Two long-term Notes customers announced a shift away to something else over the past week. Coca-Cola Bottling Company United (one of 200 Coca-Cola bottlers worldwide) migrated 1,100 users to Microsoft Office 365, and PwC announced a new global alliance with Google and the migration of 45,000 PwC employees from Lotus Notes to Gmail and other Google apps. The PwC alliance is the bigger news of the two:
Google and PwC have brokered a global agreement with the intent of developing new services to help clients “lean into the massive disruption transforming all industries”.
It will focus on three areas: helping companies better collaborate internally with staff and externally with customers and suppliers – in effect, reselling and installing Google’s Apps for Work suite of products, which includes Gmail, Hangouts, Docs, Sheets, Admin and Vault.
The pair also want to create new products and services, and split the spoils derived from intellectual capital, product sales and consulting work accordingly.
The third area involves high-level strategy work and research, helping businesses capitalise on technological change rather than just react to it.
Interesting times.
Categories: Tools & Technologies
Michael Sampson 
Losing the original Notes customer is not a good thing, and PwC will learn how much they will lose by switching as Google is not Enterprise ready (I suffer with it every day).
I can only hope PwC know what they are getting themselves into. But perhaps it is just what Google needs to help them make Apps enterprise ready.
Google will need to ensure that their security model is up to scratch. There must be a lot of extremely confidential information stored by PwC.
Most of my Notes apps are not office docs but workflow apps. What to do with them? I assume PwC must have them too.
They will struggle with those.