I don't know about you, but I live in my email. I am constantly looking back and referencing old emails, some from yesterday, some from last week, and often some from last year. Think about this scenario:

• Email is migrated from Notes to Outlook, inconveniencing users and forcing them to get used to a new system
• Each user logs into Outlook for the first time
• Old messages from the previous system aren't there
• Not a single user complains to the migration team
• Those missing emails aren't discovered for four to five years

It's just not plausible. Users bitch. As certain as it is that technology breaks, it's even more certain that users bitch. And when a migration goes bad, users are going to bitch even more. No one, anywhere, enjoys migrations and you're always going to have a cranky user population. Migrating email, which most people live in, is going to cause even more anxiety.

And you're telling me that in as hyper a place as the White House, migrating an email system in the middle of a war buildup, no one's going to complain when all their messages go missing?

Not likely. I just don't buy it.

Now, here's another interesting factor. Notes is known for two key features, two key functions it does better than any other system on the market: replication and security. Every single Domino server and every single Notes client comes with some of the most sophisticated replication technology on the planet.

Notes databases are designed, out of the box, to duplicate themselves across servers and even from the server down to the individual user. It's as central to the DNA of the Lotus environment as photo ops are for politicians. In essence, Notes, by definition, is constantly backing itself up, over and over, across the entire network.

And that, again, leaves us with more questions than answers:

Question: Did the White House make regular backups?

Question: What happened to those backups?

Question: What happened to the Domino servers and their hard drives?

Question: What happened to all the Notes replications?

Question: How is it possible so many messages got lost and no one complained during the migration?

Another possibility is that the email messages got lost and, as is the case in many companies when a network breaks, employees are told to just suck it up and move on. Theoretically, this could have happened back in 2002 or 2003 in the White House. But that brings us to another question.

Question: If a server blew up and all the past messages were lost, and everybody at the White House knew about it and had to deal with it, how come we haven't heard any "war stories" about the day the email died?

Where did all the email go?

Migrating during wartime
On March 1, 2002, Operation Anaconda began and the U.S. invaded Afganistan. Also during 2002, a former FBI agent, Robert Hanssen was sentenced for selling secrets to Moscow, Jimmy Carter went to Cuba to visit with Fidel Castro, a car bomb exploded in Karachi, Pakistan in front of the U.S. Consolate, Worldcom and Enron were big economic news, the Washington D.C. Beltway Sniper was on the prowl, and the mid-term elections for Congress took place.