Most of the time: Just a flesh wound

The debate over IBM vs Microsoft collaboration market share flared up again. IBM issued a press release ahead of Lotusphere that claims significant market share gains for Notes and Domino.

Early versions of the press release also included this statement: "While marketshare estimates vary, Gartner Dataquest's most recent report from 2008 indicates a 40 percent share worldwide for Lotus Notes , compared to Microsoft's 48 percent for Exchange, a narrowing gap."

Tom Austin at Gartner rebutted that conclusion and IBM removed it. Tom was quoted in Network World:

I don't believe that in either revenue or user seat share, that IBM is closing the gap [with Microsoft]," Tom Austin, a Gartner analyst, told Computerworld today. "The gap is getting bigger and bigger."

IBM did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

…

Early versions of the press release also included this statement: "While market share estimates vary, Gartner Dataquest's most recent report from 2008 indicates a 40% share worldwide for Lotus Notes, compared to Microsoft's 48% for Exchange, a narrowing gap."

Austin, a Gartner group vice president and research fellow who conducted that research, said the statistic was for 2007 shipments of Notes vs. Exchange only. It is far different than the percentage of people actually using either software today, the installed base.

Based on that measurement, "Microsoft Exchange has at least three times the users of Notes with enterprises with 500 or more users," Austin said. IBM may be adding Notes users, but its share of the installed base "is getting smaller," he said.

Later versions of the IBM press release have that statement and the Gartner statistic deleted.

I really did think this debate was over, not least because the key research organizations show Lotus well behind. eWeek reported on Thursday 15th Jan:

IDC's annual market share analysis of collaborative environments puts Microsoft's market share at 52 percent, with IBM's market share slipping 5 percent to 37.7 percent. A Ferris Research survey of 917 organizations worldwide found Exchange in 65 percent of those shops.

I regularly look at UK’s IT Jobs Watch as a decent indicator of technology vitality and share. The story is here in the jobs data for Lotus Notes and Domino and their key competitors: Exchange and Sharepoint. The charts are directly comparable, as they cover the same time periods and are measured against the same pool of job postings.

Lotus Notes (all versions):