Remember the Oklahoma State University / Notes migration story?

July 10 2004

Back in April, I wrote about the plight of the Oklahoma State University use of Lotus Notes.  The saga of a questionable Notes to Exchange migration had been unfolding at OKState for several months.  Many of us met Andrew Kelley at Lotusphere, an amazing guy who spent his own money to come to Lotusphere because of what he believed in.  And we followed the postings of "File Save" and others on LDD, that linked to a bulletin board on the OKstate.edu website where we could read all the discussion about the migration project.  The project leader, Brandon LaBonte, was personally responding to queries about migration and what the reasons were for the move.  I think some might describe his responses to "why are we migrating" questions as a bit defensive; no surprise if you go back to my earlier blog entry (as well as jonvon's) that describe how it unfolded.
I hadn't heard much in the last few months, until a Lotus BP pinged me this evening to see if I had heard the news.  (Thanks, David!)  It seems that there's been a bit of a controversy going on at Oklahoma State University in the last few weeks.  According to this article on University Daily, two OKState staffers, Brandon LaBonte and Michael Hewett, were recently forced to resign after deploying copyrighted software from Texas Tech University at OKState without permission.  LaBonte, Hewett, and OKState CIO Gary Wiggins had all joined OKState en masse when Wiggins moved there from Texas Tech.  They were also the crew that pushed the Notes/Exchange migration.
In addition to LaBonte and Hewett's resignations, Oklahoma State University announced yesterday that CIO Gary Wiggins had resigned.  The press release notes one of Wiggins' key accomplishments:

"One of his greatest accomplishments was to negotiate the Microsoft campus agreement that has allowed all of our students to freely obtain various kinds of software for academic use," Morris said. "To date, more than 18,000 copies of software with a retail value of more than $8 million are being used by our students."
Yes, his impressive adoption of Microsoft technologies has clearly resulted in significant benefit to Oklahoma State. (Aside: Who pays $444 for a copy of Microsoft Office?)

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  In the news  Add/View Comments [22]

Post a Comment

  1. 1  Duffbert  | 7/10/2004 10:14:12 PM

    There is this overwhelming tendancy to buy their way into a company or installation by offering software for free or next-to-nothing. Either the software is worth $444 or it's free.

    Aren't there laws that way you can't sell things for less than the cost it took to make them, all for the sole purpose of driving competition out of business???

  1. 2  Nathan T. Freeman  | 7/11/2004 2:45:42 AM

    Tom, you're thinking about "dumping" laws that are part of anti-trust law. However, they don't apply to your ability to GIVE away the thing, only to underprice it *for the specific and sole purpose of driving your competition out of business.* That was actually one of the major arguments Netscape made against MS in the DoJ hearings. If you think about it, it makes TONS of sense for MS to give away copies of Office to universities. The fact that IBM doesn't give away Notes/Domino licenses to students is nothing short of retarded (unless they've changed this policy and I'm simply not aware of that.) When someone graduates after four years of using a given platform, what do you think their preffered platform is going to be at their first job? What kind of opinions might they already have about the software they used? There's zero marginal cost to giving licenses up to students of all ages, as Bill Gates commented to Newsweek about 10 years ago. The only reason for a software company NOT to do it is if they think the software genuinely sucks and they won't be able to trick people into buying it later.

  1. 3  Axel  | 7/11/2004 3:42:01 AM

    Hi,

    are people who want to migrate to Microsoft do have a more criminal mindset?

    Has deploying copyrighted software to another university anything to do with seeing Microsoft products as a more productive plattform for their organization than Lotus Domino?

    Are there any statistics about IT people ending in jail? Are there more MS people in the jail?

    And if so, why?

    Are there genetic/early childhood causes?

    Or do people get evil, when they occupy with MS technology?

    kind regards Axel

  1. 4  Gaston www.dblookup.info | 7/11/2004 4:47:59 AM

    Hi Ed,

    I remember that there was a kind of agreement between IBM and the French gouvernment, that allowed the French universities to use Lotus software. I don't know the exact terms of the deal, but I don't remember any big deploiement either.

    Anyway, I think it is not sufficient enough to give away license, you have to provide consulting services as well. The decision maker in university are more willing to put money on open source technologies, and their technical team are already trained to deploy them. It may be ok for Office product, but not for emailing, or collaboration platform.

    Gaston

  1. 5  peter www.peterdehaas.com | 7/11/2004 4:52:46 AM

    "Yes, his impressive adoption of Microsoft technologies has clearly resulted in significant benefit to Oklahoma State. (Aside: Who pays $444 for a copy of Microsoft Office?)"

    Retail value means what you pay if you'd buy it in a Store.

    Maybe he is fired for the Notes migration and associated costs, who can tell ?

  1. 6  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 7/11/2004 8:07:36 AM

    I was blogging this mainly to draw attention to the situation with the administration at OKState -- where they imported their top IT talent from another organization, that management team quickly imposed their own view of the world on the University (rather than understanding what the landscape was), and was perhaps too quick/eager to do so, resulting in at least one problem.

    Giving away software DOES have incremental costs, Nathan. It's one thing for a tool that is used by a single user, but something like Lotus Notes typically needs support and back-end services. Without that, giving away the client create negative perceptions (and Lotus has done it, which is a long story for another day).

