Ed Brill

Reseller News: IBM challenges Microsoft for the SME desktop

Good coverage of recent Lotus brand news...

For almost any category of business software -- from word processing to spreadsheets, presentations to communication and collaboration -- Microsoft is the de facto vendor of choice. Alternatives do exist, but who wants to be the first one to rock the boat? Microsoft has grown so cocky about its position that it even bragged that it would soon steal five million users away from IBM's Lotus Notes, a competitor to its own Outlook and Exchange.

That's not the kind of threat that IBM takes lying down. On the contrary; it's digging in. Big Blue says that it is redoubling its efforts to win customers away from Microsoft, beginning with a big win in Asia and new partnerships with major Linux vendors.

The news itself isn't new but good to see coverage in a New Zealand publication.

Link: Reseller News: IBM challenges Microsoft for the SME desktop >

Upcoming on my September calendar...

After a refreshingly normal-paced summer, September looks to be quite a busy month.  Here's what's on my calendar at the moment:

• September 9 -- an executive breakfast in Philadelphia; invitation only.  I had hoped to meet with the South Jersey Lotus user group during that trip, but their meeting schedule and mine didn't match up.  Another time.
• September 17/18 -- UK Lotus User Group.  I'll be keynoting the UKLUG event, and visiting London-area customers on the day prior as well as possibly the afternoon of the 18th.  I will be in Europe almost the whole week of 15 September (calendar week 38), so if you've got an opportunity for me to add a customer meeting on the 16th or 19th (depending on time/location), let me know.
• September 22-24 -- Lotus Leadership Alliance (LoLA); invitation only.  This is an interesting new event on the Lotus brand calendar, bringing together the Lotus Global Customer Partnership Council, Lotus Enterprise Customer Support Council, and a selected group of worldwide Lotus customers and prospects.  I've been hesitant to write about it because of the invitation-only nature of the event -- no, I can't get your company on the invite list -- but the reality is, it's going to be an interesting event and I'm sure to be blogging some of the discussion.  My purpose in attending?  I'm leading a variation of the "selling Notes/Domino internally" and competitive presentations from over the last few years....but with a twist.  The format will be more roundtable than presentation, and the participants will include key Lotus brand executives from marketing and other areas.

There's probably another customer meeting or two that I've forgotten... looking forward to seeing so many of you at these various events next month!

Not sure who is having more fun

(Finishing up a long weekend...back Tuesday)

DominoPower: Why Ron Herardian thinks Notes and Domino are obsolete

I really shouldn't be giving Ron another 15 minutes of annual fame for asserting contrarian positions, but since this has already had a rather lengthy discussion over at Mr. Ben Poole's site today, I want to sum up a few key points.  From Ron's editorial:

In 1995, I declared LAN-based email to be a dead technology, for which I was vilified by countless Lotus cc:Mail employees, customers, and colleagues. Of course I was exactly right. People simply refused to face reality and, rather than be inconvenienced by having to learn a new skill or technology, they preferred to believe in the tooth fairy, at least until reality caught up with them.

Now, I am saying that distributed client/server systems will be radically consolidated into ISP and ISP-like systems and that new economies of scale will define, and are already defining, the future of messaging and collaboration systems.

What a brilliant prediction, especially since both Lotus and Microsoft had, by 1995, already announced that LAN-based e-mail wasn't the future.  I fail to see the parallel in today's market, though.

Now Ron's firm has been mentioned recently here because they announced a Notes to Sun e-mail migration tool.  Thus it is no surprise to see this in his editorial, though the lack of disclosure is disappointing:

The unexpected 800 pound gorilla of the SaaS new world order may be Sun Microsystems. Sun has more active mailboxes on their platform today than IBM Lotus, Microsoft, and Novell combined. Their products are two orders of magnitude more scalable than Exchange and Domino with active systems of over 10 million users.

Now let me see... hmmm, yep, Super 8 Motels have more rooms in the US than Hyatt.  I know where I'd rather stay, though, and I would venture to guess that Hyatt doesn't see themselves as being in the same market.  Sun may have a lot of ISP or text messaging mailboxes -- I don't have any facts from Sun that prove this fact -- but I don't see how that matters to me in the corporate e-mail market.  It's simply not the same technology.

At any rate, here's Ron's money shot:

In the future, if nothing else changes, I personally believe IBM Lotus Notes and Domino will be irrelevant at best, assuming that the products continue to exist. In my view, the most likely scenario is that IBM Lotus will merely try to hang on to its shrinking customer base through a never ending stream of minor point releases that change virtually nothing but that may obscure for a time the fact that the solution is no longer economically viable.

