Lotus Development is preparing to give IT executives the ultimate incentive to move to R5 - by ending support for the 4.6 platforms of Notes and Domino.
"The current plan is to end support in January 2002," says Ken Bisconti, the former vice president of marketing for messaging and collaboration at Lotus, who last week was named vice president of the Lotus Worldwide Business Partner organisation. "We normally support a release nine to 12 months after the next upgrade." The R5 code was released in March of 1999. "We extended 4.6 based on Y2K," Bisconti says.
Development of the 4.6 code base has stopped with Version 4.6.7g, according to Ed Brill, senior product marketing manager for Notes clients. "We are only doing Y2K fixes and those run out in two weeks."
At Lotusphere, the company indicated that just over 50 per cent of customers have moved to R5. That still leaves a sizable number that will have to make the switch in the next 11 months. While a percentage of the users are already in the planning or deployment stages, many are also wrestling with upgrades to Windows 2000.
The combination is likely to be an expensive and time-consuming task.
"The combination means that 2002 is coming like a freight train," says Jon Barton, an executive consultant with Xerox Connect. "I think some customers will be strapped with two major upgrades." But Barton says Lotus must strike a balance between wearing out customers with upgrades and keeping products competitive. The next version of Notes and Domino, known as Rnext, is likely to be delivered sometime in 2002.
"We've been anticipating this cut-off and we have been testing R5," says Michelle Monaghan, Notes system administrator for AllTell Information Services, a US-based telecom company. She plans to begin rolling out 4000 seats of R5 before the end of the month.
