It’s nearly 20 years since IBM bought Lotus Notes for the princely sum of $3.5 billion. In today’s money, this could be double.
While the company probably saw this as a great step forward into software development, I wonder 18 years on whether the company is rueing its decision to buy.
Yes, Lotus Notes has served businesses well, but since Google got its act together and realised very early on that cloud computing was the future, IBM’s little baby has increasingly looked old fashioned.
Of course, there are still stalwarts out there who are loyal. Even developers are still creating compatible software. However, the question for me is how long will it be before they realise Lotus Notes has no future.
If they are savvy, fans of the program they will watch what is happening to IBM. The latter apparently recently published sales results for the last quarter of 2012 that showed that it was starting to lose ground.
Yes, revenue was still $1 billion, but for a company the size of IBM, this figure is not good news.
IBM has started to develop its own cloud system, but this may be too little too late. Google stole a march on everyone (including Microsoft) when it developed its own internet-based apps. It’s reaping the rewards.
So, if you are still stuck in Lotus Notes mood, it might be wise to start thinking about switching to Google Apps for Business.
It could also save you a lot of money in the process.
I broke down the financials on a previous post.
It would be around double the yearly cost for me to move to Google Apps for e-mail alone. Additional dollars would be spent rewriting custom applications.
Lotus Notes has no future? That’s correct. IBM Notes 9 will be released in March 2013. That product is the future. Perhaps you should have come to IBM Connect in Orlando to learn about Notes 9 and IBM’s overall strategy instead of commenting without ever using the product.