The long-running fight for e-mail supremacy between Lotus Domino and Microsoft Exchange might be winding down, but the rival vendors are rearming for a related but broader battle that will be defined by suites of collaborative components and Web services platforms.
The two will butt heads in the next 10 days as Lotus Software ships Domino 6 this week and Microsoft follows with details of the next version of Exchange - code-named Titanium - and explains its long-term road map at its annual user conference beginning Oct. 8.
But the real stakes have expanded beyond Domino and Exchange to encompass Microsoft's .Net platform and IBM's Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE) strategy around its WebSphere product line, according to experts. Both vendors have made no secret that features of Domino and Exchange, such as calendaring and workflow, will become part of a group of collaborative components that can be embedded in applications built for their respective Web services infrastructures.
Those components are designed to lead network executives to a world where collaborative services are not separate products but embedded in familiar application interfaces, such as adding a group calendar into a CRM application. The concept has become known as contextual collaboration.
"The seat war isn't the focus anymore," says David Ellis, senior technical analyst for Carlson Shared Services, a travel, hospitality and marketing firm in Minneapolis that runs Domino and Exchange. "The issue now is that we have this stuff in place and how do we evolve and build off of it."
Ellis says his company first is looking to offer access to collaboration systems, such as messaging and conferencing, through a portal interface and then step up into the world of collaboration components embedded in applications. "We're just taking baby steps now, "he says.
But make no mistake about the strategic importance of Domino and Exchange to their owners: 74 million users for IBM/Lotus and 83 million for Microsoft, according to IDC. Both vendors need to move those installed bases to the next generation of collaboration and Web services.
"IBM cannot afford to lose Domino users to Exchange because that gives Microsoft a pipeline into the enterprise infrastructure. And if Exchange loses seats to Domino then they lose the enterprise's interest in new collaboration features being added to the Windows [operating system]," says Harry Wong, CEO of Casahl in San Ramon, Calif., that makes data integration tools and is a Lotus and Microsoft business partner.
Wong says the collaboration battle is crucial to the level of success both sides will have with their Web services pitches. "There are multibillions of dollars at stake," he says. "It is a most interesting battle to watch."
Both vendors are gearing up to face the challenges and keep the other from stealing users.
"The old game of one-upmanship has been cast by the wayside for now," says Dana Gardner, an analyst with Aberdeen Group. "The two are now regrouping to battle over Web services and contextual collaboration that will be more framework-oriented instead of platform-based."
That regrouping includes some major tinkering with platforms and products that might take three or four years to blossom, according to experts.
IBM is at the start of a tricky transition from the all-in-one Domino Server back-end and development environment to WebSphere/J2EE and IBM's DB2 database. Domino 6, which includes a free version of WebSphere, is the first step in that transition. And while Versions 3.0 of Sametime (instant messaging) and QuickPlace (teamware) also will be released this week, sources say integration with J2EE is weak and won't be strengthened until late next year.
On the other hand, Microsoft needs to build an integration story around Exchange and myriad collaboration components such as SharePoint Portal Server and Content Management Server. And it must tie that to the collaboration features it has shifted into the operating system: SharePoint Team Services and its forthcoming real-time collaboration technology Greenwich that will provide instant messaging and eventually engulf the Exchange Conferencing Server.
In addition, Microsoft must prepare users for its .Net release of Exchange, code-named Kodiak, which will likely arrive in 2005 and introduce a new universal data store based on Microsoft's Yukon technology that will be a foundation of .Net.
Already the rhetoric is flying.
"Microsoft has separate product groups that lack a common strategy and [product] architecture, and they somehow have to bring that all together," says Ken Bisconti, vice president of messaging solutions for Lotus. "As the world moves toward contextual collaboration, users expect a broad portfolio of integrated products."
"Our strategy is an upgrade path, and IBM's is a rip-and-replace," says Jim Bernardo, product manager for the .Net enterprise server group at Microsoft. "The move from Domino means a change in the directory and the database. How do you migrate Notes [public-key infrastructure]? And the access control list concept in Domino won't be ported over [to WebSphere]."
Despite such skirmishing, both vendors are on their way to meeting user needs as part of the first phase of the transition to contextual collaboration.
Meta Group predicts that in the next three years every global 2000 organization will have broadly deployed three collaboration technologies: instant messaging, Web conferencing and teamware. Both vendors offer those capabilities today, but there is another aspect to the fight.
"The battle during and after that [initial] evolution will be over contextual collaboration," says Matt Cain, an analyst with Meta Group. "The players need to get third-party vendors, systems integrators and corporate developers to utilize those services by embedding them in business applications."
Cain says that while both vendors offer APIs to features of their collaboration services, the ultimate game is to provide Web services interfaces based on Simple Object Access Protocol.
"IBM is much further ahead in that they have articulated the vision and are building products," Cain says. "Microsoft isn't as clear on its long-term road map and how instant messaging, Web conferencing and teamware services come together."
|
RELATED LINKS
