Craig RothThe debate about whether collaborative app developers are shifting from IBM Lotus Domino to Microsoft Office SharePoint has been raging for quite a while. Related questions such as whether Microsoft spends more on marketing or just benefits from “shiny new thing” syndrome are also fun to debate.
I won’t step into that debate today, but I find two enlightening posts that weren’t written in response to each other, but play like they were since they both seem to sprout from the same posting “Lotus Notes: The Long Goodbye” by jonvon.
On one side, here’s Joel Oleson on the Microsoft point of view (although he’s not with Microsoft anymore):
Give me your tired, your poor and huddled masses yearning to breathe free… With open arms we welcome Notes Admins and Developers to SharePoint
It’s no longer a fierce battle. The battle is over and we welcome you with open arms. It’s a time of reparations it’s a time of healing. If I could I’d say welcome Notes admins and developers on an icon like the statue of liberty. Which represents the open arms that America once had for welcoming the rejected.
12 years ago I use to bow to the power of the Notes developers as I’d do our little ASP apps. On the web team with Notes/Domino developers and us purist ASP later to be Exchange, .NET and SharePoint development team.
Then, here’s Ed Brill on the IBM point of view:
I’ve never been a developer
One were the Microsoft employees, in the final weeks of their fiscal Q4, dancing on the graves and saying "we told you so". I’m sure they should be much busier explaining to customers why their cloud/hybrid/premises model isn’t really in operation yet, why Exchange 2007 is still the engine behind Exchange Online, and how they actually differentiate in the commodity email space from someone like Google. But instead there are the guys who left Lotus ten years ago, all confidently displaying that they know "why this happened". Yeah, sure, you guys know. And it would have been so much different if you were still here, except for that whole bit about the Notes business having grown in revenue every year since 2004. Thanks guys.
Those are just excerpts. I recommend reading both postings in full, and especially the comments for each which continue to grow.
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