14 DAY TRIAL // After IBM indicated that it was eroding Microsoft's market share on the unified communications and collaboration software market the past week, the Redmond company came out gunning in an attempt to set the record straight. The software giant disputed claims that IBM's solutions were stealing business users away from it, and indicated that, to the contrary, it had won over 10 million customers who were running Lotus Notes, converting them to Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint.
“The number of customers who are choosing Microsoft’s solutions for unified communications and collaboration is at an all-time high. More than 10 million users are making the switch from Lotus Notes and Domino to Exchange and SharePoint, including more than two million in the last six months alone,” David Scult, general manager of field and partner in the Information Worker Division at Microsoft, explained.
IBM applauded reaching the 145 million sold Lotus Notes licenses worldwide, by revealing that customers were giving up Microsoft licenses and adopting Lotus collaboration software instead. According to IBM, in the 15 months ahead of Q3 2008, over 12,000 new companies acquired Notes/Domino licenses for the first time, at the expense of Microsoft, emphasizing that more than 50% of America's top 100 companies were running its solutions. IBM claimed that various companies that were considering adopting Microsoft Exchange had changed their mind.
Microsoft denied such a scenario, and underlined that Exchange owned no less than 65% of the messaging market, according to data via a Ferris Research survey, while Notes/Domino's share was just 10%. However, Scult did admit that IBM solutions were run by 50% of the Fortune 100 companies, but indicated that, in that case, IBM actually lost market share to Microsoft.
“Lotus Notes was once in at least 67 percent of the Fortune 100 companies, so in that context, 50 percent now isn’t terribly impressive. But, yes, the figure is likely true. Because of the proprietary code in some Lotus Notes databases, some customers keep Lotus Notes around for these legacy applications, but they don’t use it as their primary messaging or collaboration applications. So, technically, these customers may be using both IBM and Microsoft platforms, but in reality 80 percent of most of the Fortune 100 have moved or are moving to Microsoft Exchange as their primary messaging application and SharePoint for their primary collaboration needs,” Scult added.