In the last six years, IBM has released four major releases of Notes/Domino, and another one is coming soon.  IBM has already announced a major release 12-18 months after this one.  I don't see the 850 developers working in our engineering team working on a "stream of minor point releases that change virtually nothing".  I'm not sure what world Ron's in, but it doesn't map to mine.

By the way, I think the fact that Ron's firm issued a press release to draw attention to this editorial speaks volumes more than anything else I could say.

Updated 15 Aug @ 10:22 PM -- I posted a comment on the LNotes-L Yahoo group after being drawn there through the comments on BenPoole's site.  I think Ron Herardian's true nature as a business person comes out in the comments he has posted in reply to me and others there.  Instead of acknowledging his lack of citation in his editorial, explaining the non-disclosure of his business relationship with Sun, or joining the discussions here or on Ben's site, he instead writes things like:
"Maybe next time you'll think before you 'talk' but I doubt it. Some people never learn. You sure didn't last time we had this conversation."
"Stay in your shell, turtle. The world outside is big and bad. "
"your comments transport the discussion into a bizarre parallel universe where the economic model underlying the Notes and Domino technology remains valid: but its' NOT, Game Over Man."

Link: DominoPower: Why Ron Herardian thinks Notes and Domino are obsolete >

eWeek: Google Gmail, Google Apps Are Not Enterprise Ready

Earlier this week, thousands of Google's gmail users experienced a prolonged outage.  My personal gmail account (which I use in part to keep up with the industry/technology trends) was down for over an hour.  As I watched Twitter tweets, I could see literally thousands in the public stream experiencing similar downtime.

eWeek's Clint Boulton wrote an excellent story about this outage.  He contacted several industry analysts to get their take on the outage, and whether it was an indicator in terms of Google's enterprise readiness.  Dana Gardner points out one irony:

Gardner explained that, for whatever reason, users of free Web-based apps have higher expectations than those paying higher prices for internal commercial systems that may suffer the same or worse performance. What a crazy, twisted world we live in.

I think that expectation is higher for gMail because Google itself has evangelized how reliable and efficient cloud-based services can and should be.  I also think that the fact that Google offers an enterprise version of the service, at US$50 / user / year, sets expectations that it is enterprise-ready...even if it is still called "beta" after more than four years.  So, maybe it isn't.  As Burton's Guy Creese says in the article:

Creese echoed Gardner's statements about the ubiquitous nature of Gmail, noting that many SAAS (software-as-a-service) solutions are used in small groups or departments to do Web conferencing or other tasks. If those targeted solutions go down, the affected departments can't do their jobs, but the rest of the business continues running.

The issue with Gmail or Google Apps, he noted, is that the business grinds to a halt when they go down.

Creese then put the nail in the coffin for Google Apps and Gmail in the enterprise: "At this point, it is risky for enterprises to move over to Gmail and Google Apps, given this past behavior."

However, he also said we can't slap the unreliability tag on SAAS because of Google, noting that companies such as Salesforce.com have a better uptime track record than Google.

Most of the analysts, and the reporter, try to indicate that enterprise systems go down.  Missing from the article is any indication of the reliability of the Lotus Domino clustering model.  I can't remember the last time I had an e-mail outage...years.  I talk to customers all the time who report 100% availability with their premises-based solutions.

I think this whole episode was a timely reality check.  There are other issues with the SaaS model for something like e-mail.  Identity services need to mature, too.  I learned today that there is an "ed.brill.ibm@gmail.com" user on gMail...it's not me.  Google won't help me get rid of them.

Impersonation

If you believe someone has created a Gmail address in an attempt to impersonate your identity, you may wish to file a report with the Internet Crime Complaint Center (www.ic3.gov), a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National White Collar Crime Center.

In addition, we recommend contacting your state's Office of Consumer Protection.

Gmail is unable to participate in mediations involving third parties regarding impersonation. To read the Gmail Terms of Use, please visit: http://gmail.google.com/gmail/help/terms_of_use.html.

For some reason, this sent a real chill down my spine.  especially when I checked out ic3.gov and learned how onerous the process is there.  

Link: eWeek: Google Gmail, Google Apps Are Not Enterprise Ready >

So, what does "IBM" mean to you as a Lotus customer?

In yesterday's post, "IBM doesn't suck at Twitter", I turned the discussion from an observation about IBM on Twitter into something bigger, about IBM in the overall market.  The question posited is, especially to the vast majority of edbrill.com readers, who affiliate with the Lotus software brand, what does IBM mean to you?  What do you think IBM means to those unaffiliated with the Lotus brand, or outside the IT industry altogether?  How do you think this is different from geography to geography?

