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AMP dumps Lotus Notes in move to cloud email

AMP dumps Lotus Notes in move to cloud email

Looks for productivity benefits through tighter tool integration

Financial services giant AMP this afternoon revealed that it would ditch its Lotus Notes/Domino installation as part of a shift to Microsoft's Outlook/Exchange platform hosted by CSC Australia.

The shift to a hosted platform was revealed in a CSC statement touting the strength of its Australia-based cloud computing offering. But responding to questions by email, AMP IT director of service management, Sharmini Sivathas, said it wasn't a simple Exchange to hosted Exchange migration.

“AMP currently uses Lotus Notes managed by CSC,” she said.

The move adds AMP's name to a long and growing list of large Australian organisations which have over the past several years revealed decisions to dump IBM-owned Notes for Microsoft's platform – and sometimes Google's Gmail.

In February Qantas confirmed it would migrate off Notes. The month after it Monash University announced it was phasing out Notes and switching to Gmail. And in June the newly formed Department of Human Services confirmed plans to end its long-running relationship with the troubled IBM platform.

There are some IBM customers in Australia who continue to be happy with Notes - such as Australian youth charity BoysTown, which recently decided against Exchange or Gmail and instead upgraded its Notes installation – but in general there have been no large new Australian Notes customers reported for some time.

Sivathas said the cloud email migration came about because AMP had been undertaking a review of its email, productivity and IT collaboration tools.

“Recent changes in the enterprise mail market, have created opportunities both in terms of cost and functionality which aligns to AMP’s collaboration strategy,” she said. “AMP has evaluated and piloted a number of cloud and on-premise email offerings, and found that CSC’s Microsoft offering best suits AMP’s needs.

The executive said AMP saw productivity benefits in being able to provide its staff with an email system that was “more tightly integrated with other desktop productivity tools”. In addition, financial benefits were a “key consideration”. The financial services giant has more than 3,500 employees and also works with more than 2,000 financial planners in Australia and New Zealand.

CSC was picked for the rollout, Sivathas said, because it had been AMP's infrastructure partner for over 10 years, and was familiar with AMP’s environment and the financial services giant's specific needs.

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Tags productivityprivate cloudMicrosoft exchangeSharepointLotus Notesampcsc

More about AMPCSC AustraliaGoogleIBM AustraliaIBM AustraliaMicrosoftMonash UniversityMonash UniversityQantas

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