Lotus is retiring cc:Mail, its early LAN messaging platform. The company will stop selling cc:Mail on the last day of October 2000; online technical support will continue for 1 year, ending on October 31, 2001. Lotus' cc:Mail installed base was 15 million last year and has been contracting steadily over the past 3 years. The move shows Lotus' greater commitment to its high-end client/server messaging platforms, Notes and Domino. Most people consider version R5, released in April, to be the main competitor for Microsoft's messaging platform—Exchange Server on the back end and Outlook on the front. Lotus emphasizes Domino's integrated collaborative power with add-ons for instant meetings and instant messaging. Lotus' installed base for Notes and Domino is approximately 56 million seats. Ed Brill, senior manager for the Domino product marketing team, said that Lotus will finish maintenance releases of cc:Mail over the next year. He said that virtually all Lotus' customers wanted to go with an Internet standard messaging platform or a client/server platform. "We've taken file-sharing based messaging as far as it will go. We've provided many ways to migrate to Notes, Domino," said Brill. Lotus has had a trade-up or migration program in place for its cc:Mail customers to move them to Notes and Domino for the past 18 months. For more details, see Lotus' support schedule for cc:Mail.
