"Migrating" Notes applications at Enron...
Category IBM/Lotus
An email thread today reminded me of an incident I had forgotten about during my days at Enron... Although a few years old, I think the results were/are pretty typical of these Microsoft "migration" attempts.
Enron was a Notes shop with a number of Notes applications used to run the business. We now wonder *what* business, but that's beside the point. :) When the software came up for renewal at the headquarters in Houston (I was based in Portland Oregon), Microsoft was able to convince the IT management to dump Notes and convert to Microsoft Exchange. I wasn't part of that whole situation, but I heard about it from my counterparts down there.
Anyway, during the selling process, Microsoft made the typical statements about how easy it would be to convert Notes applications to whatever they were calling collaboration back then (this would have been around 1999/2000). The Notes staff picked out a pretty typical Notes application with common features... workflow, mail routing, blah, blah, blah... Microsoft then set out to automatically convert the app. After a couple of weeks, they apparently returned and asked for an application that was not as complex as the first one. Guess they felt that wasn't a representative example of our portfolio. Enron dumbed down the choice and waited for the magic to happen... only to get Microsoft back again, asking for something less complex. See the trend here?
After a number of these iterations, the attempt to convert applications was abandoned. They still converted the mail system to Exchange, and the new .Net technology was the hot, sexy technology du jour for new systems. But the fact remained that automated conversion wasn't possible then, and it's still beyond the reach of Microsoft today.
The more things change, the more they all stay the same...
An email thread today reminded me of an incident I had forgotten about during my days at Enron... Although a few years old, I think the results were/are pretty typical of these Microsoft "migration" attempts.
Enron was a Notes shop with a number of Notes applications used to run the business. We now wonder *what* business, but that's beside the point. :) When the software came up for renewal at the headquarters in Houston (I was based in Portland Oregon), Microsoft was able to convince the IT management to dump Notes and convert to Microsoft Exchange. I wasn't part of that whole situation, but I heard about it from my counterparts down there.
Anyway, during the selling process, Microsoft made the typical statements about how easy it would be to convert Notes applications to whatever they were calling collaboration back then (this would have been around 1999/2000). The Notes staff picked out a pretty typical Notes application with common features... workflow, mail routing, blah, blah, blah... Microsoft then set out to automatically convert the app. After a couple of weeks, they apparently returned and asked for an application that was not as complex as the first one. Guess they felt that wasn't a representative example of our portfolio. Enron dumbed down the choice and waited for the magic to happen... only to get Microsoft back again, asking for something less complex. See the trend here?
After a number of these iterations, the attempt to convert applications was abandoned. They still converted the mail system to Exchange, and the new .Net technology was the hot, sexy technology du jour for new systems. But the fact remained that automated conversion wasn't possible then, and it's still beyond the reach of Microsoft today.
The more things change, the more they all stay the same...
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Comments
For most large corporations that are Notes shops, who also have Windows servers, and windows desktops, and the office suite, they are only interested in presenting the sham of migration from Notes/Domino to simply get Exchange in the door. Once the deal is signed, and it is usually for a multi-year term of support, with upgrades, etc. on the complete MS portfolio, they go through a few motions of migration of Domino apps, but in the end just leave the companies hanging with the logical conclusion that at this point their best option is to rewrite them from scratch in MS technologies. Then as so IT management does not lose any more 'face' (and so they can stop answering to Sr. Mgmt why they are still paying Domino maintenance), they'll bring in more pieces (like sharepoint, etc.) to help in the recreation of the applications on their 'legacy' Domino servers -- cha-ching, another sale for MS, and so on, and so forth. My opinion is that Microsoft doesn't care one bit about 'ease' of migration from Domino to their 'collaboration' technologies. They are only interested in making that first sale of Exchange to start the ball rolling. They know up front that the Domino apps will not be migrated, they just don't tell you that. They want to make you believe that it will be possible, and they lead you down the path. After you sign the deal, they make migrating your email the first step, then sort of disappear and delay when it comes time to really get to the meat of most Domino shops.
Posted by Mike Eckert At 10:35:14 On 04/03/2006 | - Website - |
Posted by Ben Langhinrichs At 10:21:10 On 04/03/2006 | - Website - |