More than 93 percent of Lotus Notes customers are using the most recent two releases
So presumably almost everyone was on R6(which came out in 2003) and R7 and this perhaps ONLY included those paying for maintenance or support.
My luck I know the 7% on R5 but moved them to R7 and R8 this year.
Anyway, Microsoft in contrast, has about 25% or more still on Exchange 2000 which is now 2 revisions back. Did IBM get marketing right this time?
I posted about this previously here.
As a comparison, Exchange 5.5 came out in 1997, about 11 years ago.
Based on this article from 2005 this has been going on for some time with large chunks not willing to Migrate forward.
The difference between an upgrade and a migration varies but IMHO if can upgrade a software product in place with no extra hardware requirements(aside from RAM or Disk space) that is an upgrade. If I must move to a different platform or require middle man servers or other systems to complete this task, then it's a migration.
Then we have clients that have committed to Microsoft to move off of Lotus platforms, yet as Ed points out, not all have moved or if they have not entirely.
What if there is a correlation between these ideas. Can Microsoft, the epitome of a Marketing machine to those of us on the outside, not actually sell their own products to their own customers?
Perhaps Vista's marketplace issues really stem from a broader problem within Microsoft that has been hidden away for some time but now is leaking out. No matter how much money or stars they can strut in front of us, the problem may be an internal flaw.
Known for announcing something long before it sees the light of day, Azure for example is at least a year from general availability, could they be digging their own hole?
I have some ideas about what they can do, but why should I give them all of my free advice. I figure a potential market valued at $464,000,000! (Total is $1,856,000,000 based on this study from Microsft and Radicati) is worth something, don't you?
The 25% Exchange customers you mention are hard to get. Those often are customers that are quite satisfied with the product and have no intention to change anything. You don't stay with an unsupported version of Exchange if it doesn't work in some way (I am not saying that Exchange never breaks). It is not impossible to get them but I think marketing will not work here.
ReplyDeleteWhile you only mention the clumsy part (Vista) I think MS has a good selling point with Dynamics, at least in SMB.
Agreed about the 25% they are hard to get, but I don't really think it's about "it works, leave it alone".
ReplyDeleteIt's about money, resources, value and/or ROI almost entirely.
Microsoft does have their SMB side working well, no question. But that doesn't bring in the big bucks. It does in it's entirety but it's incremental unlike Enterprise Agreements and software Assurances from large companies.
Thinking about Domino clients on R4,5,6 getting them to upgrade really should not be a major issue. It's in-place a few hours of consulting time, or their admin doing it and they would have a modern architecture with blogs, wikis, Traveler and so much more benefit.
OK, they probably are out of compliance on licensing if they are on R5 but still the benefits in ROI are huge compared to Exchange which will require all new hardware(64-bit) and multiple servers setup for the migration as there is no upgrade path.
I have ideas for MS that would work, no question, but they have to ask me first.