Summary of Results of Lotus Domino vs. Microsoft Small Business Server
We have clients who are both Microsoft shops and Lotus Notes shops. We compared the cost of doing business between Microsoft Small Business Server and Lotus Notes for these small shops. They typically have about 10-15 users.
With no trade-up or Move2Lotus pricing, the cost of Lotus Notes Collaboration Express is higher than a Microsoft Small Business Server 2008 Standard for the first year. Add the no-extra cost Sametime, Quickr Entry, Lotus Symphony office suite, and other IBM branded software that comes with the Lotus Passport Express offering, and Notes has a definite value advantage.
Moreover, if a small business already has copies of Office Professional then you can see savings if switching to the Open Value Software Assurance than switching to Lotus, even including any likely Move2Lotus discounts. The actual cost for that Microsoft shop to trade in their retail boxes and go with Open Value may be far less than if it switched to Lotus Notes/Domino. However, the savings are quickly lost moving forward past the first year. The real story is that Lotus Notes Express has a far less cost per user for the small business after the 1st year. The savings for a Microsoft shop would be quickly lost. If you include Office Standard for each user in this analysis, then the savings for deploying SBS are basically lost, as well.
Another clear advantage for Lotus Domino is that the Lotus Passport offering has unlimited phone in with call-back support, plus the web-based support. The Microsoft Open Value Software Assurance has 1 call for desktops and 1 call for servers with unlimited web. If you like the ability to phone for help more than once, this support difference alone might be a deciding factor for some companies in both their time expenditure and their bottom line.
We next factored in the maintenance upgrade time as a cost. The Lotus Domino server takes about 15 minutes to upgrade in-place while the Domino services are stopped. A Microsoft Small Business Server 2003 upgrade to 2008 (64bit - there is no 32bit) requires a migration. As there is no upgrade in-place, your outage is extended as each of the services are migrated - expect your series of outages to spread out across an entire weekend or longer.
Recommendation:
- If you like rip-n-replace or you need to replace hardware anyway, you don't mind a weekend away from the family, and you want an initial substantial savings, go or stay with the Microsoft option. You'll also get to keep your Outlook mail client if you have it and get the newest Office Professional package. Just save your 1 phone call for something really critical.
- If you like a minimal outage, you don't want to waste a weekend, and you are thinking longer term and don't mind a 2-3 year payback in investment, then choose the Lotus Notes offering. You may not know this, but you could keep your old 2003/2007 Outlook if you really wanted. You would be out of the new version of Microsoft Access, as Symphony doesn't have an equivalent one. On the other hand, you'd have Lotus Notes, so there is no loss. In addition, you would be licensed for Sametime Limited Use/Entry, Quickr Entry, and some other software you might find useful. Unless you kept your Outlook client, you'd also have server and client 2048 to 4096 bit encryption with public and private keys, which Microsoft still can not do.
- SBS 2003 and SBS 2008 both have a 75 user license ceiling for SBS. To scale to 40-50 users w/SBS 2008 64-bit, we recommend that you have 4 CPU cores and at minimum 16 GB memory if you are going to install SQL and also use your SBS as a database server. With these requirements, SBS is probably not be a good VM candidate. To scale 40-50 users with Domino, you need 1 CPU core and at minimum 2-4 GB of of memory depending if Sametime was installed. It would still be a good VM candidate. If you decided to put Domino on the same hardware with only 2 cores, you should be able to serve 300-800 Notes and web users with that kind of CPU memory assuming Sametime was installed on a different server.
The numbers we used in these calculations are from Lotus Passport pricing on the www.lotus.com/passport site for the Lotus-side, and from the Microsoft business partner quick reference cards on SA, and a Google search of current prices for the Microsoft-side. If you would like to see how we crunched the numbers, please see below. Also, if you are an IBM Lotus or a Microsoft partner and would like to send us the numbers you have, we'd like to see them, too. Thanks for reading.
