IXITIn the 90s and 2000s Lotus Notes was a very popular platform used by many companies. For many reasons, since then its use as decreased significantly. In 2018 IBM finally sold Lotus to the Indian company HCL Technologies, which improved the product, but can no longer compete with more complete platforms such as Microsoft 365.
Even so, some companies still use Notes. In this post we will review some of the reasons why we recommend migrating from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Office 365.
1. Notes is On Premise
Shortly after the purchase of IBM Notes, HCL announced that it was going to stop the development of IBM SmartCloud Notes, the cloud version of Lotus. Hence to use Lotus Notes means you need to maintain an on-premise Domino servers platform.
2. Licenses Cost
The cost of Notes licenses depends on several factors and is difficult to estimate, also it is not cheap. In addition, many companies that still use Lotus Notes already have Microsoft Office 365, thus already have a platform that supports the same functionalities as Notes.
3. Ease of Migration
Even if almost no company uses Notes as their mail server, many still maintain the platform to execute custom applications with customized workflows and forms, because those applications are necessary for the daily management operations of the company.
A migration from a complete system like Lotus Domino can represent a substantial work. However, the fact that the existing concepts in Lotus Notes have equivalents in Microsoft 365 facilitates the platform change.
Applications developed in Lotus Notes can be easily replicated in SharePoint Online, the Microsoft 365 tool that manages documents, customized forms, workflows, views and specific permissions.
4. Experiencia de Usuario
La interfaz del cliente Lotus Notes ha quedado muy anticuada, y aunque la versión de HCL Notes ha mejorado bastante este aspecto, la experiencia de usuario y el diseño siguen mejorables.
5. Mobility
Today every employee must be able to easily connect to the company applications, from anywhere and with any device. The classic model client (Notes) / server (Domino) does not facilitate the mobility of employees, while Microsoft 365 is designed for this.
Take the Leap
At IXIT we have performed several migrations of Lotus Notes applications to SharePoint Online. Contact us to learn about the migration possibilities of both mail server and Notes applications.