Lotus To Microsoft: But Mine’s Bigger

I’ve used both Exchange and Domino for years. They’re both difficult to administer and they both include a whole pile of “features” that I’ve never used.

Collaboration is becoming a commodity. Commodities tend to… well, they tend to commoditize. Look for open source to start to eat away at both Microsoft AND Lotus market share, especially as Outlook begins to diminish in importance. Projects like Citadel [http://www.citadel.org], Kolab [http://www.kolab.org], and OpenGroupware [http://www.opengroupware.org] are making big headway in this area.

It’s a bit misleading to represent those market share numbers in a single table. Once again, this is why there is such a thing as copyright.

The first two numbers (2003 and 2004) are from Gartner’s formal published market share reports, based on revenue. The 2005 numbers were published in a research note, not a market share report, and are apparently based on seats rather than revenue. So the table is apples and oranges, even though the source is “Gartner” for all of them.

Having said that, the seats number is suspect since a lot of companies have Exchange CALs as “shelfware”, as a result of having bought Core CAL licenses which may never be actually deployed.

As Ed states the figures have been taken out of context and with repect to copyright, the source and actual reports should be mentioned ..

Not sure if I agree with Ed on the accuracy of the figures. From my perspective they all come from gartner. The report or research note in which they are mentioned is irrelevant, why else would Gartner publish these.

Apples / Oranges ? If it pleases Lotus they mention the number of seats, another time it is double digit revenue growth.
No matter how marketshare is measured I see the trend, do you ?

With regards to licensing programs I am not at all sure if IBM differs that much from Microsoft or any other Software company.

If the numbers represent two different measurements, they are apples and oranges. Two years worth of data are revenue, and the third is from a completely different report that says, “For commercial enterprises with more than 100 employees, we estimate the current worldwide market share”. ESTIMATE, Peter. It’s completely different.

Of course, one figure we have NOT seen from Microsoft is how many users out there still use the (now out of support, hopelessly outdated) Exchange v5.5. Unfortunately, Peter de Haas cannot provide those figures but did point at a polling site showing that 47% of the Exchange users out there in mid-stummer are still Exchange 5.5 users. Not an accurate figure, but a start nevertheless.

We dont have numbers and MS refuse to publish them - but we did see them do a UK tour called “exchange unplugged”, encouraging users to stop using Exchange v5.5. So it must be a substantive number before this is required.

Bottom line: MS may be able to claim total numbers, but is this relevant if up to HALF of their users are using the out-of-support Exchange v5.5 ?

A case of apples, oranges and Dinosaurs (as MS are taken to calling their customers these days)

—* Bill
http://www.billbuchan.com

Feel free to e-mail me offline about this, but my point is
John Wentworth took those stats from copyrighted Gartner reports. They were taken out of context and without the disclaimer, for example, that the most recent numbers are estimated.

Gartner would certainly not appreciate seeing their numbers posted and reposted and posted again from copyrighted, paid-for reports.

@Ed & Peter: We’re not sure which copyright violations you folks are citing. As to our ‘misleadingness’… If you’ll note, we linked to John Westworth’s comment in the discussion on The Power Of the Schwartz, 10 December 2005, to wit:

—
I think he got this wrong and was referring to the wrong report. It may have been the IDC report he was referring to.
IDC 2003 - MS=47% IBM=43%
IDC 2004 - MS=51% IBM=40%

Or it could have been the Radicatti Report of 2004
MS=115 million Seats IBM=83 Million

Or the Ferris Research Report
MS=60% IBM=25%

The Gartner Report shows
2003 MS = 45.5% 14% Growth
2003 IBM = 47.1% 4.2% Growth

2004 MS = 48% 15.7% Growth
2004 IBM = 45.2% 5.4% Growth

I also believe there’s a newer Gartner report entitled “Focus on Business issues .. .. ..” In which the stats appear to be MS 49% IBM 37% with IBM losing between 2 and 3% per year.
(http://smokey.rhs.com/web/blog/PowerOfTheSchwartz.nsf
/d6plinks/RSCZ-6JUUBD#comments)
—

Further, as Smiler noted in the same forum, John Westworth is a “Microsoft employee tasked with messaging & collaboration migrations.”

