ESCAPE VELOCITY

1 - I would expect they would have some documentation that says who they sold their products to, especially at those levels and in those quantities. That being said, it's hard to know who has the licensing because it was included in another bundle and who is really using it. Why is picking up the phone such a loathsome act?

2 - It's also reasonable to expect many/most (all?) of the 100 largest companies on the planet to have pockets of different IT infrastructure as a result of "undigested" merger & acquisition activity. You ask the right division or subsidiary, you can get any answer you want.

3 - Speaking of "talking out of your ass", you certainly are. Not that your core point isn't correct, but you sound like an idiot if you think you can just call the top 100 companies and ask. First off, who do you ask? These are big companies and are very adverse to getting sucked into publicity wars, so they almost certainly won't answer. Secondly, these companies are BIG, and tend to absorb other companies on a regular basis. I have customer who are huge Microsoft Exchange customers and despise IBM, yet they have whole multi-thousand person subsidiaries using Lotus Notes, which they may or may not be aware of. In those large divisions, Lotus Notes is their primary messaging and calendaring platform. So, if you simply asked someone from those divisions, they would identify Lotus Notes instead of Exchange. I wouldn't be surprised if 50% of the Fortune 100 use both Notes and Exchange as their "primary messaging and calendaring platform" somewhere.

As a related aside, did you know that Genii Software products are used by at least 70% of the Fortune 10. Yup, 7 out of 10 of the largest companies in the world, and I don't need to ask, because I have sold them licenses personally. So what? Does that imply that they ONLY use Genii Software products? But I could easily say that they use CoexLinks as their primary e-mail coexistence solution and Midas is their primary rich text manipulation solution and CoexEdit is their primary Notes/web coexistence solution, and I could even be right and it might not matter. That is why your core point is right, but it is lost by acting as if the question is whether they asked or not.

4 - @3 - Ben, c'mon... you or I might not be able to drop dime to every CIO of a Fortune 100, but the MSFT Corporate Vice President of Exchange sure as hell can. It's not like the question is hard. "Are you using Exchange as your primary messaging system? kthx."

But, fine... maybe calling them isn't the best way to get accurate information. Whatever method you choose, a claim of 81% market share in the top enterprises in the world certainly demands something better than an estimate. Microsoft (and indeed, every major software vendor) really needs to KNOW this stuff if they want to have any credibility in their claims. That's one of the reasons I can't believe anyone ever parrots this crap.

5 - I recently did an analysis of the top 100 Companies in the world and their use of email and collaborative applications.

The market breakdown that I came up with was:

Lotus Notes/Domino 27%
Microsoft Exchange 20%
Both Notes & Exchange 53%


Even allowing for some errors in my counting methodology, I don't know how Microsoft could justify this 81% figure.

6 - @3 - Ummm... you could probably just ask whoever picks up the phone what client they are using for email!

7 - Forget calling them.

Email them.

Ask them a question that requires an answer.

Then parse the headers in their reply.

Look at the X-Mailer: line.

*KNOW* what mail system they are using

8 - @6 hehe I do that now everytime I go to a new office building, I find the largest client and meet the secretary and ask her if she uses Lotus Notes as a client down the hall needs help(all true).
But @7 is right, you could do that as well, but so what?

The issue is really growing usage, by either new apps or product lines like Connections or growing more awareness about Lotus.

9 - @3, really, is it that hard? If you've sold something to 7 out of 10 of the largest companies in the world, you know, that it is easier than your comment suggests. IT shops in those companies typically recognize the email platform that the senior brass are using as "the platform" and discount the rest as part of the M&A process... This is a statistic that could be easily obtained, I would suggest that the fact that many use both, is the very angle leveraged in the article to enhance the look of the MS position...

10 - Seems to me that it should be easier for a Microsoft VP to get that info from the Microsoft sales or licensing organization than get the info from their customers.

Might be harder to get SMB numbers but numbers for Fortune 100 companies should sort pretty high in the spreadsheet, no?