Global information services company Reuters is switching its 6,000
Lotus Notes users to Microsoft Outlook and Exchange. It said the
move is because Microsoft technology has become more widespread and
is better supported by mobile devices.
Reuter's chief technology officer Mike Sayers, claimed the project
will prove to be cost-neutral because of the redeployment of Sun
servers, which currently support elements of the Notes environment,
backed by the pooling of existing Compaq servers in distributed
networks.
The motivation for the move, said Sayers, is to allow the business
to offer wider messaging and collaboration features across a range
of devices in the future.
"We are anticipating growth in the use of mobile devices such as
Wap phones, [mobile e-mail devices], Palms and PocketPCs," he
said.
"Although our official policy has been to support Palms, users are
buying their own preferred devices and expect to be able to
synchronise with the corporate messaging system. Almost
exclusively, Microsoft Outlook is the default system supported by
PDA makers' software. Notes is not in the same ballpark."
Although Lotus provides a module for linking mobile devices, Sayers
feels that this adds to the burden of managing Notes.
Another advantage of the move stems from Microsoft's almost
universal presence. "People joining the company are likely to know
Outlook but are less likely to know how to use Notes. Staff are
also more likely to use Outlook at home so why insist on them using
Notes at work?" said Sayers.
"From my perspective, configuring and maintaining Notes is not an
intuitive process and this will worsen as we get more involved in
Microsoft technologies such as Windows XP and .net."
With Microsoft Exchange Sayers hopes to reduce the number of
servers involved by taking advantage of the extra bandwidth
provided by proposed changes to Reuters' internal networks.
The company has 150 e-mail servers currently supporting Notes but
through aggregation the organisation may need fewer servers to run
Outlook and Exchange. Despite this, Sayers is not expecting
software licensing costs to fall. He is currently weighing up the
pros and cons of Microsoft's new licensing conditions.
"It looks as though we will merge the changes into our enterprise
agreement. It is easy to get confused but the cost is going to be
high."
The migration is due to start before the end of this year and
completion is expected by the end of 2002.
Sayers admitted that Reuters will still have to support in-house
programs based on Lotus Notes after the migration.