Exchange gir deg 300 minutter – 5 timer – nedetid i gjennomsnitt per måned!

PENGESLUK: Bytter du fra Domino til Exchange må du regne med å oppleve gjennomsnittlig 300 minutter nedetid i måneden. Det viser en studie gjort av analysefirmaet Radicati Group. Spørsmålet er om din bedrift har råd til å sette ut av spill i fem timer hver måned.

Det er en av mine lesere som har gjort meg oppmerksom på en artikkel på digi.no som skriver om at Google nå erklærer at de aldri mer skal operere med planlagt nedetid for Google Apps. Google skal nå ha endret sin oppetidsgaranti, men kundene har altså betalt uten å få full valuta for pengene. Nedetid skal være et ikke-eksisterende fenomen – optimalt sett.

Men derfra til å bevisst velge en teknologi der nedetiden i gjennomsnitt er på 300 minutter – 5 timer – per måned. Det er kostbart. Svært kostbart for en bedrift som er avhengig av kontinuerlig produksjon – og der f.eks. epost tjener som en hovedpulsåre i kommunikasjonen og transaksjonene. Og vi vet alle hva som skjer når hovedpulsåren kuttes. Da dør vi.

Her er et avsnitt fra artikkelen i digi.no (mine uthevinger):

Glotzbach viser også til en forholdsvis ny undersøkelse gjort av Radicati Group om den opplevde, månedlige nedetiden til ulike e-postløsninger som bedrifter selv drifter. Undersøkelsen er basert på svar fra 100 bedrifter med til sammen 300 000 it-brukere globalt.

Rapporten er dessverre ikke fritt tilgjengelig, men ifølge Glotzbach forteller den at de spurte bedriftene i gjennomsnitt opplever mer enn 300 minutter med nedetid i måneden med Exchange Server, hvorav mer enn halvparten er planlagt nedetid. Både Lotus Domino og Novell GroupWise kommer langt bedre ut.

Dersom tallene stemmer, og vi har bare Googles ord for dette, opplever bedriftene som selv drifter Exchange en langt høyere nedetid i 2010 enn i 2008, da en tilsvarende undersøkelse fra Radicati Group fortalte om en gjennomsnittlig, månedlig nedetid på 150 minutter for Exchange. Tallene for Domino og GroupWise ser derimot ikke ut til å ha endret seg stort. Tallene sier ingenting om hvorvidt bedriftene har redundante løsninger.

Det man beskriver her er altså at nedetiden for Exchange-servere har forverret seg betydelig – ja, faktisk fordoblet seg – fra 2008 da Radicati Group gjorde forrige undersøkelse og frem til 2010.

Konklusjonen er klar:

Regn selv  på de økonomiske konsekvensene. Du har ikke råd til å sette bedriften din ut av produksjon i fem timer om måneden. Velg noe du kan stole på.

3.000 nordmenn gikk fra Exchange til Lotus Notes sist søndag!

Sist søndag fikk Lotus Notes 3.000 nye sluttbrukere i Norge. Samtidig fikk Microsoft Outlook 3.000 færre brukere.

Det er en stor norsk bedrift som med dette har avviklet sin bruk av epostsystemet Microsoft Exchange 5.5. I stedet har de valgt å innføre webleserbasert epost til 3.000 av sine ansatte basert på Lotus Domino og iNotes 8.5.1. Det betyr at de heretter slipper å installere og administrere epostklienter på hver eneste PC, ettersom iNotes kun behøver en nettleser.

Et gammelt sitat, men en evig sannhet..?

Within the land of IT, nothing is a bigger pain to own, manage and run than Microsoft Exchange. Everywhere you go customers have horror stories about the installation, maintenance and, above all, up-time of their Microsoft Exchange implementations. And worse yet, they will all tell you they are paying top dollar for the privilege because the expertise needed to successfully run a Microsoft Exchange server is some of the most expensive in the IT labor pool.