    I know what "retail price" means -- I'm just saying that I've never seen a copy of MS Office at $444. A full license at CompUSA right now is $399, but the "student and teacher edition", which is presumably what would apply here, is only $149).

  1. 7  David Bailey www.cacteamsolutions.com | 7/11/2004 10:37:15 AM

    I read this differently. The other MS software was included with the purchase of MS Infrastructure software -- Exchange, MS-SQL, Windows Server, etc. If it were "given" there would be no strings attached.

  1. 8  Craig M.  | 7/11/2004 2:38:02 PM

    Sorry, but being the driving force in the mass adoption of Microsoft Software is about as impressive to me as "was voted by peers as largest consumer of donuts in the coffee club". It's an embarassing achievement at best.

  1. 9  Bill  | 7/11/2004 4:11:29 PM

    It seems unlikely that Ed would consider Microsoft licensing an impressive feat, no?

  1. 10  Chris Miller http://www.IdoNotes.com | 7/11/2004 10:30:42 PM

    Spending as much time in the academic world as first an admin , then a partner servicing them, I know the story on giving away the software and where it stands then and now.

  1. 11  Danny Lawrence  | 7/11/2004 11:21:15 PM

    "The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common, in stead of trying to change their vision of reality to fit the facts, they try to change the facts to fit their version of reality"

    Mr Wiggins and his crew should take that fact to heart.

    The interesting thing now is, what is going to happen to that Exchanged migration?

  1. 12  Nathan T. Freeman  | 7/12/2004 1:31:30 AM

    Ed, are you ever going to have cookies on this blog so it'll remember my comment details? Anyway, look, all I was trying to say was that, whatever the merits of Microsoft software, making Office the tool-of-choice for an entire university of students by making it free to them is a very smart strategy. And if, in trying to make Notes the tool of choice, IBM has failed in the past without offering consulting services (which make the cost greater than zero to IBM,) then that should be a wakeup call to Lotus that Notes and Domino should be easier to deploy and manage. Mind you, I think it's great, but it rarely has the "fire and forget" simplicity of a corresponding Microsoft product. For instance, it took until D6 to get a switch that said "prevent this server from being an open relay" and just look at chris-linfoot.net for some ideas on how complex it is to combat spam on the Domino platform. Yes, it does it brilliant, and you CAN do everything you need. But you need an entire daily website devoted to it to keep track of everything involved.

    The important point I've been trying to make is that I think Lotus ignores the academic community, largely to its detriment. I've been saying this for the last 5 years, and no one's listened so far, so I didn't really expect a resounding applause this time either. ;)

  1. 13  Christopher Byrne http://www.controlscaddy.com/ | 7/12/2004 9:53:13 AM

    Timing is everything. I have been working on a blog entry about the OK State situation with my friend File Save from a business controls perspective and this will be a nice closure to the story!

    Amen to Nathan: IBM and Lotus have done nothing to improve their lot in the academic market (and even with margins being mimimal it is still inexcuseable) as I watched IBM/Lotus not even get a seat at the table when the University of Georgia was purchasing 36,000+ seats worth of a new messaging systems, even though a large percentage of these seats would have been free under the IBM Scholars Program.

    I have been preaching the same line and it has consistently been dismissed by IBM.

  1. 14  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 7/12/2004 10:15:16 AM

    I knew it sounded familiar, but I don't see that I ever received a reply to that note.

  1. 15   http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/nd6forum.nsf/DateAllThreadedweb/268d57e7e2ad1bb485256ecf005217b8?OpenDocument | 7/12/2004 12:47:58 PM

    I figured that audience might notice ;)

  1. 16  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 7/12/2004 12:48:25 PM

    updated template is ready to go, I think it should be this week.

  1. 17  jonvon  | 7/12/2004 1:16:51 PM

    i never imagined this story would end up getting so much play on the net. some interesting developments there...

  1. 18  Ben Poole http://www.benpoole.com | 7/12/2004 4:07:55 PM

    Interesting developments indeed, but as far as I can tell, they're still full steam ahead with the move to Exchange... bar a few Domino apps for which they have no migration plan (funnily enough).

  1. 19  The Thinking Admin  | 7/13/2004 2:26:46 AM

    Ed, your comment from 7/11 is dead on target. I have friends at the University in question that tell me the true downfall of these managers (software theft allegations not withstanding) may be that the new management embarked on a simultaneous SAN, file & print, and email rip and replace on an extremely tight schedule without ever taking the time to develop a business case for it. As you can see from the the links you posted - it is now they who have been ripped and replaced!

    Ben - hold on to your hat, I hear the entire migration had ground to a dead halt while an emergency evaluation of the situation is done.

    By the way, I believe the guy who works there, Andrew, spells his last name with only one e. :+)

  1. 20  Christopher Byrne http://www.controlscaddy.com/ | 7/13/2004 9:58:25 AM

    and I hope IBM takes advantage of it. I will forward you an email from an OSU official later that you may find illuminating...

  1. 21  Tim Rattray  | 8/12/2005 12:50:05 PM

    I am a Lotus BP, but I can't help thinking that this overview sounds defensive...

    { Link }

    And read the FAQ!

    Tim