IBM said Thursday that its Lotus Notes licenses were up five million to 145 million, "including purchases by many industry leaders exchanging Microsoft licenses for Lotus collaboration software."

It cited Minolta, Toshiba, Bank of New York Mellon, Banco do Brazil, Hitachi, Belgium's Ministry of Finance and Air France.

Blue said it added 12,000 new organizations in the last 15 months and that half the Global 100 now use Notes and Domino.

It claims the shift from pre-web proprietary technology is underway and won't turn back.

Even Microsoft, it said, "is trying to wrap itself in the open standards flag we've been flying for years."

Citing Dataquest, it gave Notes a 40% market share to Exchange's 48% and claims accounts Microsoft announced would migrate to Exchange "are now stalling or abandoning those plans," evidently to stick with an upgraded Notes, a cheaper alternative.

It cites one case where it managed to cut a company's operational messaging costs by 23% over 12 months and save it a projected $27 million using Lotus Symphony instead of Office.

Love to know the backstories.