Microsoft Ships Outlook 2002 Connector For IBM Domino 5 Server

The Outlook 2002 Connector is the first Microsoft-developed connector for Outlook and Lotus Domino. While Outlook is primarily designed to work with Microsoft Exchange, the add-in connector will enable companies that have a Domino e-mail infrastructure--or a mixed infrastructure of Lotus and Exchange servers--the ability to use Outlook 2002 and Office XP as a client, Microsoft said.

The connector is a free add-in and can be accessed from Microsoft's Office Resource Kit on the company's Web site.

One consultant said it's a good move for Microsoft to offer companies interoperability options and a path to its new CRM server coming out early next year.

"It is a way for Microsoft to help people migrate to their new CRM system," said Rick Chase, a systems consultant at MicroCount I, San Francisco, which offers systems conversion services as part of its portfolio. "Microsoft knows that there is still a big market share of Lotus Domino users out there."

Microsoft's announcement comes a day after IBM Lotus issued a statement claiming to have won over some 200 Microsoft Exchange and Novell Groupwise customers in the SMB space as part of its Move2Lotus program. The list of companies that have switched from a compeititve e-mail server to Notes/Domino include Greif Brothers, Curries Group and Lennar Corporation, IBM said.

IBM said the program is now offered by 500 IBM business partners.

One of those customers who defected from Exchange to Lotus Domino is Greif Brothers. The systems analyst for the company said he gave both Lotus and Microsoft a fair shot at competing for the business after his Exchange-based company acquired another equally sized company that had done extensive development in Notes/Domino. However, Microsoft lost out because it could not seamlessly migrate the Notes applications into Exchange, he said.

As part of an Exchange demo performed by Microsoft, "the Notes applications came over nicely and looked fine, but the functionality didn't work. There was too much rework to warrant staying with Exchange and converting all the Notes apps that were developed," said James Hayes, Lotus Notes/Domino systems analyst at Delaware, Ohio-based Greif Brothers. "I was a Microsoft guy at heart, and it was tough to prove it to me, but IBM/Lotus surpassed my every expectation."

The project, which began in March and was completed in September, involved converting 1,700 Exchange seats to Lotus Domino. The company now has 3,500 Lotus Notes seats.