Replacing Lotus Notes? Here's How It Really Goes Down

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Replacing Lotus Notes?
Here’s How It Really Goes Down

In The Beginning
In the beginning there was
Microsoft. Microsoft looked
down and said “let there be
mail”. And so it came to
pass that Outlook and
Exchange soon spread
across the land like a virus.
There was much money to
be made by convincing
others to migrate to this
platform and forsake all
others.

And So It Begins....
The Microsoft salesman
arrives on your doorstep
telling you how you don't
want to be the last
company on the planet
using Lotus Notes. He/she
may also have a cure for
baldness and a bridge in
Brooklyn going for a song.

Oh The Lies
The migration will be easy
they say. They have ALL
the tools needed to handle
the migration. It will only
take a matter of weeks and
the cost will be minimal.
The decision is a slam
dunk.... Or so it seems!

Closed Meetings
The discussions that take
place next are always held
in closed meetings in
which outdated facts and
misleading information is
presented.
Informed professionals
(aka dissenting voices) are
kept at a safe distance to
ensure a quick sell.

Phase 1: Replacing Notes Mail

Domino Administrators
Domino Administrators
aren't always consulted
before the "decision" has
been made but they
usually have sufficient
connections to ensure their
needs are factored into any
migration plan that is
subsequently developed.

Training
Often the first thing that
happens after that
"decision' has been made
is for the Domino
Administrators to be sent
off on training courses to
learn about Exchange and
plan for the migration.

More Hardware
Truckloads of additional
hardware are ordered and
the process is started to
replace Domino servers
with new Exchange
servers. For some reason
more servers are needed
than originally budgeted.

Mail Users Migrated
Notes mail users are migrated
to Outlook. In many cases
users are offered little, if
any, end-user training.
Productivity levels fall
dramatically during the
transition period as people live
with increased
downtime, increased technical
issues, and the need to get up
to speed with the new mail
client. (don't bother looking for
those costs in the original
proposal)

Migration Issues
The migrations will almost
always take longer than
planned due to some
unforeseen migration issues.
It is never clear why they are
“unforeseen” given they almost
always occur.
I guess the sale to the
unsuspecting CIO always
needs to based on all those
"unforeseen" issues not being
costed into the original
proposal!

Two Mail Systems
Complications are likely to be
encountered moving from a Notes
mail system in which each user
has their own mail file to a single
Exchange mail store.
In many cases the Domino
administrators will decide to leave
the existing mail where it is. Only
new mail is to be handled by
Exchange.
Needless to say, users will not be
impressed with now having two
mail systems to search.

Desktop Support
Desktop support teams are
placed under enormous stress to
assist with the migrations and
handle the large increase in
support calls.
Now instead of hearing from
people why feature "A" or "B" in
Outlook is not available in Lotus
Notes, desktop support people
have to explain why feature "D" or
"E" or "F" or "G” or .... that they
had just yesterday with IBM Notes
is not available in Outlook.
The grass is always greener on
the OTHER side of the hill!

A Project Out Of Control
The migration project now
falls well behind budget in
terms of the elapsed time,
resources required, and
the total project cost.
The good news is the
consultant is more than
happy to increase their
billing hours.

IT Sucks
The whole of IT gets
a bad name because
of the project. We
can't say whether
Notes sucks or
Outlook sucks or
SharePoint sucks so
everyone just shouts
“IT Sucks”.

Phase 2: Replacing Notes Applications

Notes Developers
Notes developers typically do not
find out about the change until after
it has been announced. They are
unlikely to have been consulted
about the effort involved in
migrating applications.
In some cases organizations may
not have considered the cost of
application migration at all.
The consultant will possibly have it
in the fine print of the proposal. If
they do, they are unlikely to have
costed it out. If they have, there is
next to no chance that the
migrations can be done with the
budget allocated.

Fail... Please
In many cases the
consultants want to make
the existing development
team fail so they can come
in and make a truck-load of
money for themselves
fixing the mess that the
development teams will
now be blamed for
creating.
So be careful!

Sorry, No Funding!
Because the Mail migration
has fallen behind budget
there is little chance
developers will be sent on
training classes to learn how
to use the proposed "new"
technology (usually ASP.Net
or SharePoint). They have
to learn as best they can.
If it’s ASP.Net you have a
chance. If it's SharePoint....
Well, then good luck!

How Do I Test All This?
Many organizations will discover
that most of their Notes
applications contain little or no
documentation.
The chances are low that formal
test plans will exist, making it
quite a challenge to develop a test
plan that ensures migrated
applications continue to perform
the same way they always have.
Testing will be critical as the data
migration will most likely require a
one-off cut-over to the new
application.

The Slow Migration
Applications will slowly be
migrated from Notes/Domino to a
new platform. The applications
will be slow and costly to migrate.
The new applications will rarely
work as well as the old ones.
This will irk your users no end.
This aspect of the project will
ALWAYS be down-played by the
consultants when the proposal is
made.

