Microsoft Delivers New Migration and Coexistence Tools For Lotus Notes Applications

REDMOND, Wash., Sept. 23, 2002 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the immediate availability of the new Microsoft®
Application Analyzer for Lotus Notes to help customers plan a migration and coexistence strategy for moving Lotus Notes applications to the Microsoft .NET Enterprise Server platform. Microsoft also is endorsing CASAHL Technology Inc.’s ecKnowledge version 7.5 as the preferred solution for connecting Lotus Notes and Domino applications and migrating application data to the Microsoft platform. Through their relationship, Microsoft and CASAHL are enabling customers and business partners to evaluate their Lotus application infrastructure, understand their business needs, and determine how applications can be transferred with minimal disruption of service to users.

Expanded availability of the Application Analyzer tool combined with the power of CASAHL’s ecKnowledge product present new business opportunities for Microsoft service partners, for Lotus partners with their existing customers migrating to Exchange and other Microsoft servers, and for ISVs to build coexistence and migration capabilities into their offerings using these new tools. Nearly 50 Microsoft Certified Partners are already offering services to help customers use these new tools to migrate their Lotus applications. Consisting of two components, the Data Collector and the Data Processor, the Application Analyzer is now more readily available to customers and Microsoft Certified Partners. Microsoft now offers customers direct access to the Data Collector and easier access to a growing number of partners offering migration analysis services with the Data Processor.

“While customers have received value from Notes over the years, they are increasingly finding that using a monolithic product to address a wide range of business needs does not provide the performance, scalability and manageability an enterprise requires,”
said Paul Flessner, senior vice president of .NET Enterprise Servers at Microsoft.
“We recognize the significant investment those customers have made in Notes-based applications and are pleased to provide this comprehensive solution to assist them in migrating that investment to a Microsoft environment.”

The combined solution of the Microsoft Application Analyzer and CASAHL ecKnowledge helps provide customers with the resources necessary to evaluate and analyze their current Notes application infrastructure, make a determination about the ongoing cost and business value of those existing applications, connect Lotus and Microsoft environments and, ultimately, fully migrate the pertinent applications to the Microsoft platform. These tools help as customers migrating from Notes and Domino to the Microsoft platform determine whether any of their existing Notes applications no longer meet current business requirements or simply are not being used.

“We have many customers that use Lotus Notes, or that have a heterogeneous environment with both Notes and Microsoft Exchange, trying to decide what the effort would be to migrate to Exchange,”
said Don Seiford, national director of Collaborative Messaging at Siemens Business Services Inc.
“By using the Application Analyzer as well as several other tools and processes we developed at Siemens, we can accurately aggregate, analyze and report data so that the customer can make an informed decision.”

ecKnowledge, a comprehensive migration and coexistence tool from CASAHL Technology, replaces the Microsoft Application Connector for Lotus Notes. ecKnowledge replicates and synchronizes the contents of Notes applications with various Microsoft products, including Exchange Server, the Outlook®
messaging and collaboration client and SQL Server (TM) , and enables customers to access data from a variety of applications without having to undergo a complex integration project. In addition, it can help connect new Microsoft applications with other line-of-business applications such as enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management and data warehousing, allowing the migrated Lotus Notes and Domino applications to continue to utilize mission-critical data from other enterprise systems.

“Many enterprises, including many of our 1,000-plus customers, utilize Microsoft Office and server products in a heterogeneous collaborative environment that includes Lotus Notes/Domino applications and other software applications,”
said Harry Wong, CEO of CASAHL Technology.
“CASAHL ecKnowledge provides the technology that enables our customers and partners to develop collaborative solutions that are fully integrated with their enterprise applications.”

“In our experience working with customers, we’ve found that typically, no more than 10 percent of the total universe of Notes-based applications are really delivering the significant business value customers perceive they are getting from Notes. Those applications were typically not ‘out of the box’ functionality provided by Notes, but rather the result of significant custom development,”
said Andy Sakalian, president of Version3 Inc., a Microsoft Certified Partner.
“We’re really excited that Microsoft has worked with CASAHL to update its Notes application analysis tools, as we’re able to show these customers a better solution for their business requirements by developing applications based on the Microsoft platform.”

The release of the new Microsoft Application Analyzer for Lotus Notes and the recommendation of CASAHL’s ecKnowledge for data replication are part of a larger push to migrate Lotus Notes applications and to retrain Lotus Notes developers on .NET-based development. Microsoft has been working and will continue to work closely with customers moving from Lotus Notes to develop additional solutions to further ease migration from Lotus Notes and Domino to the Microsoft .NET Enterprise Server platform.

Availability and Pricing

Microsoft customers and industry partners can download the Data Collector today at no cost from http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/techinfo/interop/notes.asp (connect-time fees may apply). The Data Processor is available to Microsoft Certified Partners via the MVP eStore for $1 plus shipping and handling. For a complete listing of Microsoft Certified Partners that have the new Application Analyzer, see http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/partners/migration_l.asp . Partners can purchase ecKnowledge directly from CASAHL Technology.

About Exchange Server

Exchange is the leader in messaging and collaboration, with more than 110 million licenses sold. Exchange is the easy-to-manage messaging and collaboration platform that provides e-mail, calendaring, instant messaging, conferencing and XML Web services for custom collaborative applications that bring people and information together. Exchange delivers enhanced reliability, scalability, manageability and performance with a lower total cost of ownership.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software — any time, any place and on any device.

Microsoft and Outlook are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.

The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

For more information on Exchange Server:

http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/

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