IBM Lotus: we're beating Microsoft

By Stephen Withers
Friday, 01 August 2008 04:05

Market

IBM's Lotus business claims to be winning millions of seats away from Microsoft's Exchange, including some key wins in emerging markets. Lotus outgrew Microsoft in 2Q08, company officials claimed.

Lotus's marquee customer was an unnamed major bank in Asia that licensed 300,000  Lotus Notes seats, as well as taking up the free Lotus Symphony office suite.

Other organisations choosing Lotus Notes and Domino over Microsoft's products include Max New York Life and Aviva (India), GD Development Bank and DL Cosco Shipyard (China), Affin Bank and Trakando (Singapore), and Russian Railways (Russia).

"Enterprise customers - especially many rapidly-growing businesses in emerging global markets - are choosing Lotus software for its open, flexible design," said Bob Picciano general manager, Lotus Software.

"These companies prefer open standards over the restrictions of legacy proprietary technology for their long-term collaboration investments."

Picciano's gibe is presumably at least in part a reference to his company's adoption of the OpenDocument Format for Symphony, as opposed to Microsoft's effort to have its proprietary file format adopted as an international standard - a move that caused considerable controversy, including allegations of irregularities in the standard-setting process.

Who else is becoming Lotus eaters? See page 2.