Migrating to Exchange and the future of your business
by Volker Weber
Ed tries to make an interesting (and maybe silly) case. As CompUSA is effectively going out of business, Ed links back to their decision to dump Notes and bring in Exchange. CompuUSA could not make the full switch, since they had legacy Notes applications which could not be migrated.
I remember that back when Daimler-Benz bought Chrysler, excuse me, when Daimler-Benz and Chrysler merged, Daimler-Benz was just migrating to Exchange and then switched back midstream since Chrysler was a Notes-company. DaimlerChrysler turned out to be not as successful as management had hoped for, so Daimler is now giving away, excuse me, selling Chrysler. Will be interesting to see how their business now relates to their choice of messaging system.
Or Novartis, how will their business evolve when IBM migrates them to Exchange? Any other data points?
Comments
Fest im kleinen Mittelstand (kleine Brötchen usw.) verwurzelt und ergo mit nur kleinen IT-Problemen kämpfend, kehre ich eben aus Berlin zurück, wo ich die Gelegenheit hatte, einen kleinen Blick auf die datenverarbeitende Infrastruktur einer richtig grossen Firma zu werfen...
Fazit: Ein Wunder, dass man im Würgegriff von Oracle, SAP, Outsourcing, Wuselkram (vornehm Heterogenität genannt) und externem Consulting noch seinem Kerngeschäft erfolgreich nachgehen kann... Vor dem Hintergrund erscheint mir die Idee des Wechsels der Kommunikationssysteme keine allzu gute. Ich glaube, das Wort "Migration" ist in diesen Kreisen gaaaanz negativ besetzt. "Neue Release" auch.
:-)
Gut beobachtet. Du kannst Dir vorstellen, wie groß die Schmerzen erst mal werden, bevor man das in Angriff nimmt. Übrigens ein Punkt, den Lotus sehr gut ausspielt. Upgrades sind immer relativ lokal. Also nicht Messaging, Directory, Datenbank etc. gleichzeitig austauschen müssen.
Auf der anderen Seite hat IT überhaupt keinen Bock drauf, eine ungeliebte Anwendung zu verteidigen. Wenn die User kein Notes wollen, dann ist irgendwann der Bart ab. Hier will ja Notes 8 mit einer neuen Oberfläche das Wasser aufhalten.
Novartis is an interesting one to highlight. I don't think I can share what I know about that situation publicly (and am surprised you can), but for sure their business units are not unanimous in supporting any decision in this area.
I've seen quite a few cases here in Germany where Notes/Domino for mail were killed by the following sequence of events. Of course, with smart CIOs like that, it will all happen again with Exchange. So, here's the creepy story:
Notes was set up by people who knew what they were doing. Everything was fine. The inhouse Notes guru developed some useful apps addressing some real need/problems for the company.
The internal Notes guy(s) leave. This is seen by management as a chance to not replace the lost people and hand over Domino admin work to another IT group, as in "hey, guys, you also do the Notes/Domino admin stuff. Go to a few admin courses and we'll be fine"
Obviously, this doesn't work and not even the most crucial maintenance/monitoring work is not done on the system. We all know that this isn't all that much work. But, like any other system that isn't actively managed, things start to deteriotate.
Over time, people become unhappy. Yes, I have seen systems on 6.5.5 and 7.0 with people still using 5.0 mail templates. Obviously, they thought Notes mail sucks, lacks features and looks old.
Management decides that Exchange must be the way to go. Obviously, Microsoft's clever application migration BS doesn't work and the customer now has two systems: A still deteriorating Notes systems for apps and a newly installed Exchange system (which will probably meet the same fate, since it's just mail and doesn't need much maintenance)
The company now faces the typical Exchange problems added to the homemade and easily fixable Notes problems.