The subject of the posting referred to Twitter, though, so I think a lot of non-Twitter-affiliated readers saw that headline on PlanetLotus and moved on.  Today, I'm asking one more time, just because this subject is critical to me at the moment.  These are all questions that I've been thinking a lot about lately.  I want to know whether it even matters that there is an IBM software group as far as the perceptions in the market, or whether the five brands make more sense.  I want to know (confirm, really) if there is a natural resistance, 13 years after acquisition, for "Lotus" customers to see themselves as IBM customers.  I am curious what the broader IBM means to you, and whether you think it should mean something different.

I visited our corporate HQ in Armonk on Tuesday, as well as the software division's HQ in Somers.  In six hours, I learned more about the overall IBM vision and strategy than I have in years of toiling along every day.  But in my role as a sales leader for a single IBM product, I just am not sure whether any of that matters in my day job.  Heck, there are parts of IBM that dislike my product, and still other parts that actively work to displace it.  What does that say about IBM as a company (and oh, it's by no means unique to Lotus Notes -- there's Oracle/SQL implementation and management vs. DB2, for example, and hundreds of others).  On the other hand, one of IBM's huge advantages in the market is that we are the only company that can provide an "end-to-end" solution -- hardware, software, services, business consulting, outsourcing, training, even financing (IBM Global Finance is actually quite a decent-sized business).  No other IT vendor can do all that, period.  So if that's the value proposition, then where do we deviate from that into "this is my product and the only one I care about" thinking?  Do CIOs share the same thoughts as the average IT individual contributor?

I realize this post asks a lot of questions, and that several of you chose to answer some of them on yesterday's posting.  I appreciate that contribution.  But I'm keeping the topic going because, well, I think the future of the company can be strongly impacted by having this kind of discussion with customers.  IBM customers...whatever that term means!

IBM doesn’t suck at Twitter

I was surprised to see IBM make this list:

I write this post to simply call attention to brands and companies that are totally missing the boat and not listening on twitter where millions of conversations are happening everyday. Do companies think about or even care what people are saying about them, their products or services on twitter? If they don't, then they are about to be rudely awakened soon enough.

The author, Rodney Rumford, put IBM on his list -- based on the activity (or lack thereof) of the @IBM ID.  I think that, given IBM's size and diversity, that's an unreasonable way to judge whether IBM "gets" Twitter.  As Adam Christensen, from IBM Corporate Communications, explains in a comment:

IBM is nothing more than a collection of a gazillion individual IBMers. Really smart ones for the most part, I think. And thousands of those folks are on Twitter. So rather than have a centralized - yet generic - IBM account, we've opted for a decentralized approach and let those many individuals be the IBM face to the Twitter world.

And Adam's exactly right -- there are hundreds (if not thousands) of us on Twitter, and many of us do actively watch the public twitter stream to see what is being said about our individual products.  And we have official brand IDs tweeting away about individual products, brands, or areas.

This identifies, though, a much broader issue, one that I have been thinking about a lot lately.

What does "IBM" stand for, anyway?  Ask people outside the industry, and the image is still of blue-suited sales guys selling big mainframe computers.  I don't wish to perpetuate that, especially as it is so wrong today.  But... but.... what is IBM?  Why is it that so many of you who read this blog identify yourselves as "Lotus customers", rather than "IBM software" or "IBM" customers?  Do Microsoft customers identify as "Exchange customers" or "SharePoint customers"?  No, of course not.  So what is unique about IBM, that to most IBM customers, IBM doesn't necessarily represent something you affiliate with?  What would you affiliate with?

Can we get to 300?

The community-organized Yellow Day earlier this week drew my attention to the volume of participation we have online in the Lotus community.  

As Nathan reported, YellowDay was a success, with 109 blog posts during the day and 50% more PlanetLotus clickthroughs than the prior Monday.  For something put together by a few people, purely online, with very short notice, it was great to see the participation.

One thing I noticed is that the blog counter in the upper left on PlanetLotus.org is now showing 274.  There's been a slight increase in the number of Lotus-related blogs in the last few months, but I wonder if there could be even more.  



It has been a while since the community encouraged additional voices.  A lot of you have asked me and others, is there room for yet another blog about Lotus software?  And the answer is, definitively, yes.  We still have many more developers blogging versus admins; actual techie topics have dropped off quite a bit.  I'd love to see someone blog the chronology of their upgrade to Notes/Domino 8.x, or a deployment of Lotus Connections.  A few new focused blogs have cropped up, on topics like Lotus Foundations; I'm sure there could be more on things like Xpages in Domino 8.5 (what do you think, Sam?).  Don't assume you have nothing new to add...like any community or group, there's turnover as people's jobs or interests change.  Set yourself a goal, a topic area or areas, and blog away!

If you start a new blog, be sure to add yourself on PlanetLotus.  I'm sure you'll be welcomed warmly.

New Lotus Foundations video

This is a straightforward new flash video that talks about the main benefits of Lotus Foundations.  Nice thing is that, while it is more "marketing" than technical, it's the kind of quick-hit that you can distribute to anyone in your organization and have them learn more about Foundations.

