Armchair Theorist

So my good friend Fat Guppy is at it again, this time with a scathing article on Lotus Notes. I have to say though, I definitely found this blog entry one of his more entertaining ones, so I recommend all of you to go and read it. Maybe it’s his use of colors and visuals or his feverish passion for anything anti-IBM, but I just couldn’t help myself but chuckle throughout as I was reading it.

Not calling you out Guppy, cuz you know we are cool. I’m just using your post as an example to highlight a phenomenon I observe.

Let’s think about this a bit, shall we? I don’t believe any of the following can be reasonably disputed:

1. For every CIO that swears by Outlook/Exchange, there is a CIO who swears by Notes/Domino.
2. For every customer that migrates from Notes to Outlook, there is a customer that migrates from Outlook to Notes.
3. For every community that thinks Microsoft technologies are “da bomb”, there is a community that thinks Lotus technologies are the best thing since sliced bread.
4. For every Microsoft evangelist/geek/blogger engaging the community, there is a Lotus evangelist/geek/blogger engaging the community.
5. For every reason that claims Exchange is better than Domino, there are reasons that can claim that Domino is better than Exchange.
6. For every project like Live Mesh or Clearflow that shows Microsoft as an innovative and forward-looking company, there are projects like VirtualWorlds and BlueGene that shows IBM as an innovative and forward-looking company.
7. And finally, my favorite: for every group of people on Twitter complaining about Lotus Notes, you can find a group of people complaining about Outlook/Exchange:

The bottom line is this - There is no point in debating whether Notes/Domino or Outlook/Exchange is better, because they are all about the same. Yes, I said it - They are all about the same. The technology is mature to the point that you will find thousands of customers happy that they are on Lotus Notes, just like you will find thousands of customers who are happy on Outlook. Customers move from Exchange to Domino all the time, and likewise from Domino to Exchange. Most customers move because of either a) political factors, b) cost, c) personal gain, or d) the old system was mismanaged to the point that it left a bad taste in their mouths.

In other words, just like most other enterprise software, e-mail and collaboration group ware has more or less been commoditized.

So what does that mean? In my opinion it means that there is very little chance that either Microsoft nor IBM would be able to overwhelmingly dominate the market and eliminate the other. Not that they shouldn’t continue trying though - just like we need prosecutors and defense attorneys to try their best in order to preserve the balance of the justice system, we need both IBM and Microsoft to continue maintaining this market balance to the benefit of CIOs around the world.

Focus the energy in tending to the customer’s needs and making sure their system doesn’t get screwed up by a poor implementation partner. And save the rhetoric and energy spent in proclaiming one product is so much better than the other, because deep down we all know that they are all about the same.

Bonus Link: It seems like nowadays everyone, from Guppy to Ed Brill, is using Tweet Scan to find complaints about Lotus Notes. How bout some love for a change?

Last Word: As Joel Spolsky pointed out, economics dictate that as products get commoditized, the demand, and thus revenue, for their complementary products increase. So if server hardware and implementation services can be considered complements to enterprise software then, hmm… wait a second…

See Also:

• Yes, IBM and Microsoft Do “Get” Enterprise 2.0
• From One Empire to Another Empire
• Why Adobe AIR is not Ready for Enterprise Deployment