lotus Notes/Domino 6 became available in October 2002.
However, upgrading quickly isn't common, so there's no basis for saying adoption of Notes/Domino 6 is "slow." Nelson say large-scale upgrades to messaging systems don't occur in just a few months. He lays out the following timetable as typical for a large company:
- Month 0: The IT department reviews the product.
- Month 3 to 6: Management accepts a business case for the upgrade to Notes 6.
- Month 6 to 9: The company wraps up plans for the upgrade.
- Month 15 to 18: The upgrade is finished.
With this timeframe in mind, Nelson feels IBM shouldn't be nervous about the adoption of Notes/Domino 6.
"It is still too early to estimate the upgrade rate for Notes 6. Compared with Notes 5.0, Notes 6.0 is a stable and reliable release. Notes 5 had significant quality issues as it first became available, slowing the upgrade pace."
With that in mind, Nelson ultimately expects a faster adoption than occurred with previous Notes upgrades.
His advice to customers planning to upgrade is to estimate the current Notes/Domino total cost of ownership (TCO) and evaluate the ROI of upgrading.
"The main benefits of Notes/Domino 6 are to be found in lowering the TCO," he says, which should result in high interest in Notes 6. (See "The Cost Savings of Upgrading to Notes/Domino 6" at http://Advisor.com/doc/11345.)
IBM's take
IBM says deployments are on track but there's no typical timeline. The key issue for upgrade timing is the number of mission-critical Notes applications customers have to test before they move to full production.
"[The Ferris report] isn't an unreasonable timeline," says Barbara Liberty, senior marketing manager for IBM's Lotus Messaging unit, "but it depends on the customer's organization, the number of applications they're using in different groups within the company, and how they need to test those and interoperability. There really is no norm."
Some customers, for example, have written hundreds of applications with Domino. They might allot two years for the process of verifying these applications and finishing the upgrade.
However, the upgrade to 6 has been faster than to earlier versions.
"We are ahead of 5," Liberty says. "[Notes/Domino] 5 came out around the time of Y2K, and we were under pressure to bring it to market, so there were some issues with the 5 release, which got in the way of deployment. With 6, we took that experience to heart and focused on making 6 a quality release."
IBM estimates that at least 80 to 85 percent of customers made the move from client Lotus Notes 4 to 5, and at least 75 to 80 percent moved to server Lotus Domino 5.
Liberty says more than 1,000 customers are using Domino 6, although they're in various phases of deployment, from pilot programs to full deployment.
The release of Notes and Domino 6.5 beta (see http://Advisor.com/doc/12309) shouldn't affect customers' upgrade plans, IBM says. There are no core changes to Notes and Domino, just to client features. For customers in the process of upgrading to 6, the move to 6.5 should be straightforward, Liberty says.
Notes/Domino vs. competitors
To put the Notes upgrade in perspective, Ferris' Nelson points out that the upgrade from Microsoft Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2000 has been quite slow. The move has been troublesome for many Microsoft customers because it requires that they move to Windows 2000 and Active Directory.
In addition, he says, any messaging upgrade always involves an upfront investment for administrator and user training, upgrade consultants, etc. The shortage of cash these days could slow the upgrade rate for any key technology, not just Lotus software.
As has been its practice for years, IBM continues to improve a product after it is released. Lotus Notes and Domino 6.0.1 became available in February 2003 (http://Advisor.com/doc/11878). It was followed in March by a Critical Fix, 6.0.1CF1, to address a few problems. Another update, 6.0.2 is scheduled for mid-year. Lotus Notes/Domino 6.5 is expected later in 2003.
ARTICLE INFO
Web Edition: 2003.04.28, Doc #12288
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Keyword Tags: collaboration, Collaboration, E-Mail, ibm, ibm lotus, ibm software, ibm websphere, IBM, IBM Lotus, IBM Lotus Domino, IBM Lotus Notes, messaging, microsoft, microsoft exchange, microsoft windows, Messaging, Microsoft Exchange Server, Software, training, TCO - Total Cost of Ownership
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