- Michael Vizard, eWeek, September 2007

Microsofts FUD-maskin er i gang igjen – tradisjonen tro

I tidligere artikler her på bloggen har jeg skrevet at når Lotusphere nærmer seg kan dere forvente at Microsoft igjen går ut med såkalte “drittpakker” om Lotus. Jeg fikk rett. Nå har de slått til igjen.

Når nyheten om at Panasonic går fra MS Exchange til LotusLive, bagatelliserer Microsoft dette med å påstå at bare 4 % av de ansatte i Panasonic benytter Exchange i dag. De påstår samtidig at de ansatte i Panasonic allerede benytter Lotus Notes i dag og at dette derfor ikke er en “big win”.

Vel, at Panasonic nå skal migrere mellom 100.000 – 150.000 av sine ansatte til LotusLive og at de deretter øker dette antallet til rundt 300.000 brukere på LotusLive, er slett ikke småtterier.

Nå er ikke IBM akkurat kjent for å røpe kundeinformasjon, men det ser ikke ut til at Microsoft har problemer med dette når de påstår at kun 4 % av de ansatte hos kunden bruker MS Exchange. Om tallet innebærer riktighet så betyr det samtidig at Microsoft slett ikke har så sterk markedsposisjon som de kanskje kunne ønske seg hos Panasonic.

Og vi kjenner jo Microsofts FUD-teknikk fra før (FUD: Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt). Foran Lotusphere i fjor påstod de at markedsandelen til Lotus var så synkende at det fantes hele land som var helt Lotus-frie. Tidligere Lotus-sjef Bob Picciano blåste den gang av påstanden og repliserte kvikt: – Det må i så fall være Nord-Korea!

Det er mange medier som har skrevet om Panasonic-saken de siste dagene og tallene varierer veldig fra medie til medie. Vi kan regne med at de korrekte tallene kommer frem på Lotusphere i neste uke.

Uansett så er det korrekt at 300.000 brukere i Panasonic-sfæren nå skal benytte LotusLive. Og LotusLive er så mye, mye mer enn bare epost. Derfor blir denne diskusjonen om Exchange noe søkt. Fra før av har LotusLive 18 millioner brukere verden over og har etablert seg som en ledende cloudbasert løsning som omfatter både sosiale medier, epost, chat, konferanser etc. for den profesjonelle verden.

Les Microsofts FUD her!

Les Ed Brills kommentar her!

Panasonic dumper MS Exchange og velger Lotus Live

Neste tirsdag vil IBM annonsere at Panasonic vil migrere totalt 100.000 – 150.000 brukere fra Microsoft Exchange til LotusLive-plattformen!

I følge nettstedet ZD-Net vil migrasjonen bli presentert mer i detalj under åpningssesjonen på Lotusphere 2010 i Orlando neste uke. Elektronikk-giganten Panasonic vil begynne migrasjonen med 100.000 – 150.000 ansatte, men over tid skal hele 300.000 egne brukere, leverandører og partnere ta i bruk den nye web-baserte plattformen fra IBM Lotus.

I følge ZD-Net beskriver IBM denne migreringen som “the largest enterprise cloud computing deployment in history.”

Les mer her,her og her!

Channel Web: Lotus gir mest for pengene!

Det amerikanske webstedet Channel Web har testet Microsoft Exchange mot Lotus Domino. Konklusjonen er klar: Lotus gir mest verdi for pengene!

Normalt testes eksisterende produkter mot hverandre. Det er derfor underlig at man har testet en betaversjon av MS Exchange 2010 mot Lotus Domino 8.5 om allerede er i distribusjon og som en rekke kunder både i Norge og andre deler av verden allerede har kjørt i drift. (Men det er vel kanskje for at Microsoft skal komme bedre ut? Red. komm.).

MS Exchange: Komplisert og tidkrevende installasjon

There are several components that must be installed before embarking on an installation of Microsoft Exchange 2010. The SETUP.EXE splash screen lists and links to each component; all are available as free downloads from Microsoft’s Web site. Prerequisites for installing Exchange 2010 are the .Net 3.5 Framework, Windows Remote Management 2.0 and Power Shell v2. IIS components.

