I have just been reading a blog from Ed Brill which makes reference to someone who has been migrating from Lotus Domino Server to Microsoft SharePoint.
A comment was made as follows:
“In general, SharePoint feels like a big old marketing scam to me. It doesn’t do as much out of the box as Microsoft would have you believe, but it does give Microsoft and their partners a good chunk of money. A decision to go with SharePoint is a decision to tie yourself into their full product line…”
I find it interesting that Microsoft does tie you into using it’s products just by choosing to use one of them. It is not the cost of the product, but the cost of all the accessories required to make it work. Even if you’re not using their software they will find a way to spend your money with them.
For example, I have a customer who want to run Lotus Domino Server on Microsoft Windows Server. As you can expect the customer will need to have licenses for its users to connect to the Lotus Domino Server. As, Domino is running on a Windows server, Microsoft requires that you have a license for every device that connects to that server even thought there is no authentication required against Active Directory.
In the case of my client they have to have a Microsoft Client Access License for all of their desktops and PDA’s to access Domino on that server. To make it worse, the client also has a Windows Server which is running a Voice-mail application. Microsoft requires that every phone that accesses the voicemail on that server to have a Microsoft CAL! This is even though the voice-mail application is not even Microsoft’s.
I like is how IBM give the user the freedom of choice. You can choose what operating system you would like to run your Lotus Domino Server on. You now also have a choice of what you would like to run your Lotus Notes Client on (Windows, Linux or Mac OS). Not only do you have a choice of operating system, you also have a choice of client such as the Lotus Notes Client, the Web Browser with multiple browser choices, Domino Access for Microsoft Outlook and then a almost any IMAP or POP client you can think of.
Related posts:
- Anti-Spam for Lotus Notes stops SPAM like you should be able to expect
- Lotus Symphony
- Revealing the secret to moving Microsoft Excel spreadsheets into a supported multi-user network environment
- The most favorite part of my job is happening again today – check this out
- Qucikly create a connection document from Lotus Notes to a Domino Server