NOW you can complain about copyright etiquette. We used more of The Power Of the Schwartz than is prudent.

@Ed. C’mon Ed. Gartner’s in the publishing biz. They’ve logged a ton of free publicity for their good name and this $195 report:
Focus on Business Issues, Not Emotions, When Considering IBM Lotus Domino; Matthew W. Cain, Tom Austin; 23 November 2005
(http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?ref=g_search&id=487276).

As you discuss on your blog, the report is largely a plus for Lotus.

It seems Gartner both giveth and taketh away.

“Unfortunately, Peter de Haas cannot provide those figures but did point at a polling site showing that 47% of the Exchange users out there in mid-stummer are still Exchange 5.5 users. Not an accurate figure, but a start nevertheless.”

c’mon now Bill. If you quote “some user poll ou there”at least do it acuratly. the figure is 25% and yes this was March 2005. This is just one source, I do not have other figures on this as I have stated endless number of times already.

As for the copyright discussion. This article quoted the right sources and does not violate it I would say.
This is a thin line discussion as aslo Ed raised on his blog recently

I am sure Gartner appreciates free publicity, but since I work with them directly from time to time, I know that they are very protective of this kind of information. The market share reports cost US$6000, not US$200. Should give you an idea of how they value it.
And Peter, leaving out the word “estimated” and representing the data from that report along side two other reports that are reported as definitive, that would be misleading, whether or not it is an actual copyright. “Estimated” is a very different thing, and neither you nor John have acknowledged that.

Ed,
You made your point. I get the word estimated. It is an esimation, so let’s wait and see.

@Art & Bill: You folks must be new ’round these parts. We’ve been monitoring the abandonment of Exchange 5.5 fans for some time.

For collaborative alternatives to Exchange 5.5, see: Wolves Circle As Exchange Nears Death (http://www.emailbattles.com/archive/battles/email_aacbghdadd_i/).

If we missed any apps that fit the article’s criteria for Exchange 5.5 migration, please share in the “Wolves” article’s comments, along with the appropriate links.

@Ed. More datapoints than we’re discussing have spread across the web like wildfire. $6,000 or $200, that train left the station.

Most of the industry is waiting to see whether IBM will fight for its turf, or do the OS/2 flop and retreat from the field.

B.J. I don’t think you quoted too much content from my site. I do think you could have done a better job attributing — and I do display a Creative Commons license that says permission is required for commercial use. This site appears to be a litle more commercial than your average personal blog, but no harm done. My site is clearly not the only one you drew from. I appreciate the link.

Now, let me say that from my point of view, IBM has always fought and is still fighting aggressively in the messaging and collaboration space. Anyone who says otherwise isn’t watching them carefully enough and/or doesn’t have their FUD filter tuning out enough of what Redmond (and known Lotus-hater Forbes) says. And they’re fighting far more effectively now than they were a few years ago.

The comparison to OS/2 is a bit specious. IBM never gave OS/2 a fighting chance, and it held the market lead for about 2 seconds at best. Notes and Domino, on the other hand, didn’t just lead the collaboration market for years… it defined the collaboration market. Microsoft has caught up in messaging, and surpassed according to the statistics — and they have made some strides in collaboration — but look closely: One of the reasons Microsoft has been able to make gains in collaboration is that collaboration doesn’t mean what it did when Lotus defined it in the 90s! To some extent, one can say that Microsoft and other players, have deliberately redefined collaboration away from IBM’s strenghts. The market had something to do with that, too, however — and IBM could probably have done more to control market perceptions of collaboration, but that’s all water under the bridge. It’s an interesting market, and in all likelihood it will remain interesting for quite some time. It would be even more interesting IMHO if everyone concentrated a little more on out-innovating instead of out-marketing the competition.

