This is a hoot: after complaining bitterly that Microsoft was offering bounties to business partners to encourage them to get customers moved from Notes/Domino to the MS collaboration stack, IBM is now doing the same thing. This Washington Post article quotes Peter O’Kelly at length, pointing out that it’s unusual for IBM to offer a bounty like this. I don’t want to say or imply that it’s a desperation move by IBM, but it’s certainly unexpected, and it seems to be funded (at least in part) by IBM’s Linux division. Selling Notes on Linux is harder than selling it on Windows, since partners will have to convince non-Linux shops to make the leap to an unfamiliar OS and to throw away much of their investment in Windows infrastructure– an irony, given IBM’s claim that Notes/Domino provides better investment protection than does MS’ stack.
A modest proposal: in six months, both IBM and MS should publicly tell the world how much bounty money they’ve paid out. That’s a good way to gauge the effectiveness of their respective programs.
Paul's Down-Home Page 
Are you sure?
Microsoft is actually supporting Linux for the MS Virtual Server.
http://www.forbes.com/2006/04/04/microsoft-gates-linux-cx_cn_0404autofacescan06.html
True, it’s only for selected supported distributions, but those are also the same Linux distros that are supported by IBM/Lotus for Domino.
Which means, that Microsoft is now supporting a Linux installation of Domino (or MySQL, or anything).
Actually, I think this is pretty cool.
I’ve expected to see the price drop on Virtual Server for a while; MS has every incentive to cut the cost of software virtualization since it will help sell Windows licenses. It’s good news that they’re supporting Linux, but I don’t think it’s going to cut the entry cost of migrations like the ones IBM is funding. If you have only Windows admins, hosting a virtualized Linux environment on Windows isn’t any easier than putting it on physical hardware– you still have to have adequate Linux skillz.
Paul,
I’ve commented in a similar fashion 🙂 http://www.peterdehaas.com/2006/04/ibms_migrate_to.html
Very funny to see this kind of attempt by IBM. Discounting thier software up to 50% doesn’t even seem to work; now it’s time to “motivate”their partners ??