Disclaimers:
This document does not strive to give exact costs or recommend specific licensing avenues for every client. Instead, it is designed to be a quick reference of the Licensing options and costs with the IBM Lotus and Microsoft offerings, along with their relative costs for a 10 user small business. These are prices gathered as of February 2009. Actual costs will vary depending on current Microsoft and IBM discounts, along with any promotional discounting passed through their business partners. Your mileage in savings may likely vary.
In the spirt of full disclosure, Mindwatering is a IBM business partner and was, until recently (in 2008), a Microsoft business partner. We have used Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino internally since R5 running on Redhat and Ubuntu Linux when we converted from Outlook ourselves. Our workstations are a mix of Microsoft XP, Ubuntu Linux, and Apple OS X workstations, Macbooks, and an iMac. Our servers are VMWare on iron, Ubuntu linux, Redhat Linux, and Mac OS server.
Obviously, the products compared in this document are the copyrights of IBM and Microsoft, respectively.
Licensing Comparison for First Year Between Microsoft and Lotus and Second Year Moving Forward
Lotus Licensing INITIAL cost for Domino-based collaboration for a 12 user company with Domino server.
Lotus
Licensing | Server Operating System | Lotus
Domino | Lotus
Notes | iNotes /
Web Only | Total w/o
O/S |
 | Windows | Redhat | Suse | Debian/
Ubuntu | | | | |
Express
Collaboration: | $750.00 | $300.00 | $350.00 | $0.00 | $0.00 | $1400.00
$140.00/user | $200.00
$100.00/user | $1600.00 |
Notes Collaboration: | $750.00 | $300.00 | $350.00 | $0.00 | $4000.00
(duel core proc.) | $1400.00
$140.00/user | $200.00
$100.00/user | $5600.00 |
Foundations: | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a | $950.00
(is its own O/S) | $1680.00
$140.00/user | $1788.00 |
(Update 1/2010: Lotus has simplified their licensing and there is no separate web only license. License costs for both vendors has changed since this article was originally written.)
Lotus Licensing YEARLY cost for Domino-based collaboration for a 12 user company with Domino server.
Lotus
Licensing | Server Operating System | Lotus
Domino | Lotus
Notes | iNotes /
Web Only | Total w/o
O/S |
| Windows | Redhat | Suse | Debian/
Ubuntu | | | | |
Express
Collaboration: | n/a | $300.00 | $350.00 | $0.00 | $0.00 | $402.50
$40.25/user | $63.00
$31.50/user | $1510.50 |
Notes Collaboration: | n/a | $300.00 | $350.00 | $0.00 | $1045.00
(duel core proc.) | $402.50
$40.25/user | $63.00
$31.50/user | $1510.50 |
Notes:
The O/S was not included since it could be free and varies significantly depending on the desires of the companies running Lotus Domino.
The tables above were made using details and assumptions using the per user licensing (CAL) information below these tables.
Comparison w/ Microsoft Server 2008 for a 12 user company.
Microsoft Open Licensing
(Exchange) | Server Only | 5 User CALs
Included | 10 User CALs
Included | 25 User CALs
Included | 1 User
Add'l CAL | 5 User
Add'l CALs | Total 12 users |
SBS Standard: | - | $905.00 (open) | - | - | $30/user | $195 | $1210.00 |
SBS Premium | - | $1620.00
$1925.00 (w/sa) | - | - | $30/user | $195 | $1925.00 |
Server Standard | $705.00 | $925.00 | $1,100.00 | - | $19/user | $195 | $1210.00 |
Server Enterprise | $2290.00 | - | - | $3600.00 | $19/user | $195 | - |
Web Server | $460.00 | - | - | - | n/a | n/a | n/a |
Notes:
Pricing & Support:
The Microsoft server and user CAL prices were result of Google search and averaging of lowest item prices and then rounding to nearest $5. As a result, these prices are less than retail prices posted on the Microsoft web site and in the partner reference cards. Total calculations included a 5 or 10 CAL bundle, as those typically result in a lower per user cost overall. Bundle prices were used in the total calculations when possible.
