Haven’t visited Microsoft’s Global Evidence Management site for a while now, it turns out a lot of new casestudies on Lotus Notes / Domino migrations have been posted :
The whole list can be found here. A few highlights I haven’t linked to yet or in the past :
- The Weather Channel
The Weather Channel Gains Efficiency with Switch from Lotus Notes to Exchange Server
Since 1982, The Weather Channel has grown from a television network devoted entirely to weather, to a multimedia organization that delivers breaking weather news to more than 87 million subscribers throughout the United States. As the company grew, management wanted to increase efficiency and productivity by providing workflow applications to automate many day-to-day tasks. However, trying to build those applications on the Lotus Notes platform proved extremely time-consuming and did not offer the easy integration that the company was looking for. By switching to Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003, The Weather Channel is able to quickly build automated workflow applications that integrate smoothly with its other business systems. Through this migration, the company provides more functionality for both local and remote users.
- Rogers & Hollands
Retailer Improves Corporate Communications and Boosts IT Productivity 25 Percent
Rogers Enterprises, which operates 78 fine jewelry stores throughout the Midwest, has owned Lotus Notes messaging and collaboration software since 2001, but corporate employees rarely used it. The system was difficult and time-consuming to administer, and store managers were not tied into it at all. Wanting to improve messaging and communications enterprisewide, the IT group decided to update the network infrastructure, migrate existing servers to Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 with Active Directory® service, and deploy Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 as the company’s messaging platform. Today, the entire company relies on e-mail as its primary tool for scheduling and communications. Remote users and store managers use Microsoft Office Outlook® Web Access to access e-mail. And because the solution is far easier to manage, productivity for the IT staff has increased by 25 percent.
- CoachUSA
Charter Bus Company Expands Messaging Capabilities and Reduces Costs
When CUSA, a charter bus and group tour company serving the western and south central United States, was formed with the purchase of certain assets from CoachUSA, it wanted to streamline its IT systems and increase capabilities. As part of that process, CUSA decided to migrate from Lotus Notes to Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003 to take advantage of the familiar user interface, mobile computing support, and ease of administration. The company moved 550 mailboxes in 35 offices to Exchange Server in approximately three months. As a result, the familiar interface minimized employee training; shared calendars and directories increased collaboration among workers in different offices; mobile computing support enabled executives to more easily remotely access e-mail, calendars, contacts, and task lists; and centralized management helped to reduce administration time by 30 percent.
- Public Service Electric and Gas Company
PSE&G Enhances Collaboration with Notes-to-Microsoft Migration
Public Service Electric and Gas Company (PSE&G) serves millions of customers in the New Jersey area. The company relied on IBM Lotus Notes for electronic mail and collaboration, and to host more than 250 software applications. When rising licensing costs and an increasing number of support issues led the company’s IT department to announce it would no longer support Notes, PSE&G sought a new collaboration platform. The company worked with Avanade to migrate two Notes applications to the Microsoft® collaboration technology as a proof of concept for migrating its entire Notes environment in the future. The migration has provided users with greater functionality and tighter integration with other systems than the Notes environment provided. In addition, users can now view and customize their data more effectively. PSE&G anticipates significant cost savings from the switch.
- Global Television
New Communication Environment Saves Television Company 20 Percent on Costs
Upgrading an e-mail system for more than 190 people can be a delicate operation, especially for a company involved in the dynamic business of television production–where time really is money. The exercise is even more difficult when the upgrade involves establishing mobile access to corporate information. Yet for Global Television, the process could not have been more straightforward. The Australian television production facilitator looked past Lotus Notes/Domino and deployed Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003 and Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 to save network bandwidth and resources. The subsequent consolidation of servers, centralized management, and out-of-the-box application has helped Global Television save 20 percent on the costs of new e-mail servers and software licenses—all of which have been a ratings winner with the management at Global Television.
- Zurich City Council
City Council Streamlines Operations with Fully Integrated Messaging Environment
Historically, Zurich City Council managed its electronic communications using a number of disparate systems. While the Building Services Division used Lotus Notes and Domino technologies, other areas of the organisation used Microsoft® Exchange Server version 5.5. Over time, managing these disparate systems became increasingly inefficient and expensive. To address these issues, the Division decided to standardise and centralise its entire communications infrastructure on Microsoft Exchange Server 2003. As a result of the migration, which was conducted by Microsoft Certified Partner SF Solution Factory AG, the Building Services Division has significantly reduced its system and user administration costs. In addition, employees are able to share data, such as contact details and calendar appointments, effectively. This has increased efficiency and enhanced collaboration between individuals and departments.
…And many more where this came from …
It always amazes me that the term “white paper” is thrown around like some non biased PHD from MIT was behind the creation. These documents are further written in a formal tone to try to lend authenticity.
The truth is most white papers in the tech biz are writen by companies (or their paid advocates) to toot their own horn. The goal is to dupe some CIO or CFO into thinking some legitimate research has been accomplished by an imparital source and they would be wise to buy in. Its essentaily a high brow black and white ad. Both IBM and Microsoft have whitepapers that will “authoritivly” tell you anything they want you to hear.
