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Exchange 2000 vs. Domino: Which platform suits your company?
Both have similarities but also dramatic differences. Gartner Group
analyst pinpoints key issues that technology decision-makers need to
weigh in the balance.
By Garry Kranz
Lotus Domino Enterprise Server may give more
comprehensive clustering than Microsoft Exchange 2000, but the
latter's reliance on Active Directory gives tighter integration.
These are just two of the ways the platforms differ. TechTarget
asked Senior Research Analyst Maurene Caplan Grey of Stamford,
Conn.-based Gartner Group to tackle issues business managers should
consider when weighing the two products.
TechTarget: How do the instant-messaging tools of each platform
compare?
Grey: The two products are made using very different philosophies.
Exchange 2000 relies on Windows 2000, and it also relies on Active
Directory for directory services. You have to put those products in
place first before migrating to Exchange 2000, and that's going to
take a longer period of time. Microsoft instant messaging software
in the enterprise level comes with Exchange 2000, which uses Active
Directory for directory services.
Microsoft is coming out with a simple SIP-compliant instant
messaging service that will be included in Windows XP, and the
Windows XP client, called Windows Messenger, will also include the
old NetMeeting functionality.
Domino takes a more modular approach. Lotus makes Domino Enterprise
Server to work on a variety of platforms. It can run on IBM
mainframes all the way to Linux machines. Domino is not a
standards-based e-mail system, but Lotus develops its products to
run on different operating systems. From the perspective of instant
messaging for directory services, Lotus's SameTime [collaboration
products] will work against a Domino database but also run against
an LDAP client directory.
So, companies looking at the two systems will want to consider each
vendors' research and development roadmap and their
product-development processes. For instance, if your organization
has an environment that is heavily dependent on Unix, putting in
Exchange 2000 would require tearing out your Unix system or, at
minimum, putting in a sister system with a Windows 2000 environment.
TechTarget: What cost implications are there relative to messaging
within the individual platforms?
Grey: From a messaging perspective, you'll want to look at the needs
within every technology division. Understand what your business
drivers are. You also have to consider what other applications are
in your environment. By the way, these could be
non-messaging-related applications, such as Seibel CRM software.
Think about the degree of IT resources you have, how many people
need to be retrained, and think about your network and underlying
architecture. If you're in an AIX environment, for instance, it's
going to be pretty costly to move to Exchange, where everything has
to run on Windows.
TechTarget: How do Domino and Exchange match up as collaborative
tools?
Grey: The underlying architecture of Microsoft Exchange 5.5 did not
lend itself to application development. That changes in Exchange
2000, because the underlying database has architecture that is
XML-based, HTTP-accessible and Web-app accessible. We'll begin
seeing development in these change environments like we have already
seen in Domino.
Domino has [more] years of development [than Exchange]. An awful lot
of Domino users are database folks who also have a heavy application
development environment. A lot of development in the Domino
environment has been moved to the Web, and of course is still fired
up by a Domino backend.
TechTarget: Companies hear a lot about clustering and why it's
important. What should IT administrators know about the distinctions
between clustering on Exchange and Domino?
Grey: In Exchange 2000, you could have multiple databases per
server. As long as the server is hosting fewer than 20 databases,
there is room for databases from another server [to be absorbed] in
the event of fail-over. The earlier Exchange 5.5 limited clustering
to one database per server and required a dedicated backup server.
Exchange 2000 uses clustering at the operating system level; that
is, at the Windows 2000 level. It handles fail-over at the OS level
but not load balancing.
Many organizations running Domino, rather than clustering at the OS
level, are more likely to use clustering provided at the application
environment. The reason is obvious: the application level is where
fail-over and load balancing are most likely to occur. Domino has
had clustering built in to the product for both fail-over and load
balancing for about five years. It's a more comprehensive level of
clustering support than you'd get at the OS level. It's
Domino-specific, not OS-specific.
TechTarget: It appears that Active Directory might give Microsoft an
edge over Lotus in the areas of security and network administration.
How is Lotus responding?
Grey: One of the things you'll have in a Microsoft Exchange 2000
environment with Active Directory is single sign-on. When a user
logs on to the operating system, he is also logging on to Exchange
2000. That's not usually the case with Exchange 5.5.
Domino users certainly are going to have to sign on at two places.
But understand that Domino's release 5 came out before Active
Directory and before Windows 2000, and it uses its own directory
services. Companies that want to cut down on network administration
may want to move toward a Windows environment. With its nice
integration, you have less administration over the entire
environment.
Domino does not have the tight integration with Active Directory,
since it was developed before Active Directory came out. It's
unclear what Lotus's future plans might be in support of Active
Directory.
TechTarget: How can companies compare costs of the two platforms?
Grey: Pricing is very tough, especially with all the changes
Microsoft is making to its licensing agreements. (Note: previous
Gartner research notes report that many users "vigorously oppose"
Microsoft's planned licensing changes, which take effect Oct. 1, as
too onerous).
Licensing comprises between 8% and 12% of the total cost of
ownership (TCO) in a steady-state environment. Gartner says that any
technology has a five-phase TCO: planning, implementation or
migration, steady state, change management and retirement.
When the time comes for product decision, companies generally tend
to bundle in costs for planning, migration, steady state, etc., and
choose a vendor because it's going to cost X amount of dollars, or
because they get a good deal on licensing. But you need to break out
hard costs, like putting up servers and training, from indirect
costs, such as loss of user productivity while people are learning a
new system.
So there are really two TCOs to consider. After going through
migration, you have to consider what it's going to cost to go from
here to there. The second TCO is what it costs to manage the
environment in steady state. If you try to bundle those costs
together, you're going to make bad decisions because you won't be
comparing apples to apples.
Bio: Garry Kranz is an independent technology journalist in
Richmond, VA.
MORE INFORMATION ON THIS TOPIC:
Making a choice is no easy task. Here are some resources from
sister site searchDomino.
Also find resources from searchWin2000.