The IBM Lotus licensing includes support services which is a similar offering to Microsoft's Software Assurance. As the search results were limited in those with Software Assurance, these costs do not include SA. In addition, with the different types of Software Assurance available, getting a direct comparison of apples-to-apples between IBM and Microsoft licensing is difficult. We did give one example for the SBS 2008 Premium offering as an example of the actual cost if a Software Assurance option is included. As a result of these factors, the actual cost to ownership, especially with SA, may be significantly higher than totals displayed above.
Application Support:
The SBS 2008 Premium is probably the closest match as far as features, as it includes a limited but full SQL database along with the Exchange, IIS, and SharePoint services.
Lotus Notes, on the other hand, includes Sametime chat and Quickr Entry, along with other Lotus and IBM branded software at no additional charge, including Lotus Symphony. All the Lotus products include support and upgrades while under Lotus Passport, while the Microsoft prices do not necessarily include Software Assurance, as some of the vendors selling it at the lower prices did not say whether SA was included.
Per User Comparison including Productivity Suite
Server + 10 User CALs + Office / Symphony Productivity Suite
O/S on workstations not included as would likely come w/purchased hardware.
Per User / Month
Estimation | First Year | 2nd + years |
Server | 10 Users | Suite | Total | / User / Month | Server | Users | Suite | Total | / User / Month |
SBS Standard w/Office Pro
(OVS) | $229.00 | $300.00
10 x $30.00
/user | $1790.00
10 x $179.00
/user
[$300.00] | $2319.00
[739.00] | $19.33
[0.62] | $229.00 | $300.00
10 x $30.00
/user | $1790.00
10 x $179.00
/user | $2319.00 | $19.30 |
Notes: | OVS = Open Value Subscription
Prices above are based on the "OVS Pricing & Part #s Partner Quick Reference Card".
Part Numbers:
269-09696 - Office Pro Upgrade $179.00
T74-02681 - User CAL $30.00 (user vs device)
T72-01301 - Server $229 1 year
Bracketed amount is estimation of deepest upgrade discount if customer already had mixed 2003 and 2007 Office Pro. licenses.
Another Discounted Pricing Example with rebates:
$1,790 (10 X $179 + $300 (10 X $30) + $229 = $2,319.00
$1,070 subtracted - Open Value Sales Spiff & VAR Rebates
Assumes existing workstations are OEM windows with some kind of OEM Office installed. Depending on software customer already owns and Open Value Sales Spiff & VAR Rebates, a partner could pass along significant savings to the client. |
| Server | 10 Users | Suite | Total | / User / Month | Server | Users | Suite | Total | / User / Month |
Notes Collab. Express w/ Symphony: | $0.00 | $1400.00
10 x $140.00
/user | $0.00
10 x $0.00
/user | $1400.00 | $11.67 | $0.00 | $402.50
10 x $40.25
/user | $0.00
10 x $0.00
/user | $402.50 | $3.36 |
Notes: | Assumes existing workstations are OEM Windows or Ubuntu linux. Assumes server is running on OEM Windows or Ubuntu Linux.
Prices reflect amounts used in Lotus tables. Prices are from a 2008 and 2009 passport similar to the scenario above except that real client had a designer license included.
Lotus Notes includes itself as a database and an application server. Lotus price does not include any discounts for trading or upgrading from existing server solution. If so they would roughly be twice the 2nd yearly forward price of the Lotus option.
Symphony does not include Access equivalent. |
Result:
As a result the 1st year savings for an existing Microsoft shop could be substantial moving from retail box to OVS. However, the savings are quickly lost as the years progress as the Lotus Express offering is less expensive.
