Know the Difference Between Lotus Notes and Office 365

Inquiring the difference between Lotus Notes and Office 365 doesn’t make sense if the seeker is unaware about both applications. In this era, it is difficult to find a person who doesn’t use an email account by his own. Even though the user is not knowing the inner functions or advanced facilities of each application, he might be using it. That is while considering the comparison of Lotus Notes vs Office 365 the reader must have a good idea of both technologies individually. On reading further, this article will help you decide the advantages of Office 365 over Lotus Notes.

Know More About IBM Lotus Notes

Lotus Notes email client is developed by IBM. And its server is known as Domino. Different email applications developed by various firms use a different format for storing its data. The IBM Lotus Notes email files are stored in .nsf extension. Lotus Notes is a very advanced application in the sense that, it is having many operational capabilities. That is, it is much more than just an email client. Because Lotus Notes provides facilities like to-do lists, journals, templates, contacts in address books, bookmarks, tasks, team-rooms, discussion forum, instant messages, sharing of files, blogs, micro-blogging, user-directories etc. So, one can not say IBM Notes as just an email client, but it is a complete enterprise solution for organizational email activities. Before considering the difference between Lotus Notes and Office 365 we should consider some of the important features of IBM Notes such as:

• Emailing and quick-messaging
• Lotus Notes is able to access local and server-based data and applications.
• Has To-do-lists and calendars to manage work assignments and operations.
• It also provides Web browsing.

What is Microsoft Office 365?

Let’s explore a bit about what is Microsoft Office 365 before discussing IBM Notes vs Office 365.

MS Office 365 is a cloud-based collaboration and connectivity suite including Exchange Online as the emailing and calendaring server environment. That is everything accessed in Office 365 account is saved on Microsoft cloud. It is a subscription plan which provides various services and applications like, Office Online, SharePoint Online, Lync Online, Office Web-Apps, desktop applications, Skype for Business etc. It provides several plans to its subscribers which they can subscribe on the monthly or yearly basis. A user pays only for the apps or services that he or she uses. The users can also cancel the subscription of any service or app at any point of time. Other important facts about O365 account are:

• Office Online is the free desktop or mobile version of Microsoft Office.
• The OneDrive is for online storage drive for storing data.
• Skype for Business (Lync Online) is for instant messaging and online meetings.
• SharePoint Online can be used for web content creation as well as collaboration.

Difference between Lotus Notes and Office 365

The following section will help you decide the winner of Office 365 vs Lotus Notes. When an organization considers the selection of a right email environment for its working, the scrutiny of each email clients is necessary. This is the only way for the users to know the divergence and advantages of each application. Considering Lotus Notes and Office 365, we need to evaluate both to know which features are more suitable for the use. Now let us look at some of the main difference between Lotus Notes and Office 365. You can also find some the advantages of Office 365 over Lotus Notes in this section.

1. Exchange Online vs Lotus Notes Mailbox Quota: Lotus Notes mailboxes do not have any mailbox size limitation. While Office 365 (Exchange Online) has 50 GB mailbox size restriction for it.
2. Managing Content: Microsoft SharePoint Online help to set-up and manage all the online communities, wikis and blogs, etc. easily. But the Lotus Notes doesn’t have such an option.
3. IMAP Option: MS Office 365 does not support IMAP protocol in the implementation. So users have to use Active Sync protocol instead of it if he/she need to use any software other than Outlook.
4. IBM Notes vs Office 365 Room & Resource Reservations: In case of IBM Notes, each department is having separate Room-and-Resource-Reservations database. But in Office 365 room and resource is having its own separate mailbox or calendar.
5. Collaborative Environment: In Office 365, users can cooperate with the team-mates, as well as their customers using the documents that are up to date always and accessible from any place. But this facility is not available in Notes.
6. Convenient Mobility: In Office 365, the user can work from any place virtually using the applications on PC systems, Mac machines, and even mobile devices. But Lotus Notes does not provide mobility.
7. Easy Communication: While comparing Lotus Notes vs Office 365 based on communication, the O365 has greater advantages. Skype for Business (a.k.a Lync Online) helps in better communications in Microsoft Office 365.

Conclusion

This article is meant to provide a basic information about the difference between Lotus Notes and Office 365. It shed light on two different email environments, it’s working, features etc. This article is aimed at removing the confusion between Microsoft Office 365 and IBM Lotus Notes. Comparing MS Office 365 vs Lotus Notes helps us to understand what are the advantages of Office 365 over Lotus Notes.