Microsoft, Lotus Eater?
Microsoft said Tuesday it plans to offer a variety of analytical and data transfer tools, aimed at luring customers of IBM’s rival Lotus Notes e-mail software to its own system that allows business to collaborate on projects using the web.
Both Microsoft and IBM are vying for supremacy in the $2.8 billion corporate messaging market which includes collaboration tools such as e-mail, web publishing, electronic calendars and project management systems.
Each company wants to play a leading role in defining how web services will work together in the future.
Analysts agree that Microsoft has captured the momentum in the more than decade-old battle between Exchanges and Lotus Notes to win the lion’s share of the corporate e-mail market.
But IBM is seeking to redefine the competition by investing in a new set of web-based collaboration tools known as IBM Workplace that is attempting to recapture momentum among corporate users switching to Microsoft.
To encourage customers to switch from their existing Lotus applications to Microsoft’s platform, Microsoft said it would offer a tool to allow potential customers to identify and organize its most-used shared software.