And expensive that move is. The fact that Linux is free is pretty much irrelevant. The license cost of the Microsoft equivalent, say Windows XP, is really only a small part of the whole cost of the desktop. For starters, the project to move people to a Linux desktop from a Windows one is going to be hugely expensive. Think about your last major Windows upgrade project, and then add to that all the new stuff that you have to do: locate, evaluate, and install new desktop software for Linux to replace the Windows programs. How will solve the problems of programs with no Linux equivalent, like Notes?

Think about the even larger cost of converting all your custom applications to work on Linux. Work out how you will justify to your company spending all that money on those applications merely to make the same function work on another sort of computer, with no added value in the application itself for all that work. And then add to that the cost of training all your staff to use Linux and Linux applications instead of Windows and Windows applications, and all the costs of retraining your support staff. Finally add to that the lost productivity while people are less familiar with their computer environment than they are now. And work out how long it will be before they're back up to speed.

Then look at the cost of running that environment. I doubt that you'll have saved much. You will have saved some Microsoft license fees for sure, but that's all. I doubt that they made up more than ten percent of the whole. Okay, a ten percent savings is worthwhile, but what did you spend to get that ten percent savings? How many years of that savings did it cost to make it?

Lotus knows this. They know that large corporations have better things to do with their money than spend it on such a conversion. They must be balancing this argument against the more emotional ones in favor of doing the Linux client. And so far, they are of the opinion that their money is best spent elsewhere. A chunk of that reasoning is competitive edge. The competition in the mind of the market between Notes and Exchange is finely balanced. We Notes professionals know that Notes is a better email system, and maybe a majority of the market knows that too, but it's not so much better that there will be many rip and replace migrations from one to the other going on, and most of those will be as a result of mergers and acquisitions.

But Lotus won't want anyone to steal a march on them, putting the Lotus market share at risk. The competition in collaborative and Web applications between Domino and Microsoft is less finely balanced, but Lotus knows that they can't let their guard slip. So, for the sake of IBM's shareholders and Lotus's employees' jobs, they put their investment cash where it's most likely to pay back for IBM. And that, in their opinion, isn't in doing a Linux client.