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IBM's 18-month company-wide email system migration has been a disaster: sources

theregister.com

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Re: IBM's 18-month company-wide email system migration has been a disaster: sources

#23
post #4

First job out of college used Notes. Hated it. Since then I've personally declined new work where Notes was the standard.

Is this the same as (or based upon) the old Lotus Notes? Had that at a company where I worked in the 1990s. It was kind of new/novel and interesting then. We used it mainly as a knowledge base and for internal forums on various subjects. IIRC required an OS/2 server to run, which was the only OS/2 box in the company.

IBM squired Lotus many years ago and has maintained the Notes / Domino product line ever since. The basic architecture has never really changed.

Re: IBM's 18-month company-wide email system migration has been a disaster: sources

#24

Should’ve just paid Microsoft to transition to Office 365. Leave the technology work to tech companies, stick to core competencies.

Not sure if you’re sarcastic or not, but my company (enterprise size) has migrated from self hosted Exchange + network file shares + GitLab + Jenkins + Artifactory + 1000 other things to Office 365 + Azure and it’s been great. Probably took a lot more effort than what I notice as an end user…but I do get the impression that Microsoft is pretty good in enterprise productivity…

MS has always been stronger in B2B. Consumer facing.. well there's been some missteps.

Re: IBM's 18-month company-wide email system migration has been a disaster: sources

#25
post #6

Should’ve just paid Microsoft to transition to Office 365. Leave the technology work to tech companies, stick to core competencies.

IBM isn't considered a tech company?

They are far more of a services and support company than a tech company these days. Their current tech is mostly used by their services teams to implement solutions.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/274823/ibms-global-reven...

Re: IBM's 18-month company-wide email system migration has been a disaster: sources

#26
post #8

So a migration from Lotus Notes to what? It wasn't clear to me in the article.

Anything involving Notes seems like a dumpster fire. It was so bad at a former employer of mine that people actually left the company because of it. We used it for email and scheduling (or tried to).

Re: IBM's 18-month company-wide email system migration has been a disaster: sources

#27
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this the same as (or based upon) the old Lotus Notes? Had that at a company where I worked in the 1990s. It was kind of new/novel and interesting then. We used it mainly as a knowledge base and for internal forums on various subjects. IIRC required an OS/2 server to run, which was the only OS/2 box in the company.

IBM squired Lotus many years ago and has maintained the Notes / Domino product line ever since. The basic architecture has never really changed.

I believe HCL actually owns the Lotus software line now. At least that's where we go for Sametime and Domino patches now...

Re: IBM's 18-month company-wide email system migration has been a disaster: sources

#28
post #10

Should’ve just paid Microsoft to transition to Office 365. Leave the technology work to tech companies, stick to core competencies.

Ha! I saw a very big multinational F500 company completely reorganize its AD, because users were unable to login to Office 365 with their standard accounts user@ .company.com. After weeks of complete disasters the company decided to switch to user@company.com just for O365. It's a hard life as microserf.

That makes more sense anyway. Why should your individual identity be hardwired to your current location or department? If you changed jobs within the company you had to get a new email address and login?

Re: IBM's 18-month company-wide email system migration has been a disaster: sources

#29
"Minutes after this article was published, an IBM spokesperson dictated the company’s statement over the phone, presumably because email is a bit spotty"

Condolences to the team. I don't have a particularly strong opinion on IBM, but I am getting a chuckle out of all of waves hands around this.

Re: IBM's 18-month company-wide email system migration has been a disaster: sources

#30

Should’ve just paid Microsoft to transition to Office 365. Leave the technology work to tech companies, stick to core competencies.

Not sure if you’re sarcastic or not, but my company (enterprise size) has migrated from self hosted Exchange + network file shares + GitLab + Jenkins + Artifactory + 1000 other things to Office 365 + Azure and it’s been great. Probably took a lot more effort than what I notice as an end user…but I do get the impression that Microsoft is pretty good in enterprise productivity…

My experience was that MS understands how IT departments work (from small to large) and are fantastic at providing resources to customers if it means you'll end up using more MS products. At a prior job they paid for a local consulting group to configure the Office 365 tenant, connect it with the existing on-prem infrastructure and train the staff on migrating mailboxes.
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