Bill Gates at SharePoint Conference 2006 -- FUD from the top

May 16 2006

So while we're here in Karlsruhe, Microsoft has their own conference in progress, covering SharePoint.  Bill Gates spoke yesterday, covering a number of interesting topics.  The speech transcript has been posted, including the Q&A (where he was joined by Kurt DelBene).  Some very interesting thoughts, especially in the Q&A (emphasis mine):

Question: Speaking of that, what is your current view about Lotus Notes and the current Workplace initiatives that IBM is coming out with?

BILL GATES: Okay. Well, I'm not exactly unbiased on this subject. (Laughter.)

... IBM, other than the work that Ray Ozzie did when he was at Iris connected with Lotus, their center of gravity has very much been more in terms of IT or corporate development. And there's nothing wrong with that, those are important constituencies, we have to understand their needs, but particularly as the original team at Iris disappeared, they've really gone back to not so much thinking about productivity software, they haven't done anything new there. Workplace, I don't know of any substantial use of Workplace that's out there, and that's before the Office 2007 system comes up.

We have done something where we've said that as you think about Notes and you compare that to Microsoft, don't just think about Exchange. Exchange has a release -- I think of it as Exchange 12, but I guess it's Exchange 2007 that's timed at the same time as Office 2007, very powerful release. In fact, we had a conference focused on that as well, and it connects up to these other things.

So for messaging that is the best system, but we never turned Exchange into a collaboration platform. We had some shared folder things and stuff like that. SharePoint is clearly our collaboration platform, and it's more mainstream because it's just taking all the standards of the Web and the browser access and just building on top of those.

And so we've been very lucky that as IBM has had a discontinuity, that they're saying, well, your Notes applications aren't going to continue to run, we want you to move to a new environment, which is some WebSphere type thing, people have had to step back and say, okay, it's not the best messaging system, Exchange has been totally focused on those scenarios, and it's not the best collaboration platform because it's sort of stuck as a pretty good messaging platform and a pretty good collaboration platform.

And so we have had a lot of very strong migration. Getting corporations to do it was hard because they'll have a lot of Notes applications and we have partners that have learned how to help with the migration or show them how to let some of those stay in place and still have the integration that those people want.
So on the same day when Mike Rhodin said, "If Notes applications don´t run in Hannover, it´s a bug", Bill Gates said that IBM is "saying Notes applications aren't going to continue to run".  

I know that some accuse me of being stuck on the same old same old "Lotus is great, Microsoft sucks" point, but when you see a quote like that, it's impossible not to get a bit defensive.  Many many people will believe what Gates said because he is Gates.  There's no changing that in the computer industry.  Unfortunately.  But let's be clear: Lotus Notes "Hannover" signals the next 15 years of Notes innovation, on an open platform,  with embedded productivity tools and complete support for all existing Notes applications.

At least Mr. Gates threw out a couple of softballs, too, including the admission that Exchange was never a collaboration platform (despite how many tries?).  Then there was this:
You're absolutely right that in terms of programming things, backing things up, it would be much better if we could get things into a single structure, and so the Exchange and SQL group have been working on that, and down further in the roadmap Exchange will be built entirely on SQL.
It's like déjà vu all over again, because what Gates says here is almost exactly what Microsoft said about SQL as the unified store back in 2000.  The more things change...

Ed Brill Karlsruhe, Deutschland Category:  Microsoft  Add/View Comments [39]

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  1. 1  Ben Rose http://www.lnug.org.uk | 5/16/2006 2:29:06 AM

    I never realised before how much of a liar Bill Gates could be.

    All my admiration popped like a balloon.

  1. 2  Philip Storry http://www.not-so-rapid.com | 5/16/2006 3:42:57 AM

    Looks like poor old Bill's briefings are a little out of date.

    This probably explains all of the current problems at Microsoft, though.

    They're not just late shipping their products, but also late shipping their briefings internally...

    Maybe they're all stuck in an Exchange mail queue somewhere?

    ;-)

  1. 3  Chris Linfoot http://chris-linfoot.com | 5/16/2006 4:32:51 AM

    If a lie repeated a thousand times becomes the truth, how much more convincing would the truth repeated a thousand time be in comparison?

    There's some outstanding grass roots support out there for IBM/Lotus. Isn't it time to embrace it and start getting that message (the truth) out to that wider audience which is the target of all of the FUD?

    { Link }

  1. 4  Keith Brooks www.keithbrooks.com | 5/16/2006 6:14:54 AM

    Bill Gates, 1999 or current? Isn't this similar to what was said before exchange 2000 came out and was decreed their collaboration platform? And that Notes 5 left older versions forced to migrate when we changed the ODS?

