Finally, a migration is very disruptive for end users, because they're forced to change the way they work. The culture and how they work with others using Lotus Notes are wiped out. So expect to incur large retraining costs and lost productivity as people and groups figure out the new approach.

David: Before we talk about your solution, can you say a few words about Mainsoft? How did Mainsoft get into the SharePoint/Lotus interoperability space?

Philippe: Mainsoft has been in the interoperability space since 1993, enabling independent software vendors to deploy more than $1 billion in Windows software annually on UNIX, Linux, or both operating systems.

Since 2003, we've invested $15 million into building interoperability software that enables .NET applications to run locally on Java EE platforms, such as Lotus Notes, WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere Portal, Lotus Expeditor, and Tomcat.

With the explosive growth of SharePoint, IBM customers and sales reps asked Mainsoft to extend our expertise in Microsoft/Java interoperability to include SharePoint. We launched Mainsoft SharePoint Federator for WebSphere Portal in November 2007, when IBM signed on to resell our software directly to customers.

Since then, we've expanded SharePoint integration capabilities to include Lotus Notes and Sametime.

David: So your solution is coexistence. What are the advantages of a Notes/SharePoint coexistence strategy?

Philippe: A coexistence strategy between Lotus Notes and SharePoint eliminates the steep costs and risks inherent in a migration strategy, and it eliminates the inefficiencies and frustrations of doing nothing.

David: Have you done any market research on this whole problem? Anything you want to share?

Philippe: I can point you to two public studies. In a June poll of LotusUserGroup.org members, 79% of respondents said that SharePoint content integration with Lotus Notes is a top priority, very important, or important. Only seven percent said ability to access SharePoint content from Notes is irrelevant to their organization.

Ferris Research reported early this year that "approximately one in eight Notes/Domino users plans to migrate to Exchange...[only to] find that the effort of the migration is too great. For the last five years, Notes/Domino customers commonly anticipate migrating to Exchange but fail to follow through with their plans."

David: Now let's get more technical. Help us understand what sort of problems IBM customers can solve using Mainsoft SharePoint Integrator for Lotus Notes?

Philippe: Mainsoft's integration software and solutions for Lotus Notes and SharePoint solves multiple use cases.

First, end users can access SharePoint document libraries within the context of their current work. From a sidebar in Notes, they can navigate their document libraries, drag-and-drop documents between SharePoint and Notes email and calendar applications, and modify documents within a document library using check-in and check-out. In other words, they get the same access to SharePoint document libraries from Notes as they get when they access SharePoint directly using Web Services.