Of course, having to download each component and then reboot the server after each is installed adds to the length of time it takes to get Exchange installed. Once that is done, Exchange can be installed. The program can be installed with typical settings or with customized settings. “Custom” settings refer to the installation of Unified Messaging, an Edge Transport server role or the Exchange Management Console.

Another time-consuming yet necessary part of the Exchange installation are the Readiness Checks. The system will check for additional prerequisites needed to install Exchange. Any Active Directory or DNS issues could really set back the installation time during the Readiness Check phase. However, the time it takes to do the check is worth it. This is a big improvement over legacy versions of Exchange.

Lotus Domino: Enklere og raskere installasjon

Install of Lotus Domino Messaging Server moved like lightning in comparison. To install the core Domino and Lotus Notes platform took about two minutes, although the process was not completely glitch-free.

After installing Domino, attempting to launch Domino as a Windows Service gave a “Notes.ini file for this server is invalid error” message. There seemed to be an issue with the installer — it appeared to be configured to write files to a directory path that did not exist on our Windows 2008 Server. Modifying the .ini file to the path containing the appropriate files corrected the error.

Domino installed with the following features by default: templates, certificate management, Web services data files, Dojo, XPages, Lotus iNotes, Sametime integration, performance monitoring, plus a host of other features.

You get a lot of extra goodies with a Domino install. After installation, the server had a database replicator, an agent manager and other “tasks” that can be added to customize the environment. Each task is listed in the interface with a description that explains what that task is all about.

For deployment, we tested connecting each e-mail client to each e-mail server. Outlook is a snap to configure. Once a user has a mailbox set up, the client also needs to point to the server. The Lotus Client configuration is a bit more involved; not only does the server name have to be specified, a mail file and User ID file must exist for the user.

For Installation, points go to Lotus. The install process is a smooth one because the installer contains all of the necessary files to get Domino up and running in a relatively short amount of time.

Channel Web gir følgende score til MS Exhange 2010: 4 av 5 oppnåelige, mens de gir følgende score til Lotus Domino: 5 av 5 oppnåelige.

Tilpasning og integrasjon enklere med Lotus enn med Microsoft

Lotus Notes as part of the Domino platform supports a multitude of operating systems. A 32-bit or 64-bit version of Domino can be installed on Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and 2008, Linux, Sun Solaris or IBM AIX.

In contrast, not surprisingly, Exchange Server 2010 is a single unified communications system designed to be run as part of the Windows ecosystem. Exchange 2010 also requires 64-bit architecture.

Although there are a vast amount of granular controls and varied configuration options, Exchange is pretty much a straight-out-of-the-box software product, and there isn’t exactly a lot of room for integrating custom components.

Lotus Notes, on the Domino platform, is highly customizable and there are modules for developers to integrate custom components. Lotus Notes supports the integration of mash-ups—Web applications that integrate data from multiple sources into one single interface. Composite applications are another way to customize the Notes environment and are weightier than mash-ups.

IBM also offers a Lotus Expeditor Toolkit. It is used to create custom plug-ins for not only Lotus Notes but for Lotus Sametime, the unified communications platform from the Lotus Software division of IBM and for Lotus Symphony, Lotus’ office applications suite.

In terms of interoperability and customization, Lotus is the clear winner over Exchange. However, all of that customization horsepower can lead to a level of complexity for Notes administrators. Businesses are opting more for the shrink-wrapped feature set of Exchange. An added plus for Lotus Notes is the ability to install on multiple platforms and operating systems.

Channel Web gir følgende score til MS Exhange 2010: 2 av 5 oppnåelige, mens de gir følgende score til Lotus Domino: 5 av 5 oppnåelige.

Når det gjelder funksjoner gir Channel Web høyere score til MS Exchange 2010 enn til Lotus Domino, men her er vurderingen preget av noen faktafeil og man overser en rekke nye funksjoner som Microsoft ikke kan tilby. Også når det gjelder ytelse gir Channel Web bedre rating til MS Exchange enn Lotus Domino, man da må man atter poengtere at man her sammenligner en betaversjon med en eksisterende versjon som snart kommer med ny oppgradering.