Time as a Cost to Upgrade Lotus Domino 6.5x or 7.0x to Domino 8 or Small Business Server 2003 32bit to SBS Server 2008
Lotus Domino / Lotus Notes / Lotus Symphony
Time Advantage: The Lotus Domino upgrade is very straightforward. It's downtime consists of about a 15 minute in-place upgrade while the installation is run.
Specifics: First, the upgrade from Lotus Domino 6.54 or 7.02 is upgrade in place. For the Domino shop, the upgrades are always is in place unless it happens to want to swap out the hardware. In that case, the upgrade is simply install the same version on the new hardware and copy over the notes.ini and data folder to the new box. That takes however much time it takes to copy the data.
If you come from Domino 6.5x, you have to rebuild busytime.nsf and the reservations. If you are coming from Domino 7, you have to rebuild indexes and add a notes.ini. Most of this can be done with the server up and servicing users. The indexing update is actually performed while the server is coming up. Our total outage for a Lotus Domino server and a separate Sametime server were under 30 minutes and 1 hour respectively. Had we done used the temporary second server and quickly switched the server ids and IPs, the mail/app Domino server outage would been less than 5 minutes which is the time it takes to boot the actual system.
With the exception of the reservations portion of the upgrade required from a 6.5.x server, the upgrade pre/down/and post tasks were all documented in the readme's link to the Information Center.
For the users, you can deploy the software remotely using Smart Update or the new Update Sites once they are on the 8.x Eclipse-based Standard client.
Microsoft Exchange / Microsoft Outlook / Microsoft Office Professional
Time Disadvantage: The Microsoft Small Business Server 'upgrade' is not an upgrade, but a migration. There are multiple small outages while applying any updates and prepping for the AD forest upgrade. Once the new server was up, the outages are very minimal if external DNS is updated as each task is completed by the "Migration Wizard" and the individual services & folders are being moved.
Specifics: For the the Microsoft SBS, we had to upgrade the AD forest, which meant we were basically down for 1-3 hours as the software complained if any one logged onto the server via it's Terminal services or AD during the software updates, installer update, 2.0 .Net frameework install, and finally the Adprep component. We ended up disabling the network card, which took out the VPN server (it used the AD for accounts) and the e-mail. Our second time we were able to confirm that we didn't need to leave it for the whole part just one of the updates. 1 hour should be sufficient.
We then had to install the new 2008 SBS server. The first "wizard" was anything but. It's just a blank form of fields, which you have to complete and put on a USB stick. Use use this file when you install the SBS 2008 Server on the new box. Once the install was completed, and the AD master switched/moved, the actual Migration Wizard was nicely automated with a status for each step of the migration. After completing the AD migration, you migrate the exchange store (mail users). After that is completed, you migrate the web sites, along with the SharePoint "lists". Afterwards, you have to migrate the SQL server if you have one. In our case we had it easy, we were migrating from a 2005 SQL to another on the SBS 2008 server. All this took a couple days of watching the tasks. Once the AD Forest upgrade preparation was done, there were only several relatively small outages for each of the Small Business Server's services while each was being moved and re-configured from the outside as the IP addresses moved from the old server to the new one. There are 21 days to complete while Microsoft allows you to be over licensed to run both at the same time.
Unfortunately, the best way to learn each upgrade's steps and pitfalls was to restore a backup to identical hardware in a test environment and fail the upgrade each time and read the error messages and then you do what to search for on the MSDN and Technet sites. The readme was not beneficial beyond that you were going to likely be required to migrate rather than upgrade and that you needed to start with the AD forest upgrade. (Updated 3/1/09, as other admins have upgraded servers since 1/2009, there are many more sites with the full steps and troubleshooting for some of the more common issues.)
For the users, it's a matter of updating the small number of users (75 or less) to the new version of Office Professional including the new version of Outlook.
Details on What's included on Express & Lotus Collaboration Licensing
Express Licensing:
Intended for companies needing e-mail and/or collaboration applications on the Lotus platform.
