Lotus Domino 8.5. VS Microsoft Exchange 2010.

Mr.Network

What is your opinion on Lotus Domino 8.5 vs Exchange 2010, what are the pros and cons.
Which do you think is better?
My company is now running Domino 8.5 server, and we are thinking of moving to Exchange 2010. Is it easy to import Lotus mail users to Exchange?

Claymoore

Of course Exchange is better than Lotus. What a silly question to ask an Exchange consultant who works for a Microsoft partner.

As to the relative ease of migration from Notes to Exchange I will give you the classic IT answer - it depends. Exchange 2010 has no native connector to Notes, so you either have to swing migrate through an earlier version of Exchange that does have a connector or use a third-party tool from Binary Tree or Quest. Both tools are good products, but neither are free.

Mail is just one part of a Notes migration though. Typically we see Notes shops using custom Notes databases which have to be migrated to SharePoint. There are tools available for that as well, but that migration effort really depends on the number and complexity of your Notes databases. If you use SameTime and want to convert to OCS to completely get the blue out, that's another migration. Add to that new client deployments for Outlook (and perhaps OCS) and the project can become a larger effort than you first realize. And we haven't even discussed training users on the new software.