Great! Mission accomplished. Give that CIO dude a big raise! And call the Microsoft Sales guy, your CIO is ready for a nice, colorful SharePoint demo. Life sometimes really pisses me off ;-)
So, in summary, definite results of migrating to Exchange are (a) completely unnecessary costs for the migration and (b) a whole new set of technical problems that are not home-mode but come free with the new system.
Oh, I forgot a comment about Novartis. Recently, there were rumors of Novartis being interested in the the healthcare part of Bayer. If both the migration and the acquisition were to happen, they would definitely have a lot more migrating to do.
People migrate from one to the other for a host of reasons, some rational, some not. Notes has, for years, been an open target for migration because it feels heavy on the workstation. It has avoided migration in many sites because it has an irreplaceable value for those sites which actually make use of its features.
I seriously doubt these or any examples -- no matter who spins them -- will ever serve to really make the point that a choice of either is instrumental in the ultimate success or failure of a business. It certainly is a sign of poor decision making when massive application migrations are being undertaken without them being part of an overall forward looking I.T. strategy.
The problem for IBM with Notes, is that it hasn't done well at selling any kind of "Grand Plan" around the Notes client. Microsoft comes in and shows you Outlook with Exchange and Office and Sharepoint and all tied in with the operating system, the browser, the the deployment tool, and their "simplified" buying and licensing plan. Sure, the irony of such a plan is thick enough to choke on, but it is a "PLAN" that an I.T. manager can put his hands on and take to the CEO.
What is the grand vision promoted with Notes? I understand the various plays, all as alternatives to parts of Microsoft's big plan; but its much harder to define the rosy picture of a healthy Notes based organization. Along with making the client feel more integrated and part of the solution, IBM needs to focus on making the Clients feel like there is a grand unified theory out there somewhere (and one that doesn't involve Portal - that ship has sailed).
Notes guys usually keep crying on two issues:
1. Microsoft plays evil tricks or
2. the CIO is a moron.
I think the Notes people will make a big step forward the day they accept that there are also smart people outside IBM and the day they decide never again to use these two stupid assumptions as an excuse.
Instead they should ask only one question:
How much must customers suffer from either outdated technology or from bad customer support if they are ready to set off for such risky and costly migration efforts?
I'm not too convinced that the choice of application is the crucial point in wether your company succeeds or not. It might have an effect, perhaps combined with other decisions, but it shouldn't be the decisive one. Anything can be migrated, it depends on how much effort and money you pour in.
And isn't the fact that CompUSA could not migrate their notes application a sign of vendor-lock-in by Lotus Notes/IBM ?
I've been a notes admin, been through a fusion where Notes was rejected and Exchange was chosen because (ludicrously, in my eyes) "Exchange can do everything notes does and more, look at Sharepoint, look at the office integration, etc". Even asking them to prove this to us and rewrite a notes app in Exchange/Forms was rejected as 'not needed'. In short the decision was already made at a higher level, and that was it.
It took several more years before all notes applications were migrated, many more years than was planned, but once a decision was taken, nobody at my level dared to oppose it. And no, there was never an application written in Exchange, but now it all runs web-based.
I always thought that it was (and is) the way Notes is structured : it's a collection of email and applications with a very tight integration possible. The ease of use with which I could cobble together a discussion forum or document storage app was astonishing. But, in a way, that ease of use looks to me to be also it's achilles heel. The management thought was : if we can develop notes applications so easily, then it really can't be a lot of work to migrate them to another platform.
I am a Notes guy in some way but do not blame Microsoft or a CIO. I understand why there are customers migrating to Exchange although I do not think this is always progress.
Still I think there is a valid point. Most case studies mention cost savings and productivity enhancements in a way that has little to do with reality.
In Notes there are some many possibilities - to build great stuff and also to completely screw up. Sometimes I get the impression that companies spend all their resources on tool selection, rather than focussing on the way they should actually use it. Will a major enterprise enjoy their Messanging platform with immature users and no decent eMail policy? Will good developers be able to compensate lack of application ownership and governance? Will a technically brilliant migration make management happy in case it's not properly communicated?