Mye mer for pengene med Lotus
Når det gjelder lisenspriser og funksjonalitet per krone kommer Lotus mye bedre ut enn Microsoft. Her hersker det ingen tvil i Channel Web´s konklusjon:

It would seem that IBM’s pricing far exceeds Exchange. Yet, considering Domino is a platform upon which Notes and virtually limitless applications can run, it is economically reasonable. Also, the fact that Domino and Notes can run in an open-source environment can really reduce the amount an organization would otherwise have to spend on operating systems and other proprietary software licenses.

By the time an enterprise has purchased Exchange and the CALs for it, plus the Windows Server license and CALs for Windows Server, costs begin to snowball.

The edge in pricing, when all is factored in, goes to Lotus. You simply get more bang for your buck.

The bottom line: Both Exchange and Lotus have their pros and cons. We felt Lotus excelled when it came to installation, interoperability, customization and what you get for the price. Exchange, we believe, is superior in performance and feature set. The deciding factor was the edge in pricing value that Lotus has over Exchange.

Les hele historien her!

Microsoft vs Lotus – en interessant sammenligning!

Mange har lenge savnet en god sammenligning mellom Microsoft Exchange/Outlook og Lotus Domino/Notes. Nå er den her!

Vil du vite hvilket av produktene som er best – IBM Lotus Domino 8 eller Microsoft Exchange 2007- og hvorfor? Ja, da skal du lese den nedenstående sammenligningen som er gjort av uavhengige IT Comparison.com.

Spørsmålene i nedenstående undersøkelse forsøker å besvare en rekke spørsmål: Hvordan er IBM Lotus Notes & Domino 8 i sammenligning med Microsoft Exchange og Outlook 2007? Hva er fordeler og ulemper med MS Exchange 2007 og Outlook 2007 sammenlignet med IBM Lotus Notes og Domino 8?

IBM Lotus Notes & Domino 8 VS Microsoft Exchange & Outlook 2007 Introduction:

If you have reached this page you are more probably considering to build or upgrade the e-mail system for your organization. Either way you are probably looking for the best e-mail system that meet your organization needs. We are offering and are preparing many comparisons regarding e-mail systems. At this page we are comparing between the two most common e-mail systems in the market today. Microsoft and IBM are the two major vendors for E-mail Solutions today. At this comparison we will focus on the competitive information of Microsoft Exchange 2007 & IBM Lotus Domino 8. It will has a high over view of MS Exchange 2007 Versus IBM Lotus Domino 8.

