My email exchange with Ed

So, Ed made our email exchange front-page news by posting summaries, but not the actual messages, from the thread of email we exchanged after my March 15 column, “Tooling Up for Exchange Migration“, went out. I think the summaries miss some important details, so I’m going to post the full messages in the next day or two; it’s a hassle to turn them into readable HTML, and I’m busy with several things that have to be done before I head out for Exchange Connections in Nice, so I don’t have time to do it right now. For now, suffice it to say that it’s interesting to see the comments from the Notes faithful complaining about IBM’s branding for WCS, Workplace, Websphere, and Notes.

Oh, heck, why not. Here’s Ed’s first message:

Paul —
I’m disappointed that you continue to push this falsehood about the Lotus product line:
“IBM is pushing Notes, and its successor, Workplace Collaboration Services, as a future-proof way to protect existing investments”.
Could you please provide documentation to evidence where IBM has indicated that Workplace Collaboration Services is the successor to Lotus Notes. When you determine that none exists, I ask that you please discontinue such references, which you also made in comments on your own weblog and others.
I’ll also question your assertion ” although Exchange clearly offers a better messaging and calendaring system than Notes (particularly when you include the desktop client in the comparison), ” but I guess you’re entitled to your opinion — clear or not.
Also, will you be covering the deficiencies in the Application Analyzer 2006 for Lotus Notes in a future newsletter, now that you’ve promoted its use in this week’s?
Thanks –Ed

And my reply (I’ve converted footnotes into links for readability and changed the formatting a bit):

Ed–
It’s clear that we disagree on a few things, and it’s ironic given that the intent of the sentence you complain about was to say that IBM is strongly pushing the notion that Notes/Domino/Workplace offers better investment protection than does Microsoft’s platform.
IBM has introduced WCS to offer “converging and complementary functionality”. Arthur Fontaine says that “Workplace Managed Client is an enhancement, not a replacement.” This sounds like the introduction of a completely separate product that provides a parallel path to Notes/Domino. On the other hand, you said: “When that happens, whether it’s Notes 7.5 or 8.x, the Notes client and the Workplace client become the same thing,” Brill said.
If they’re the same thing, that certainly gives the impression that the two are converging. That’s the whole idea of a one-lane road, isn’t it? In my experience, that means that only one will remain. Very, very few technology companies are willing to maintain two separate but parallel product tracks given the degree of investment that doing so requires. Erica Rugulies of Forrester gets the point when she questions whether IBM’s going to maintain two sets of collaboration tools.
David Via of Ferris said something analogous, quoted in an article with your own byline:
“It is now very clear that Notes technology (and most importantly millions of applications) will live on, effectively embedded in the new Workplace Client.
So, Notes applications will be embedded in the Workplace managed client, at which point they’ll be what? Notes applications not running in the Notes client? Notes applications that won’t necessarily be hosted on a Domino server? Sounds like a replacement to me. In fact, using language like “sets the stage for extensions to applications”[6] is very reminiscent of what Gary Devendorf keeps talking about, although in the opposite direction.
So, to answer your request [ed: for a correction]: no. I think there’s ample evidence to support the claim that Workplace will be the eventual successor to Notes, although you’re welcome to try to convince me that the quotes I cite mean something different.
Now, on to what “clearly” means in “clearly offers a better messaging and calendaring system”. From my perspective as a messaging administrator, and as a consultant who deals every day with a wide range of customer messaging environments, I think it’s fair to say that the current version of Exchange offers a number of desirable messaging features that Notes and Domino do not. These features include an integrated anti-spam filter and integrated wireless access for a wide range of devices, to say nothing of Exchange’s higher scalability on identical hardware. There are lots of little things, too: Exchange offers a much broader range of performance parameters you can monitor; the scripting environment for performing admin tasks is much richer,
On the client side, you and I both know that the Notes client has been lambasted over the years for its user interface. You can argue over whether that’s just a matter of it being unfamiliar to Outlook users; I think the bigger point is that the Notes interface diverges significantly from other Windows productivity applications (including not only Microsoft Office but Lotus’ own SmartSuite products); this divergence confuses users and makes them think that the Notes client is hard to use— because for them, it is. To its credit, the Notes team has worked hard to make the client UI more consistent; however, the very strength of interest in DAMO should indicate something about user preferences in the broader market.
As for writing about the app analyzer in more detail: I may or may not, depending on the amount of reader feedback I get. With Exchange 12 around the corner, most of my reader mail recently has been asking questions about some of the new features (notably unified messaging and compliance) that Microsoft hasn’t been discussing in detail.
Cheers,
-Paul

I’ll post more later, but now I really do need to get some real work done.