Gartner: Migrating From Lotus Notes/Domino to MS Office System Needs Careful Planning
IBM clients with a good business case for moving customized, rich applications to Microsoft should plan carefully. So, consider retiring Lotus Notes/Domino systems from 2010, but only if Microsoft makes migration easier.
Unfortunatly this is a report you have to buy if you’re not subscribed to the Gartner service. Based on this small clipping I conclude the following :
- Ofcourse you need to carefully plan a migration. For example on the Domino application side you need to analyse / rationalise you current applications and determine your mid to long term ‘retirement plan’for these apps. 2010 maybe the retirement date, but planning, containing the application platform should start as soon as possible considering Gartner is discussing customized / rich applications.
- Gartner Group positions Microsoft Office System against Lotus Notes/Domino. Simply because the Lotus Notes/Domino vs Exchange discussion is not the right context (for the last 3 years now).
- This is about Lotus Notes/Domino to Microsoft migrations; yet another confirmation that this is the dialogue / decision maiking process a lot of organisations are in at the moment
- Microsoft and its needs to put more effort into optimising / facilitating the migration process better.
I very much agree with point 4. I am very thick in a Domino to Microsoft migration. Figuring out the email pieces takes a lot of careful planning, but it is relatively simple. Just trying to figure out how to get the Domino applications to place nice with the Outlook client is proving to be very challenging.
For starters, MS ought to at least offer a before and after summary:
How to manage doclinks
How to deal with apps that send stored forms
How to deal with apps that email business logic
How to get Sametime and LCS to co-exist
etc…
With all the Lotus talent that MS have recruited over the last 12 months this type of thing should be a no brainer.
@ Simon,
Good input on the 4 point you mention. As you know by now I am not the application expert on that level of detail’, but I know that a number of ISV’s and SI’ have solutions for ‘discovering’ and solving those types of issues.
On the last point I still think that co-excistence of SameTime and LCS, espacially in the same organisation should only exist in the migration phase for a period as short as possible. Reason being they both provide very similar functionality with the difference that LCS intergrates better in the Microsoft environment and therefor provides better RTC scenario’s for end-users.
I you want send me some more specifics on what you’d like to see addressed around those points via email and I will get you a bit more info.
I agree with your Samtime & LCS coexistance. But Microsoft does not provide a connector for these environments (like they do for email). So we have to take a hit in funcionality terms, by leaving Sametime operational while we are using Outlook. We will then have to make a ‘big bang’ switch from Sametime, once the email migration is complete – which is about 9+ months away at least.
Simon,
There is no connector and my assumption is that it is not a priority for Microsoft. I think mainly because SameTime is (still) a fairly standalone solution compared to the rest of the Notes / Domino platform ..
I honestly wonder how big the ‘big bang’ would be. Ofcourse this depends on how ‘deep’ SameTime is integrated in applications, etc, but if it is mainly use for IM then a ‘rip and replace’ is very straight forward.
Implementing LCS 2005 will require a schema change on AD, but next to that it is a very schalable platform which instantly adds value to the Microsoft platform being implemented.