   

The Foundations team is adding more and more content to their product pages.  Check out www.lotusfoundations.com for more >

Domino Utility Server. React

As part of a planning effort, the Domino team is having an interesting discussion about the role of Domino Utility Server in the overall Domino market mix.  



What do you see as the value of Domino Utility Server today?  What changes, if any, would you want to see made to Domino Utility Server in the future?

Removed e-mail addresses from visibility in comment postings

Based on the "miss Juliet" spam from over the weekend, I've banished your e-mail addresses from the publicly-visible comments on edbrill.com.  Even though they were obfuscated by the Dominoblog template (by using a bit of javascript code), somehow some spammer decided to view source and manually harvest these addresses.

You will still need a valid e-mail address and to use your full name to make a comment posting on edbrill.com.  This policy has, in my opinion, kept the overall tone of discourse here more professional and open.

More Lepo-palooza photos posted

Alan has also posted a batch of photos from his farewell gathering last Wednesday...click through for the full set!



(My set is here)

I saw your profile today

New spammer approach:

How are you today .my name is miss Juliet from Africa  i saw your profile today(www.edbrill.com) and become very interested .so please it is urgent that you have to contact me immediately through above email id so that i will tell you my mind and give you my picture.

Congratulations to all the edbrill.com readers who interested miss Juliet today.

Couple of new articles covering Lotus iNotes on the iPhone

...which, as part of Domino 8.0.2, is on track to ship later this month.

Computerworld Australia, "Lotus iNotes coming to the iPhone 3G":

IBM's Lotus Domino Web Access software, also known as IBM Lotus iNotes, will bring your Lotus e-mail, calendar and contact details to the Apple iPhone 3G. ...

The Web page touting Lotus functionality on the iPhone states that Lotus Notes data "will combine with the flexibility and connectivity of the Apple iPhone. To be built on the time tested IBM Lotus Domino Web Access infrastructure, users will be able to quickly access e-mail, calendars, and contacts through the rich Apple iPhone user experience".

AppleInsider, "IBM expands Lotus Notes Mac support to iPhone (screenshots)":

IBM has unveiled a sneak peek of its new Lotus iNotes, a web app client for its Lotus Domino messaging server to bring email, calendar, and contacts to iPhone. The move fulfills rumors of customized iPhone support for Lotus Notes and demonstrates IBM's evolving interest in Apple within the enterprise. ...

An initial study at IBM Research, which started in October of 2007, found that 86% of those participating wanted to keep their MacBook Pro laptops over returning back to IBM ThinkPads running Windows. "It has been easier learning the Mac than learning Vista," one participant reported. IBM has since expanded its Mac pilot program.

a pilot which one of my staff will be joining in the next few weeks...  The AppleInsider article takes a weird detour through Lotus history from 20 years ago, but it's good to get coverage of this in the Apple-focused press.  The comments thread even settles down after a bit.  

Check 'em both out, and while the beta program is shutting down, you can see iNotes Ultralite in action today on the Lotus Greenhouse.

IBM Embedded Software Gives AT&T and Sprint Customers Access to Lotus E-mail

IBM announced expansion of the Lotus Notes Traveler carrier network yesterday...

AT&T and Sprint have certified for use by their customers, IBM's Lotus Notes Traveler software which enables wireless replication of Lotus Notes e-mail, calendaring, and personal information management (PIM) data on select smartphones.

IBM's Lotus Notes Traveler software can be loaded with all of the set up information pre-configured. This means it is now "wireless replication-ready" as soon as the customer starts using his new device.  Standard data usage charges apply.

The devices from AT&T that have this capability are the AT&T 8525, AT&T Tilt, Moto Q Global, Palm Treo 750, PantechDuo (Mustang C810), Samsung Blackjack, and Samsung Blackjack II (i617). The devices from Sprint to include it are the Touch by HTC™, Samsung ACETM, Palm® Treo™ 700wx and Palm® Treo™ 800w. ...

Additionally, Sprint customers can now get mobile access to their corporate email accounts on select non-PDA Sprint phones such as the new Samsung InstinctTM.  Easy access to IBM Lotus Notes and other corporate email accounts is now available through Sprint Mobile Email Work, as an extension of Sprint Mobile Email's existing access to personal email accounts from other companies. For details visit www.sprint.com/mobileemail.

In another significant development, IBM and Research in Motion (RIM) took mobile collaboration to a new level by launching the full line of Lotus collaboration software along with IBM Cognos business intelligence software on  BlackBerry® handsets through a seamless interface, for providing a desktop-like experience on a handheld device for the first time.

Link: IBM Embedded Software Gives AT&T and Sprint Customers Access to Lotus E-mail >