Big Loss For IBM: P&G Making Lotus-To-Microsoft Switch

It may be news to many, but Procter and Gamble, the multi-gazillion-dollar consumer packaged goods behemoth, is well into the process of moving tens of thousands of users to Microsoft's communications infrastructure from IBM/Lotus Notes/Domino.

Needless to say, this is bad for IBM, which has been trying to show that it is retaining big customers and adding new ones even after confusing the world with its whole Notes/Domino/Workplace mixed message a few years back.

P&G now also includes Gillette which had been headquartered in Boston, just a stone's throw from the old Lotus LDB building on the River Charles.

The move has been reported although in a way that very few have noticed. The nugget, long rumored, was buried in this InformationWeek story.

Sources say the migration is driven by Hewlett-Packard Services, a Microsoft integration partner, which inked a major IT outsourcing deal with P&G in 2003.

P&G, notoriously close-mouthed, did not return calls seeking an update on the migration. Microsoft would not comment. IBM/Lotus could not be reached for comment.

It must be killing Redmond not to be able to crow about this. P&G, along with Gillette, employs more than 90,000 people, and is the king of consumer goodies from Pampers to laundry detergent.

Microsoft has long recruited from P&G ranks, probably because Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was famously an assistant product manager there before joining his pal Bill Gates at Microsoft. Former Microsoft COO Robert Herbold was also a long-time P&G guy.

The fact is this is not a straight Domino-to-Exchange move. The P&G collaboration push requires implementation of Windows Server 2003 (with its embedded Sharepoint services) Exchange Server, Live Communications Server. That's a lot of infrastructure. And, some would say, a lot of vendor lock in.

And it's also a lot of piece parts, Microsoft's message of integrated innovation, not withstanding, that will need their own upgrades over time.