14 DAY TRIAL // IBM's latest announcement comes to confirm, if anyone had any doubts, the fierce competition on the business segment between the Redmond, Seattle company and the Armonk, New York one.
And it's not about venomous statements between the leaders of the two companies, but an attempt of financial seduction aimed at convincing companies to switch from Microsoft's collaborative solution to IBM's.
IBM's move, dubbed 'Migrate to the Penguin', is part of the Move2Lotus program, whose goal is the migration from Microsoft Exchange to Lotus Notes and Domino.
The idea is that the IBM partners who make this switch will obtain a $20 rebate per Exchange license, the maximum amount reaching $20,000.
"A growing number of organizations are interested in moving away from closed, proprietary technology platforms in favor of an open computing model," said Michael Loria, Director of Worldwide Channels, IBM Software Group.
"As one of the fastest growing operating systems in the world, Linux is emerging as a viable alternative to Microsoft Windows as an email and collaboration platform," Loria added.
Aside from the financial seduction IBM is exerting on the partners, the company is also offering clients the possibility to test Domino on IBM's servers to see if they are satisfied.
But Microsoft is no stranger to these practices, in January 2006, the Redmond company releasing a set of tools aimed at simplifying the switch from Domino to Exchange.