Feature	IBM Lotus Domino VS MS Exchange 2007
Company	IBM	Microsoft
Supported Platform	Support Windows 2003, IBM AIX, Linux (on Intel), Linux (System Z), IBM i5/OS, IBM z/OS, and Sun Solaris.	Only Support 64-bit Windows Platform in production.
ITComparison Team Comments -: IBM Lotus Domino 8 VS MS Exchange 2007 :-	IBM Lotus Domino 8 is the definite winner when it come to the number of platform it support. Exchange 2007 support only Windows 2003 64-bit version which limit a lot of organizations who is running at different platform than Windows. Even if you are running windows 2003 you will be forced to buy window 2003 64-bit edition, as the 32-bit addition is not supported in production any more.
Complementary Products	Sametime instant messaging, IBM WebSphere Portal, Tivoli Directory Integrator, Websphere Application Server are only examples of the IBM Complementary products IBM Lotus Domino Customers are applicable for.	Microsoft does not offer any specific complementary product with Exchange 2007, but offer extra paid products that can integrate with Exchange 2007.
ITComparison Team Comments -: IBM Lotus Domino 8 VS MS Exchange 2007 :-	IBM Lotus Domino 8 is the definite winner when it come to the number of Complementary products. Microsoft will charge you an arm and leg to get features equivalent to the free complementary products IBM Lotus Domino 8 customers applicable for.
Virtualization Support	Hardware & Software virtualization support	Does not support Virtualization
ITComparison Team Comments -: IBM Lotus Domino 8 VS MS Exchange 2007 :-	* We are not sure what is Microsoft idea of not supporting Exchange 2007 in any type of virtualization at the moment and not even releasing a date when it will be supported. Yes, it might work but won’t be supported by Microsoft. * In the other hand IBM support Lotus Domino in both hardware virtualization (Power Series) & Software Virtualization (VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3) * As Virtualization becoming to be the market trend at the moment due to the fact of it saving money, space, hardware, and easy provisioning it seems a real catch when Microsoft does not support it when exchange 2007 requires a lot more roles and more hardware which could been virtualized and allow good saving on the hardware cost.
Upgradeability & Integration: In Place Upgrade from earlier versions Integrate with earlier versions Earlier versions Application Support	Yes Yes Yes	No Yes, but not 5.5 No
ITComparison Team Comments -: IBM Lotus Domino 8 VS MS Exchange 2007 :-	* IBM Lotus Domino 8 can do in place upgrade of earlier versions of Domino, where Exchange 2007 can only do a complicated migration of earlier versions. It even requite upgrading Exchange 5.5 to 2000/2003 prior to migration. * IBM Lotus Domino 8 can integrate with earlier versions of Domino, MS Exchange 2007 can do the same with Exchange 2000/2003, but not with Exchange 5.5. * Applications written to work with earlier versions of Lotus will most likely work with Lotus Domino 8, where applications written for earlier versions of Exchange will more than likely not work with Exchange 2007 which is a huge waste of investment.
Solution Type	Complete Solution	Messaging only Solution
ITComparison Team Comments -: IBM Lotus Domino 8 VS MS Exchange 2007 :-	* IBM Lotus Domino 8 offers e-mail, Contacts, Calendaring, team spaces, forums, Integrated IM & Presences awareness, and development tools. * MS Exchange 2007 only offer a messaging solution and if you need any further functionality you have to pay for an extra product.
Composite Applications:	Yes	No
ITComparison Team Comments -: IBM Lotus Domino 8 VS MS Exchange 2007 :-	* IBM Lotus Domino 8 has NSF-based composite application that includes both NSF and Eclipse components that offers an easy way to make applications that integrate into Lotus Notes without extensive coding. In the other hand, Microsoft does not offer any equivalent to that.
Clustering Type:	Application Level	OS Level
ITComparison Team Comments -: IBM Lotus Domino 8 VS MS Exchange 2007 :-	* IBM Lotus Domino 8 Cluster is on the application level which make it more flexible and give a higher availability than Microsoft Exchange 2007 Cluster which is OS Level cluster and highly dependant on the OS Clustering capability of windows 2003.
Replication Reliability:	High	Low
ITComparison Team Comments -: IBM Lotus Domino 8 VS MS Exchange 2007 :-	* IBM Lotus Domino has implemented replication for ages to be one of the most reliable and efficient replication methods available. * MS Exchange 2007 is the first Exchange version to support replication. The replication was not reliable in the RTM release and got a bit better with SP1 but still not the best. In addition, Exchange 2007 replication is not efficient and requires a large amount of dedicated bandwidth which can be expensive.
Software Release Approach:	Fully Tested – Ready for Production	Half-Raw till SP1
ITComparison Team Comments -: IBM Lotus Domino 8 VS MS Exchange 2007 :-	* IBM has release Lotus Domino 8 as a solid product fully tested and ready for production, but was a bit late to market. * Microsoft as usual early to market with half raw product at the RTM version of Exchange 2007 with many bugs and features missing few examples: - Public folders Management GUI - Replication was not working unless implemented directly by Microsoft with some secret hotfixes. - Single Copy Cluster was not working unless installed with certain hotfixes in certain orders which was not mentioned any where on Microsoft website and not applying the fixes will make the cluster resources jump from a node to the other. Note: these were few of the issues Microsoft fixed with SP1, but even SP1 had its own issues that Microsoft admit in the release note of SP1 and the installation of SP1 has not been smooth for many customers.
Maintenance:	Install & Forget	Time-Consuming
ITComparison Team Comments -: IBM Lotus Domino 8 VS MS Exchange 2007 :-	* Microsoft as usual has kept their product maintenance quite time-consuming doing updates for exchange, operating system fixing failures and recovering data stores. It seems they are trying to help administrators look busy to keep their jobs. * IBM has kept again the Install & Forget approach. After Domino has been installed you only need to visit the box if you need to add or enable a feature. It does not mean administrators will lose their job, but will have an easier life.
Microsoft Office Integration	Yes, but require a free connector	Out of the Box
ITComparison Team Comments -: IBM Lotus Domino 8 VS MS Exchange 2007 :-	* As Microsoft Office is a Microsoft product which as expected integrate better with Microsoft Exchange 2007 and without the need for any extra packages, though IBM has released a connector for Lotus Domino that will provide a quite good integration with office. In the other hand, IBM has their own mail Client Lotus Notes which is a great one.
Security:	offers advance security features including: local encryption, digital signatures, Server & user defined level SPAM control, and granular access control.	Although Microsoft has put a lot of effort into building some spam protection and enhancing their security features in Exchange 2007 they still struggle as usual with many security leaks, virus propagation and security holes.
Encryption:	up to 4096 bit RSA encryption keys and 128 bit symmetric keys	offer some type of encryption, but optional.
Costs: Initial License costs for only messaging system (non redundant): Initial License costs for only messaging system (redundant): Initial License costs for full solution: Full Solution including hardware, licenses, and software cost. Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)	A bit more expensive Cheaper Cheaper Cheaper Lower	A bit cheaper More Expensive More Expensive More Expensive Higher
ITComparison Team Comments -: IBM Lotus Domino 8 VS MS Exchange 2007 :-	Exchange 2007 get to be cheaper only if you calculate the initial licenses for non redundant setup. In all the other calculation and TCO Exchange 2007 will be in a loss situation. Exchange 2007 require newer 64-bit hardware and more servers (at least 6 server in case of redundancy) where Lotus Domino can reach full redundancy with two servers only, this is due to the new roles Exchange 2007 came up with. More servers means more licenses and clustering with Exchange require windows enterprise licenses which not required with Lotus Domino. All this give Domino an initial setup advantage when you look at the full setup cost. In addition, if your setup require features like forums, portal, and instant messaging you will have to pay for an extra three separate products with Exchange where all of these are integrated into Domino server for free. All that Make Domino the TCO winner.

