IBM Challenges Microsoft With an Ad Campaign

Rytis writes "IBM is about to spend $300 Million dollars on a campaign to win customers and to convert them from Microsoft Exchange to Lotus Notes and Domino under Linux. IBM is also said to offer resellers a bounty of $20,000 for switching customers to its Linux-based e-mail programs from Microsoft server software. It seems that the concurrence Microsoft Corp. is facing is getting tighter and tighter. The Penguin gets more and more support from the two biggest rivals that Microsoft have ever had."

Comments

I am so sick of hearing about Notes sucking

[CFD339]

Lets get a few things straight given that I actually KNOW THE F'ing products involved:

1. Notes has an odd UI with some challenges, we agree on that. Of course, that's because it was DESIGNED TO BE CROSS PLATFORM. In fact, the next rev includes a LINUX CLIENT.

2. Notes is VERY STABLE. I am personally aware of a major financial firm where 12,000 users are doing mail, calendaring, I.M., discussions, and workflow applications with the support of less than 15 people. They have had no outages. They have had no works.

3. Notes is inherently secure. It was doing public/private key encryption from day 1, back in the late 80's and is still doing so. It even supports PKI plug ins. Apparently, it was the only one because nobody else ever made any.

4. The notes CLIENT is inherently secure. It use execution control lists and design elements are signed. There are not worms or trojans that use Notes to replicate because THEY CAN'T.

5. Notes is OPEN. Yes, it uses a proprietary storage and transport format, but it also FULLY SUPPORTS XML for every design and and data element. It also includes Java (w/ IIOP and CORBA as well) object models, COM object models, and a published XML schema. It FULLY SUPPORTS MIME, SNMP, SMTP, LDAP (as client or server), NTP, HTTP, SSL, DIIOP, WEBDAV, WEB SERVICES (as client or server), ODBC.

6. Notes is PROGRAMABLE. Its objects are openly accessable and it includes full support for JAVA, Javascript, and its own Lotusscript and formula language.

7. Domino (the server) is MULTI-OS cross platform. It runs EQUALLY WELL on Linux, AIX, Solaris (in the past, and soon again) iSeries (OS400). I even know of one web accessible server running on Linux on XBOX! (no, I'm not going to /. it by linking it here).

8. Notes owns roughly 50% of the corporate mail and calendaring marketing. No, not in small business or home use, but in major corporations.

9. Notes & Domino are backward compatible. No rip and replace upgrades. EVER. I can take a version 8 beta client and open a version 2 application (that I have) and it will WORK. Now. It is cheaper to upgrade to Domino 7 from Exchange 5.5 than to upgrade to Exchange 2000 or 2003 from the Exchange 5.5.

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So, given all these things -- every one of which is something in general /.'ers scream for, WHAT IS THE F'ING PROBLEM?