While making it easier to collaborate, the scope of the this sort of product becomes its greatest weakness. The strengths I've described above easily empower end-users. Where the category breaks down is once those empowered end-users want more.

Once a basic solution is in place, end-users often start asking for more, features like robust, programmable workflow, archiving policies, scan paper capture, deeper version controls, and data manipulation.

And this is where things get difficult, because functionality to cover the entire lifecycle of a document falls under the realm of document management and often isn't doable in a collaboration environment.

Of course, given enough time and money -- and the mere matter of programming -- you could force-fit these products to do whatever your users want. But it'll be painful and very, very costly. In the end you'll probably find yourself wondering "Was it really worth it?"

That's because you'll realize that what's needed is a blending of the ease of use, start quick nature of document collaboration with the rich functionality of document management to grow with the demands of end-users. In effect, you need actual document management, not document collaboration.

Most document collaboration vendors take the plug-in approach for overcoming the document management weaknesses in their core products. Rather than building out the core product and turning it into a document management solution, collaboration vendors provide plug-ins or connectors into existing document management products.

Transitioning from Domino.doc
This is what Domino.doc customers are facing now. Domino.doc was a document management solution. Rather than offer a single Domino-based document management solution going into the future, Lotus is offering Domino collaboration solutions that will connect to external document management systems.

Lotus customers now have the ability to add document management to their Lotus Quickr environments by purchasing licenses to IBM FileNet or IBM Content Manager, Collaboration Edition. Which brings us back to how to migrate Domino.doc.

Domino.doc customers will start hearing (if you haven't already) about "The Deal": Swap a Lotus Document Manager license for a Lotus Quickr license (assuming maintenance is up to date), plus add a no-charge license for a FileNet or Content Manager Collaboration Edition license.

If you're leveraging Domino.doc advanced document management features, then Lotus Quickr will not be enough. On the surface, this deal looks fantastic; exchange your Domino.doc for the Web-based Quickr and FileNet, a richer, deeper document management product.

Unfortunately, neither FileNet nor Content Manager runs on Lotus Domino, they need IBM DB2 and IBM WebSphere. And there's the rub.

The hidden cost of migration
With the economy expected to start recovering sometime soon but still limping along, this "no-charge license swap" offer is extremely interesting, and certainly attractive -- at least on the surface.