Over on Ed’s blog, he’s been talking about how the battle between IBM Lotus and Microsoft isn’t about e-mail. In the comments, I pointed out that both sides want the battle to be about their broader platform… but many customers still think it’s about messaging and calendaring, and they see the debate in those terms. That may be because they’re more familiar with messaging and calendaring tools, or it may be because (despite protestations to the contrary) many Notes shops aren’t using all the collaboration functionality that they paid for (and have to manage).
In response to my comment, John Rowland asked what could be done to improve the value proposition of Notes/Domino as an e-mail environment. That made me intensely curious. I already know what I think about the relative value proposition between the two products. Exchange has a number of very-well-integrated messaging features that customers absolutely love, including built-in, no-extra-cost mobile device access, a very capable spam filter (in addition to connection, recipient, sender, and IP-based filtering), and a powerful management toolset. Microsoft is spending a ton of money to deliver new capacity for free, too; witness ExBPA and ExTRA.
Domino admins and users: what would improve the value proposition for Notes and Domino as an e-mail platform?
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