@Richard. Apologies for missing your licensing requirements. We should have used other refs. As to commercial vs personal blogs… Many personal blogs run the Goog’s and affiliate ads. The great separator seems to be that at Email Battles, we make it 100% clear who we are, what we do, and why we think the way we do. Along with that, we give full attribution at the end of most of our articles, which is fairly rare anywhere on the web. If that somehow makes us less legitimate than the legions of personal blogs that run non-stop, unverifiable rants… we’ll live with it. (Thanks for the opportunity to blow off some steam, Richard. This editor has bagged his limit of holier-than-thous today.) Now to the business at hand…

We flashed OS/2 to filter out the younguns. Having said that, OS/2 pitted the IBM elephant against the Microsoft mouse. The mouse outmanuevered the elephant. Now you point out that Microsoft has caught up in and possibly surpassed IBM in messaging, and made strides in collaboration. But the good news is that Microsoft isn’t competing fairly. It has the audacity to have redefined the market away from IBM’s strengths!

And here’s even worse news… The mouse ain’t a mouse anymore. So which part of the OS/2 comparison is specious?

If you spend some time on Email Battles, you’ll find no animus targeting IBM or Lotus. Instead, you may well conclude that we despise Microsoft. That would make you wrong twice.

Among other things, we think the Lotus cross-platform approach is nothing short of brilliant in the long run. We’re mildly surprised that Redmond hasn’t yet caught this wave.

No holier than thou intended. As I said, no harm done. Re commerciality, this site is formatted in a way that is very similar to a lot of cmmercial trade press sites, and I believe I see more than just Google ads here, but again… I said no harm done. As far as I’m concerned, you were well within fair use and the link is appreciated.

But re OS/2 my point is that IBM was out of the fight (in your wording, which I think is right on the money, they were outmaneouvered) before the first round was fought. That’s not the case here.

When IBM let OS/2 die, it wasn’t the case that they were abandoning 100 million users and 40-plus percent of the market, along with leaving mulitple quarters increasing revenue stream to withher and die. That’s would be the situation if IBM walked away from Notes and Domino. Clearly they’re not about to do that, and that’s why it’s a bad analogy. And I do stand by the word “specious”. The OS/2 thing has a strong ring of truth to those with limited understanding of what happened in the 90s, but beneath the ring of truth is a bad analogy.

Finally, I don’t think it’s unfair at all that Microsoft and others shifted the term “collaboration” away from IBM’s strengths, and I said that IBM could have done more to deal with that. I’m glad you consider your site to be balanced on things like this. Despite being rather firmly in the Lotus camp for many years, I believe I’m still very much capable of seeing and appreciating the balanced point of view. Your site was not on my radar screen until now. Now it is.

@Richard. Bullseye. From the top, you absolutely do see more than just Google ads here. For those who missed it, trimMail’s Email Battles is funded by the builders of trimMail Inbox, the best doggoned spam and content filtering appliance on the planet… no, the solar system… no, no, the universe. At least, that’s our opinion. Fortunately for both our readers and our editors, we normally don’t air sales pitches here. For that, we highly encourage you to consult the bill-paying part of the enterprise: www.trimmail.com. (Once again, thanks for the segue. Our sales manager thinks he loves you.)

Those who clearly understand where we’re coming from, can also clearly see that we have no dog in this fight (or most of the others we cover). In fact, if you watch our Newsbytes, you’ll see that we, not Google, often publish INTERESTING good news for competitive products. (Let me know when you find a… personal… Lotus blog that runs non-paid good news for Microsoft, or vice versa.)

But we really get our jollies from covering controversial topics in communications, security and file transfer. Hence, the “battles” in “Email Battles.”

Now. As to the speciousness of our OS/2 comments… Here, we’ll simply have to agree to disagree. As a humble supporter of anybody and everybody’s messaging, we watched major IBM blunders in earlier games, and the scoreboard’s not looking too hot this time. Millions of users aren’t always enough to sway management prerogatives (read that “Lenovo”). Sometimes the view is better from the bleachers.

And finally… Your gracious comments concerning our use of your materials were much appreciated. As my own work is broadly replicated across the net, those who base their entire marketing defense on ephemeral allegations of copyright violations flat wear me out. It’s like the “who stole collaboration” argument. Win the rants amongst the homeboys, lose the war.

Like you, Richard, I hope the very best solutions come out on top. Unfortunately, I can’t for the life of me remember the last time that happened.

(By the way, I beat you. Added PowerOftheSchwartz.com to my RSS aggregator a few days ago. And I hope to rip you off again… Those numbered comments of yours are, as the kids say, too kewl;)

Excenge is the worst software Microsoft evered released

George ( george@balcanicsoft.com )