Thinking the time is ripe to lure customers of IBM's Lotus Notes/Domino e-mail and collaboration platform to Microsoft's Exchange and Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), Microsoft has upgraded its existing migration tools and will offer two new tools that analyze Notes applications and migrate data to WSS. As IBM touts its radically different Workplace product line while discontinuing support for older versions of Notes/Domino, Microsoft and its partners claim they are seeing renewed interest from customers requesting help migrating to the Microsoft platform.

Opportune Moment?

For many years, Microsoft and IBM have battled for the corporate e-mail and collaboration software market, with Microsoft pitting its Exchange Server and Outlook desktop and Web clients against Lotus's Domino Server, Notes desktop client, and Domino Web Access. Exchange has long included tools to help Lotus customers move to the Microsoft platform, and Microsoft saw some early success enticing users because of its reputedly stronger e-mail capabilities and its integration with other parts of the Microsoft platform, such as Active Directory and Office. However, migrations later slowed to a trickle, largely because Microsoft offered nothing equivalent to Notes' platform for collaboration solutions.

However, over the past five years, Web-based portals backed by relational databases began to emerge as a better architecture for collaboration solutions than e-mail servers. Portal solutions are easier to develop and to integrate with other business applications and data. Microsoft began working on its SharePoint products, culminating in the current WSS 2003 and SharePoint Portal Server (SPS) 2003 (which is built on WSS). Microsoft began discouraging application development on top of Exchange, stressing that it was de-emphasizing Exchange public folders as a repository for shared application data. At the same time, it enhanced tools, such as FrontPage and the Visual Studio development environment, to make it easier to customize or build SharePoint-based collaboration solutions.

Meanwhile, even as IBM's Lotus division continued to advance its Notes client and Domino server and released the latest R7 version in August 2005, a different IBM division had begun a similar Web-centric collaboration effort and is now touting a completely new architecture and product line, IBM Workplace, a family of products that includes Workplace Collaboration Services and the Workplace Managed Client. IBM now says that IBM Workplace will eventually subsume Notes and Domino.

Workplace has facilities for coexistence with R7 and tools for migrating collaboration applications and data to Workplace. However, the looming forced migration is causing many Notes customers to reconsider a migration to Microsoft, particularly now that Microsoft offers a competitive collaboration platform: Microsoft claims that hundreds of Lotus Notes/Domino customers have begun making the move to Microsoft's collaboration platform in the past six months, and partner Avanade claims that worldwide demand for its migration services from Lotus Notes/Domino to the Microsoft collaboration platform has more than doubled in the last six months. Microsoft believes that a high percentage of Notes customers are on still older versions, such as R5, for which IBM is discontinuing support. These older systems would have to be upgraded to R7 before they could be migrated to Workplace.

In anticipation of this opportunity, Microsoft has put together a "Notes Compete" team that includes engineering and marketing personnel from its Windows, Exchange, and Information Worker groups, and will launch worldwide sales and marketing campaigns during 2006 aimed at Notes customers. Most important, Microsoft is at last providing tools and guidance for migrating Notes applications, not just e-mail and schedule data.

New Tools to Migrate Notes/Domino Applications

In the first half of 2006, Microsoft will ship two new tools for migrating Notes/Domino R5 and R6 applications and associated data to Microsoft's WSS and SPS collaboration portals.

Microsoft Application Analyzer 2006 for Lotus Domino. Scheduled for availability in the first quarter of 2006, this free tool will enumerate the types of applications that Notes customers have installed and how frequently each is used, thereby helping those customers to determine the scope of a migration project. The tool categorizes Notes applications into four classifications based on whether they are derived from stock Notes templates or have been customized, and also whether they are data- or process-centric. (Template-derived, data-centric Notes applications are easiest to migrate, while customized process-centric applications are the hardest.)

Microsoft Data Migrator 2006 for Lotus Domino. In 2005, Microsoft acquired full rights to Proposion's Portal Migrator technology, which allows Notes customers to move Notes application data into WSS lists. Microsoft is incorporating this technology into a new free tool, Microsoft Data Migrator 2006 for Lotus Domino, scheduled for release in the second quarter of 2006. Data Migrator will make it relatively easy for organizations to move data from Lotus Notes/Domino applications built on the standard templates installed with the product (primarily document libraries and team discussions, which constitute a significant percentage of the Notes applications in actual use) to equivalent template-based WSS applications. Microsoft recently added three new WSS templates especially tailored for this purpose—Discussion Database, Team Work Site, and Document Library—to the 30 existing WSS templates.

However, the Data Migrator is for migrating data only; it does not convert Notes application logic to WSS applications and cannot migrate data from custom Notes applications to WSS unless there is a WSS template corresponding to the customized Notes template. Notes organizations with custom workflow and process-centric applications will still have to do significant heavy lifting with Visual Studio to re-create applications with equivalent functionality on WSS.

Enhanced Coexistence and Migration Tools

In Dec. 2005, Microsoft also released enhanced versions of three tools needed to migrate Notes/Domino R5 and R6 users to Exchange 2003, and to support Exchange/Notes coexistence during the migration project or when the customer needs to link both systems together for extended periods.

Exchange Connector for Lotus Notes/Domino supports messaging and calendar interoperability between Domino servers and Exchange Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003 Active Directory (AD). This tool has been updated to support HTML/MIME-based message content when routing e-mail between Exchange and Domino, which also makes it possible to support the Domino Web Access client (and its iNotes predecessor) during coexistence. The new connector also has enhanced Unicode support and improved stability and reliability.

Exchange Calendar Connector for Lotus Notes/Domino supports sharing of calendar free/busy schedules between Domino and Exchange. The updated version is easier to install and is more stable.

Migration Wizard for Lotus Notes/Domino supports the migration of Domino mailboxes and associated Domino directory information to Exchange and AD. This tool has been updated to support Unicode characters and more item content formats.

All three tools require Windows Server 2003, Exchange Server 2003 SP2, and the Lotus Notes 6.x client on the Exchange server used to connect the two systems.

Exchange Also in Flux

One possible fly in the ointment is Microsoft's recently announced decision to release the next version of Exchange, code-named Exchange 12 and expected in late 2006 or early 2007, as a 64-bit-only version. Because the current 32-bit Exchange Server 2003 cannot run on the 64-bit edition of Windows Server 2003, customers that migrate Domino message and PIM data to Exchange during 2006 will face major upgrade costs if they decide to upgrade to Exchange 12 later.

This caveat could be enough to make many potential customers simply wait until Exchange 12 ships before beginning any migration.

Resources

All tools and guidance documents related to Notes/Domino migration may be found at www.microsoft.com/technet/interopmigration/collaboration/default.mspx.

WSS information is contained in "SharePoint Templates for Business Processes" on page 12 of the Sept. 2005 Update and "Windows SharePoint Services Supports Office Collaboration" on page 3 of the June 2003 Update.

Information on Proposion Portal Migrator can be found at www.proposion.com.