So Peter, you will pardon me if I suggest that in the future point your users to impartial sources. Making an argument for a company and then backing it with “evidence” fabricated by such company is not very ethical.
Brain,
Thanks for commenting.
I am a bit confised and maybe you can clarify your comment a little bit. What exact whitepaper are you referring to ?
The blogpost you are commenting about is on case studies of organisations who have migrated form Lotus Notes Domino to the Microsoft platform.
The links are to the source, so there is nothing impartial here …
I look forward to your clarification.
Case study, white paper, its all the same. Are you selling truth or snake oil? I’m sure you will claim truth. But its only part of the truth.
As a consultant I have seen numbers of conversion and these case studies claim are such a specific version truth. The study will claim the customer saved a bundle on licenses, which was true, but they will neglect to say how many days users were without email due to issues, or how long the company had to operate with both products due to application porting difficulties. The costs of these un mentioned issues do add up. Also perhaps the licenses were sold at a discount, or that some functionality was given up, or the licenses were included in the price of another MS product like office which the customer already owned.
The point is these case studies are just a sugar coated hollywood movie about what really went on. Only the positive or consumable portions of the story are told. It irks me that these are sold as the truth and instead of pushing the real issues and helping a customer make the right decisions and knowing the true costs. Instead both IBM and MS are more worried about market share than actually helping the customer achieve their needs. AH a novel idea that, helping the customers instead of fleasing them for a few bucks and title of application maximus.
I’m not saying a conversion is wrong, or the products you sell are bad. I am saying that I do grow weary of seeing fluff sold as the truth. But then again snake oil has been sold for generations and its not likely to stop being sold anytime soon.
I do agree on the erosien of “independent studies” paid by software vendors by companies like gartner, idc and forrester. and at least forrester stopped it. MSFT still suports “independents studies” and the get-defects (aka “linux myth busting page”) is full of it that on _every_ report listed there i can at least point out one lie, one one times not telling the truth. i think i have said that before here
however, the blog posting above has nothing to do wit that, just some customers of msft and ex customers of ibm. i quess you can find it the otherway around as well.
the other thing is, peter, i dont think that this posting qualifies as a blogentry. it is a blatant copy of a marketing page of your employer.
my advice:
1) you dont have to say what your employer says. my employer is rather msft friendly but in my free time, i still think for myself
2) you dont have to echo what your employer is saying. there is less and less new content here on this site, it just seem to echo msft site
still, your blog, your call. but getting less interesting by the day.
Brian,
Thanks for the clarification. I now see where you are comming from with your comments.
I do not disagree with you that things like casestudies and whitepaper could have (and often do) a high degree of marketing in them. The casestudies as listed are all about actual projects at actual clients, there is nothing theoretical about that. And there is also information that an organsiation would not like to disclose.
A short casestudy very often does not do the argumentation and background of such projects justice because is is very short in most cases. That is why the majority of organisation who participate in casestudies are often willing to be a reference i.e. meet other prospective clients to tell their story.
In this way the casestudy should be seen as a headsup. Hence my intention of posting a link to them. Organisations are migrating and all have their own motivations for doing so.
The above is the case also for Microsoft’s competitors ofcourse 😉 Case studies / references are an important part of any commercial organsiation’s sales process ..
Bert,
Thanks for stopping by and giving me some blogging lessons 🙂
I was not aware of the actual defeinition of a blogpost and when and how it qualifies as being original or something like that.
The reason I did this post and any other post that references specific Microsoft material is to provide my perspecive on what’s out there. I have not counted but there must be thousands of casestudies on the MS.com site alone. I see providing visitors to my blog with a specific link and some consolidated information as added value.
Next to that my blog is in many cases also my personal reminder so it contains a micro universe of what I think is interesting. Microsoft does have a lot of my mindshare and I am not ashamed about it 😉
I do value you comment and would love to put more time in blogging and expacially in specific blogposts, unfortunatly time is limited.
I do recognise I can’t please everyone ..
Greetings,
I am a big fan of Microsoft and MOST of it’s core products. However, I am also a Notes/Domino developer and have to take issue with some of the utter MUCK in your article. It is FAR, FAR easier and quicker to develop in Notes than any of Microsoft’s products. I work with VS 2005 as well and, while the IDE is vastly superior, it takes far more code to do simple things with .net than Notes. If the Weather Channel’s developers took so long to do ‘collaborative’ apps, then they had no clue about what they were doing. Simple as that. I suspect they had a bunch of VB/Java people who were forced to develop in Notes, did not understand the object model-which is, admittedly, difficult to grasp at first, but very easy to work with. The problem with Notes, for most developers starting out, is that it is not a traditional database. Once you get past that, it’s a piece of cake.
For the record, my company is making the switch as well. We’ve used Notes since the mid-90’s.
Hi Geogray,
Thanks for commenting.
I do not know the Wheather Channel case personally nor the level of complexity of their Notes Apps.
Reference Case documents often don’t give the level of detail and the full story, regardless of their Microsoft’s or other vendors.
I do agree with you that it could be related to their own developers making the switch which took time.
Any way .. very good to here that your company is also making the switch to the Microsoft platform, congretulations ! 🙂