If you're a large organization with the right skills and infrastructure, you may feel like you hit the IT lottery. For small to mid-size organizations who don't have a small army of IT professionals, this could be a major headache.

While the license swap won't cost you anything, the actual migration could end up costing you two to 4x (or higher) the amount of the original license cost. What follows are some of the hidden costs.

Potentially adding another Infrastructure
DB2, WebSphere and additional server hardware will be required for the move. If you don't have the licenses, these will be additional hard costs.

J2EE skills
If J2EE is new to you, expect to either (a) spend money on training your existing IT group on DB2, WebSphere, FileNet and general J2EE admin and development skills, (b) hire new internal resources with these skills, but unfamiliar with your organization, or (c) find a business partner to handle this.

Be aware that J2EE services typically bill out higher than Domino skills, and J2EE projects tend to require more time (i.e., billable hours) than Domino-based projects.

Your Domino.doc customizations
Every organization is different; practically everyone customizes and personalizes technology products to suit and fit how you do things within your organizations.

While everyone needs invoicing, how many different invoice templates have you seen? The more customizations you had in Domino.doc, the more work you'll have to put into customizing the backend FileNet.

Security and privileges
Domino does a great job handling security across the platform for all Domino-based applications. In J2EE, this is not the case, and depending on your integration requirements, additional add-on products may be required to suit your user base.

Data and other migrations
You're moving from Domino to J2EE. You're moving file attachments, workflows, meta data, the security model, taxonomy or cabinet/folder structure, audit history, etc.

Without the proper tools, things could get interesting -- and a lot could go wrong.

Domino-based Domino.doc alternatives
There are some good reasons for taking the deal, including gaining free access to some excellent software, getting the opportunity to work with new platforms, and new languages.

But if you don't have the time, don't want to budget for the additional cost, or simply want to stay with a solid, Domino-only solution, there are options. That'll be the subject of next week's article.

Scott Tomlinson has made marketing+IT software his passion since 1997, working with IBM, Oracle and holding the senior marketing role at DLI.tools since 2005. Contact Scott or learn more about Docova at http://www.docova.com or scott_tomlinson@dlitools.com.