Article: The State of the Future: cc:Mail in 1998 and Beyond

Overview

Throughout 1997 rumors circulated that Lotus would finally discontinue cc:Mail. News leaked out of Mountain View, California, that cc:Mail headquarters was operating with a skeleton crew and that remaining development resources were allocated to Lotus Notes Mail 5.0 and eSuite.

Aggressive migration strategies emerged from Microsoft and Netscape, and 3rd party migration tools began to appear on the market. Late in the year at their Paris Messaging Summit, Lotus finally voiced what, perhaps for the first time, sounded like a coherent messaging strategy, at least from the fifty-thousand-foot level.

Finally, at Lotusphere 98 in Orlando, Florida, Lotus and IBM revealed their plans for Notes Mail 5.0 and cc:Mail migration. Lotus announced that there would be no new major versions of cc:Mail and that the Notes 5.0 client, which can access cc:Mail post offices, would be the next version of cc:Mail. The Notes 5.0 client will likely be given away free to cc:Mail customers. The industry press has taken all of this to mean that cc:Mail has finally been discontinued. Nonetheless, the announcements have surprisingly little real impact on customers because the cc:Mail product line is relatively mature. For several reasons, cc:Mail has more life in it than most analysts have suggested and there is no reason to imagine that cc:Mail is going away any time soon.

There's Gold in them Hills

Ironically, despite all of this, cc:Mail just kept going and going in 1997 like the Energizer Bunny, continuing to gain users (now roughly 14 million). This fact seems to fly in the face of everything that is being said and done by messaging vendors. It seems as if every messaging vendor in the market has tried at one time or another to put a stop to cc:Mail. For Lotus, which has been promoting Notes and Domino over cc:Mail for years, this latest move is unsurprising: but it remains to be seen whether they can pull it off. Customers are wondering is cc:Mail still a future, and, if so, what is it?

I asked Jeff Papows about cc:Mail just at Lotusphere 98 and he said that cc:Mail will be supported for the foreseeable future but that there will be no new versions, other than maintenance releases. Papows also stated that cc:Mail is still a viable product in some markets and, although Lotus is currently focusing on small and medium-sized customers, he indicated that cc:Mail could not be categorized as a workgroup solution.

It seems clear that Lotus intends to sell, support, and maintain the cc:Mail product line for as long as it remains profitable to do so, and with 14 million users that could be quite some time.

What can You Get for the E-Mail System that has Everything?

Lotus has emphasized that it remains committed to providing support for its 14 million cc:Mail users and, like other messaging vendors, openly acknowledges the importance of Internet standards-based messaging technologies such s POP3, IMAP4, and LDAP, all of which are supported in cc:Mail R8.1. What does it mean to say that no new major versions will be produced when the product line is mature and has in many ways set the standards in the industry?

While the Internet protocol support in cc:Mail R8 makes cc:Mail an open, scaleable messaging solution allowing post offices to be consolidated down to a few messaging servers, Lotus refers to this new model for leveraging an existing file server-based cc:Mail infrastructure as an evolutionary step towards Notes and Domino. Although cc:Mail can go to the next level as a client/server, Internet standards-based messaging system today (using HTTP, POP3, IMAP4, and LDAP), Lotus' vision remains that cc:Mail customers will migrate to Notes and Domino. In late 1997 Lotus adopted a position I wrote about at Lotusphere 97, that Internet standards-based protocols can and should be used to bridge the gap between cc:Mail and Domino and thus facilitate migration. In 1998, IBM and Lotus consulting, along with the Lotus Business Partner community, will provide the expertise and external resources to migrate cc:Mail customers.

New Lotus Migration Tools and Services

Lotus will be making new migration tools and services available, partly to counter the predatory migration strategies of Microsoft and Netscape. The most interesting migration tool shown at Lotusphere 98 was R6D. R6D is a 16-bit cc:Mail R6 client based on the cc:Mail for Windows 6.03 code stream that runs directly against a Domino server using native Notes RPC protocols. R6D emulates a Notes Mail client by hooking into the same set of Notes DLLs used for Notes Mail thanks to a special version of the cc:Mail Mail Engine, similar in concept to the Mail Engine emulator used by HP to implement the cc:Mail client on top of its client/server OpenMail back-end. R6D is a true client/server cc:Mail R6 client that works with Domino servers.

All that Glitters is not Gold

R6D has been hailed as everything from free cc:Mail to the missing link that will rescue cc:Mail users that have been unable to migrate. Actually, R6D is a very limited, transitional tool purely for migration and coexistence. R6D is 16-bit and no 32-bit version is planned. It is Windows-only and there are no DOS, Mac, OS/2, or UNIX versions planned. What is more important is that there will be no Mobile version and no future versions are planned.

In terms of features, R6D will support cc:Mail Bulletin Boards on top of Domino discussions, type-down addressing (against the Domino Name and Address Book), and local cc:Mail Archive file viewing. However, the product does not support Rich Text or Notes/Domino doclinks and cc:Mail still lacks native HTML support. HTML support signals a possible incompatibility between R6D and Notes Mail 5.0. At the same time, Lotus Organizer users on the cc:Mail side will still not be able to fully interoperate with Organizer users on the Notes client side or with Notes' native Calendaring and Scheduling capabilities.

To Migrate or not to Migrate?

There are several migration tools and alternatives that I distill down to only four basic alternatives: (1) keep using cc:Mail either (either as it is or with Internet standards support for HTTP, POP3, IMAP4, and LDAP); (2) leverage Internet standards to facilitate migration to Domino, Exchange, or Netscape; (3) migrate directly to Notes and Domino; and (4) migrate to an alternative, proprietary messaging system such as Microsoft Exchange. Of course there are variations on these themes but these are the four basic approaches that any cc:Mail customer can take.

For several years Lotus has espoused customer-controlled migration where, in theory, customers could mix and match Lotus messaging products and migrate from cc:Mail to Notes and Domino at their own pace. Unfortunately, the often complex reality of coexistence and the process or migration, along with the attendant costs, were enough to keep cc:Mail customers using cc:Mail. In 1998 Lotus customers will see this situation change due to tighter integration of Lotus messaging products and the ability to leverage Internet standards-based messaging technologies for migration. Lotus cc:Mail customers can take four basic approaches:

Summary

While we can foresee a time when cc:Mail may no longer be, that time is not yet and cc:Mail remains a viable solution for most existing customers for at least the next 2 years. At the same time, Lotus will continue to sell cc:Mail into vertical markets and in geographical areas where the cc:Mail technology remains appropriate and is able to meet customer requirements. There are new products, migration tools, and services from Lotus and its Business Partners that will not only expand customer choice but that will help to remove risk, through tighter integration of Lotus messaging products, Internet standards-based messaging technologies, and consulting services that represent field-tested expertise and proven best practices. In 1998 and beyond Lotus cc:Mail customers will be able to leverage existing infrastructure and software investments while moving ahead technologically.