Notes loses to MS Exchange

Microsoft's Exchange is continuing to snatch market share from Lotus Notes in the groupware sector, according to research from IDC.

The results released last week examined groupware software sales during the first half of 1999 and found that worldwide, Microsoft surpassed Notes/Domino with 8.1 million seat sales, compared with 7.4 million for Lotus in the same period. Novell's Groupwise was left behind on 2.6 million seat sales, where it was even surpassed by products from smaller vendors which reached 3.2 million seats.

In the US, Microsoft maintained its dominance but in Europe, Notes managed to keep its lead, outselling Exchange with 2.2 million seat sales in comparison with 1.9 million respectively.

Rebecca Wettemann, senior analyst at the European Collaborative Technologies Programme at IDC, claimed that Lotus has remained strong in Europe because of its understanding of the market. She added Lotus partners had also helped the vendor on a local level.

"They have done well to introduce Notes to smaller customers. The key to Lotus staying on top in Europe will be its ability to tap the SME market," Wettemann said.

Jeremy Gittens, marketing manager of the business productivity division at Microsoft, said: "This is evidence of Exchange's popularity in the UK for use as a platform for knowledge management, for example, collaboration and business applications such as workflow and customer tracking, as well as messaging."

John Young, marketing manager at Microsoft and Lotus Var Infobank Software, said: "It's a matter of preference as there are some people who still think Microsoft is a big scary monster. But it's good for us as we sell licences and provide services for both."

Wettemann suggested Lotus will continue to "have a tough time" fighting off the challenge of Exchange because it "doesn't have the extensive resources and software guns Microsoft has". But she maintained that both camps still offer opportunities to resellers.

Wettemann refused to speculate on the commitment of Novell to its Groupwise product after it fell behind smaller players such as OpenText and Netscape.