Jon Pyke CIMtrek
Jon Pyke, founder and CEO of CIMtrek

Legacy-to-cloud migration firm CIMtrek says that although it offers software that helps firms migrate from IBM Lotus Notes to the cloud, IBM shouldn’t take it personally. Indeed, it’s possible to migrate customers from on-premise Lotus Notes installations to run on IBM’s SmartCloud.

"The CIMTrek product set was created to help organisations modernise their legacy applications and smooth the migration to new platforms including the cloud," CIMtrek founder and CEO Jon Pyke told CBR.

So why should IBM be interested in partnering or working with CIMtrek?

"CIMtrek gives IBM Domino/Notes users a SmartCloud option that delivers more than MS365 or Google Apps, enhancing IBM’s offerings for its existing customer base," Pyke said. "CIMtrek offers an outstanding way for IBM to retain the substantial number of customers looking to migrate off of IBM Domino/Notes by delivering a way for clients to move to IBM’s SmartCloud and reap the benefits associated with cloud application management in a very short space of time."

Far from being a threat to IBM’s Notes business, Pyke argued that CIMtrek offers IBM the opportunity to protect more of its Lotus Notes revenue stream.

"[CIMtrek] maximises the value of existing investments in Domino applications through carrying the business logic and forms, as well as the intellectual property held within the existing data through into the web environment," he said. "It provides an accelerator to modernising existing Notes based applications, and facilitates moves to an open, Java-based platform that is well positioned to deal with Eclipse/Rational and to create an easier route for integration across both SmartCloud functions and external, third party cloud functions."

This month CIMtrek announced a partnership with hosting provider OrangeScape, a platform as a service provider. The firms said the partnership strengthens OrangeScape’s Lotus Notes migration solution by reducing the time, cost and effort for customers planning to move from Lotus Notes to a cloud infrastructure.