Domino is dead

Barbara Darrow Profile: badarrow

So, once again, Domino is dead.

That’s the gist of Ron Herardian’s article in — get this — Dominopower.com. This may be trolling but there’s a lot of truth in what Herardian, a longtime contact and a Domino partner by the way, has to say.

The tremors from Cambridge can be felt here, nearly five miles away as I type. Ed Brill et al.  must be gnashing their collective teeth.

Herardian makes good points. There’ve been ample Notes/Domino vs. Microsoft Exchange Server stories over the years. The truth is the tide ebbed for Domino some time ago. Exchange pulled ahead if only due to Microsoft’s enterprise license agreements. And Microsoft is on something like version four of its hosted Exchange, which is deployed by ISPs who, by the way, really know what they’re doing when it comes to scale.

But Exchange isn’t even the issue any longer. No one cares about Exchange. Or Domino.

Writes Herardian:

“This shift is the consolidation of small and medium enterprise systems onto Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings categorically enabled by Web 2.0 technologies such as AJAX. Large businesses in the US must stem rising costs for messaging and collaboration systems. Companies will either outsource these systems or undergo radical consolidation using more scalable, lower-cost products.”

Microsoft has acknowledged this shift in its “Live” and Online services push. Herardian does not think IBM/Lotus has done the same. Microsoft long ago came to the conclusion that on-premise e-mail is beside the point — Mail has become so cheap, such a commodity that it can easily live anywhere and users want to pay cents, not dollars, per mailbox. (Not that they would ever actually verbalize that.)

(More here on Microsoft Office Live efforts.)

Ron? Put your flak jacket on, buddy. Incoming!

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