Ferris: LotusLive Has Different On-Prem vs. Extranet Platforms

Another timely LotusLive reality check from Nick Shelness; see the full post

Thus it remains to be seen which of the following customers want:

• A seamless choice between functionally identical on-premise and cloud-based services as is the case with Microsoft’s on-premise server and online service offerings, and IBM’s Domino server and LotusLive Notes service, or
• A wholly new and functionally different offering on-premise and online. This will be the case with IBM’s on-premise servers (Domino, Sametime, QuickR, Connections), and LotusLive Engage.

The jury will be out for some time on this one.

It looks like at least some parts of the jury won’t be out for long; e.g., see this Forrester post: Exchange 2010: Tier Your Workforce, Split Your Domain, Save Money – an excerpt:

Exchange 2010 is the first product that Microsoft has engineered to run as well in the cloud as on-premise. That means it will be easier to split your domain and run a single managed environment (meaning one admin console, one archiving management tool set, one legal hold implementation, one message filtering solution) across an on-premise and cloud-based implementation.

And that means a Fortune-class company can keep its high-volume mailboxes on-premise while taking advantages of the higher degree of automation, direct-attached storage, and new functionality of Exchange 2010. But it can also move occasional users that can get by with a small mailbox and Web email client (which they are probably using at home anyway) to a cloud provider (Microsoft itself, or a provider like USA.NET, AT&T, or LiveOffice.com).

That approach won’t be as practical, for organizations that have to contend with different sets of capabilities, user experience models, and third-party tools, for on-prem and online users.

LotusLive Has Different On-Prem vs. Extranet Platforms