Microsoft glemte skuddårsdagen!

«The Exchange server address list service failed to respond. This could be because of an address list or email address policy configuration error.»

Dette var meldingen mange administratorer av Microsoft Exchange fikk sist fredag – selve skuddårsdagen! Mange av dem opplevde at det ikke var mulig å opprette eller aktivere nye postbokser. Også nyinstallasjoner ev Echange server har det vært problemer med. Og det var datoen 29. februar – skuddsårsdagen – som var årsaken!

Microsoft innrømmer at kunder har opplevd problemer med dette på en av sine blogger.

Vi anbefaler misfornøyde Microsoft-kunder å bytte til Domino fra IBM.

Og Microsoft anbefaler vi å kjøpe seg en kalender!

Slem Fisk med nyttige tips om migrering fra Outlook/Exchange til Notes/Domino

Slem Fisk er navnet på en ny blogg for Lotus-entusiaster. Den blir stadig mer spennende å følge med på.

Du finner RSS-feed fra denne nede på høyre side på herværende blogg!

For tiden driver bloggeren på Slem Fisk med migrering av en kunde fra Microsoft Exchange til Lotus Domino, noe som kan by på en del spennende utfordringer og gi nyttige erfaringer som bloggeren i beste Lotus-ånd gjerne deler med seg.

Les den spennende beretningen her.

Domino 8.0 – Serveren som bare går og går og går…

Når måtte du restarte din Microsoft Exchange server sist? Plagsomt ofte sier du?

Ta en titt på bildet her. Det er en konsollrapport fra en Domino 8.0 server som ble installert samme dag som den ble releaset. Siden har den bare gått og gått! Mer om det kan du lese her!