Can be licensed three ways: messaging (mail only), utility (apps only), and collaboration (messaging and apps).
- Server does not have a licensing cost.
- Partitioning & Clustering are not allowed.
- xACL, cascaded directories, directory access, and directory catalogs are not allowed
- SAP Notes Client access is not allowed.
- Express licensing is available up to 1000 users. (Company may not have more than 1000 employees and still be Express customer.)
- Collaborative type:
- About $141.00/user for first year including support for a company w/10 users. Cost per license would decrease as number of users increase. Renewal is much lower, (Note, w/o renewal, you are licensed to stay at the release when support ended.)
- About $40/user for renewal w/ support.
Note: Renewal is not required but you would be "stuck" at the release that is current when you dropped your subscription on Lotus Passport.
- Includes add-on "limited use" licenses for:
- Lotus Quickr Entry
- Lotus Sametime Entry / Limted Use (Sametime w/in the Notes Client and iNotes)
- Lotus Expeditor
Lotus Domino / Lotus Notes Licensing:
Intended for the standard enterprise customer or smaller customers that want to take advantage of features not available with the Express offering (e.g. clustering).
Can be licensed three ways: messaging (mail only), utility (apps only), and collaboration (messaging and apps).
- Server has a licensing cost.
- The server cost is based on PVU (processor value units). The cost is based on the processor. To make it fair, Lotus decided that duel core (one processor chip) would have half the cost and therefore half the "value" of a single core chip.
- So if you have a duel core machine, you'd have 50 value points x 2 = 100 points which is same as single processor = 100 points. Then in your Passport bill you would see a line that says something like: 100 quantity x $10.50 = $1045.00 for your yearly renewal cost of your server.
- For a new server, that price depends on the processor count and the number of servers and users you are licensing. For a very small shop of maybe 10 users your single server the first year might be $4000 as a rough estimate.
- Quickr entry and Sametime Entry (limited use) are included with the collaborative licensing.
- Websphere Application Server (WAS) is also included with the licensing.
- DB2 limited use software is also included with the licensing.
- Tivoli limited use software is also included with the licensing.
- Collaborative user licenses
- Notes Client based collaborative licenses allow for full Notes client use and included add-on product usage.
- About $140/user for first year including support for a company w/10 users. Cost per license would decrease as number of users increase.
- Renewal is much lower. For a 10 user company, yearly Passport renewal is about $40/user.
Note, w/o renewal, you are licensed to stay at the release when support ended.
- Includes add-on "limited use" licenses for:
- Lotus Quickr Entry
- Lotus Sametime Entry / Limted Use (Sametime w/in the Notes Client and iNotes)
- Lotus Expeditor
- Lotus Traveler
- Web (iNotes w/) Collaborative licenses allow for web-based (and other Internet protocols/ports) access.
- Cost is significantly less than the Notes client access.
- About $40 less than Notes Client license/user for the first year on Passport.
- Renewal is much lower. For a 10 user company, yearly Passport renewal is about $30/user.
Lotus Foundations:
Intended for small businesses less than 100 users. The Lotus Foundations server is an all-in-one type offering which includes e-mail (w/ or w/o Lotus Notes), Apache web server, a web-based management GUI, with automated backup and restore. Options (such as Lotus Domino-based mail) are added to the server as packages and installed via the management GUI.
- License cost is approximately $149/user depending on number of users and options/add-ons to install. Cost decreases per user as number of licensed users increases.
There are also CEO bundles for companies with at least 100 or 400 users. CEO bundles assume that ALL users who would have a computer would be using the software available in the bundle. See the IBM web site for more information.
Lotus Domino Utility Server
- PVU (per processor) licensing is used for the Lotus Domino utility server. This model is great for businesses wanting all their partners, or customers to have IDs. There is no per user license, but messaging is not available with this licensing option.
For licensing options and F.A.Q.s, see:
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/notesanddomino/domino-server-licensing.html
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