It's Not My Fault
By now the CIO will just wish the
entire project will go away and a
lot of political pressure will be
brought to bear to quieten the
issues that continue to exist.
It quickly becomes the project no-
one wants to work on. The smart
people have either transferred to
other projects or found a job with
another company.
The project manager almost
always transfers at some stage
during the project so that it is
never clear who was at fault.

But Still Notes Persists
At some point in time it will be
decided that enough money has
been wasted invested and the
remaining Notes applications will
be allowed to remain until such
time as they are replaced with
"strategic" solutions.
It is never intended, but this
usually means Notes applications
remain for many years. So the
Notes client remains on
workstations, and supported, for a
whole lot longer than
planned/costed.

Wallpaper The Black Holes
The development teams that
previously supported Notes will be
folded into existing teams or a
restructure will take place in an
attempt to wallpaper over the massive
holes that remain.
The concept of a team of people
doing "Rapid Application
Development" will almost certainly
disappear. Nobody really cares as
the Notes development team was
probably always a square peg in a
round hole that was never well
understood. Besides, they just made
the other development teams look
"slow".

A New Solution Needed
End Users will look for
something else they can
use to build their own
solutions. Many will be
looking out for the next
"Lotus Notes" to appear
because it sure aint
SharePoint.

The Consultant Disappears
At some time around now the
consultant disappears into the
distance to count all the cash they
have acquired from their latest
victim engagement....
If they are lucky they will have
convinced the CIO that all the
issues encountered were the
direct result of a lack of support
from key people in the project.
The Blame game will be pointed
at those that were saying "this is a
stupid idea” or the failure to give
all the work to the consultants
from the very beginning.

What You Will Not See

You Will Not See
Any analysis of the
project to establish
the true total cost of
the project and the
ROI it achieved. If
such a document
exists the CIO will
lock it away in
his/her top draw.

You Will Not See
The consultant learning
from all the problems
encountered and
factoring that into the
proposal of their next
victim client.

You Will Not See
The consultant
admitting that they may
not have disclosed all
the likely issues to be
overcome.

You Will Not See
The consultant
admitting they may
have oversold what
SharePoint's
capabilities really are.

You Will Not See
Any reduction in the
cost of operating mail in
the organization. It will
probably have
increased (even without
adding the costs of the
migration!).

You Will Not See
The victim company
suddenly being able to
do things with their e-
mail client they were not
already doing with Lotus
Notes Mail.
Mail after all has now
become a commodity
item.

You Will Not See
A case study where a company:
• Successfully migrated away
from Lotus Notes 100%.
• The project came in on
time, under budget
• It delivered a significant
lowering of the costs for
operating messaging
• Provided an even faster (lower
cost) service for rapid
application development.
But you can bet the consultant
probably promised all those things
when the project started!

What You Will See
Microsoft now has its
hooks in yet another
company that is locked
into its proprietary stack
of products for quite
some time.
But for some it is not too
late….

What You May Hear
(comments posted on social media related to an article about a migration project at Qantas)
I have two companies whom were migrated to
Exch/SP. The environment is about 25-30%
bigger. They have operational problems and
user issues. They lost some
applications, migrated apps have less
functionality. SP has performance problems.
Lot of money was spent over the first price.
These "it's progressing but it's
taking longer than we
planned" (aka "our migration
to exchange and the MS stack
is stuck half way and we're
truly buggered") projects are
more common than Seinfeld
re-runs.
Have been dealing with a lot of
companies that thought a
Microsoft migration would be
as easy as Microsoft/MS
partners tell them. Not a single
one of the companies I´ve been
working with over the last 11
years in Notes/Domino EVER
completed the migration.
The nation’s largest airline Qantas has
revealed that it’s still in the process of
migrating its corporate email platform
off IBM’s Lotus Notes/Domino
platform and onto Microsoft’s
Outlook/Exchange system, with the
rollout now into its fourth year.
Add to the list just about every large
Notes migration done in Australia,
Defence probably has the record,
they still use heaps of Domino. But
add Caltex, DFAT, Centrelink,
Westpac, etc. All in the same boat. All
spent a ton of money swapping email
and then keeping what they had.
BTW You should ask
AMP where they’re
up to as well in their
migration… they
started in 2010

A New Approach is Needed

What Should I Do?
Start by identifying what
your customers want, rather
than what they don’t want
(The Notes client)
Don’t skate to where the
hockey puck is, but where it
is anticipated to be when
you get there.
Differentiate between mail
and applications. Notes is
both… Outlook isn’t.

Extend Rather Than Replace
Your existing IBM Notes
applications have probably
served your company well
over a great many years.
Don’t under-estimate their
numbers and the total cost
to replace them.
Look for solutions that fill
the expectation gap without
the need to replace what
you already have.

The World Is Going Mobile
Within a few years there will be
more mobile devices on this planet
than people. This is where the
hockey puck is likely to be in a few
years time.
Imagine the delight of your users if
they came to work one day to find all
the content stored within their Notes
applications was now readily
available to them on mobile devices.
Was that a gleam in their eye and a
smile on their faces. They didn’t hate
those Notes applications after all.
They just didn’t like the way they
were being packaged.

Replacing Lotus Notes? Here's How It Really Goes Down

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