    Maybe as chairman you just don't get all the updates from yor SWAT team that you used to, so you revert back to older info. ;-)

  1. 5  Keith Brooks www.keithbrooks.com | 5/16/2006 6:16:35 AM

    Forgot to add, and now you have to buy yet another piece of MS pizza pie to still get what comes in the box(cd sleeve?) with Domino.

  1. 6  Roberto Boccadoro  | 5/16/2006 7:06:06 AM

    Yawn.... when can we expect anything new from mr. Gates ? Not only their products are the same since stone age or about, but also whatever he says...

    RoB

  1. 7  Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 5/16/2006 8:25:22 AM

    Exchange on SQL, eh? Well, hardly surprising. They need to do something drastic to the Exchange object store to fix the problems that they obviously can't fix with the current architecture (and aren't resolved in Exchange 12 / 2007). Hang on, won't Exchange on SQL mean another migration? Nice.

    My big concern is not Gates' nose growing longer, but the fact that Microsoft have more market reach and a louder voice. So often they spout crap and it goes unchallenged (which is what Chris said). We're very serious about the productivity editors in Hannover and Workplace offering an alternative to Office... I hope Microsoft's arrogance makes them wake up to that fact too late - it will serve them right.

  1. 8  Karen  | 5/16/2006 9:28:19 AM

    The fact that MS products haven't changed since the stone age means everyone knows how to use them. They are used to the good, the bad, and the ugly. "Who Moved My Cheese" didn't make the best seller list for nothing, ey?

    As a corporation, we might be into innovation - on the plant floor. But not in our IT department where we just need to git 'er done, as they say. I think the message "innovation" falls on deaf ears outside of the choir we're all preaching to. At least in non-IT companies.

    I think IBM should market who's on Notes/Domino. Let the buzz around the office be "I heard company X is on Notes/Domino." Over and over... going through a bunch of companies. Then people can start to use that with the executive team.

    It seems silly that you have to talk like a ten year old "Well Bobby has one!", but that's what you hear... "Well at my OLD job we had Outlook and Exchange..". I'm telling you, the fact that a product hasn't changed is sometimes looked upon favorably, like it not.

    The message and products should be, "Look! Bobby's doing it." Insert cool company X for Bobby. And Bobby's someone we respect in our industry (target IT, manufacturing, etc. Who's using it in each area?) I don't have names, but I know there are a LOT of companies. Who are they?

    I'll say it again - the CEO, CFO, and VP of HR of my company do not care that MS hasn't put out a newer version of MS product X. So when Gates promises... they're like, "Oh, okay, someday... whenever. No rush."

    .02, off the top...

  1. 9  david racicot  | 5/16/2006 9:51:22 AM

    Would be nice if some MEDIA ANALYSTS weighed in on his comments wouldn't it??????????

  1. 10  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 5/16/2006 10:08:36 AM

    @9 see

    { Link } See page 3.

  1. 11  Charles Robinson  | 5/16/2006 10:12:45 AM

    I agree with Gates' assessment:

    "... their center of gravity has very much been more in terms of IT or corporate development. And there's nothing wrong with that, those are important constituencies, we have to understand their needs, ..."

    I agree with that because the Notes environment and Domino functionality seems to be about giving IT what it needs, the general end user experience be damned. This makes sense for the era in which Notes and Domino were developed, but end users are much more sophisticated now and need a more usable product.

    But then Bill totally blows it:

    "... but particularly as the original team at Iris disappeared, they've really gone back to not so much thinking about productivity software, they haven't done anything new there."

    My take away from that is Gates is saying IBM isn't being innovative in collaboration. Hannover is a lot of little somethings that look like they will add up to a sophisticated product line. This is the very definition of innovation. I think IBM finally got it and is focusing on the general end user experience for Hannover, which also addresses the first criticism, that of IBM's IT-heavy focus.

    For all my complaining about IBM and Lotus I have to concede that as far as I can tell they're getting more right than Microsoft is. That's not to say I'm sold on the vision, but at least it's interesting to watch it unfold. The one who needs to step up the plate with something compelling is Microsoft.

  1. 12  Keith Brooks www.keithbrooks.com | 5/16/2006 10:33:51 AM

    What's interesting is how Bill says it will all come into sharepoint, eventually, right now there are 4 seperate workflow pieces of software.

    Bill says

    "office 2007 will plug a hole by having "office groove" and Outlook handle the offline capabilities."

    So what good is a collaborative server that you must stay connected to while working?

  1. 13  Wayne Weinheimer  | 5/16/2006 11:13:54 AM

    @10 - ... "and complete support for all exiting Notes applications,"

    Exiting? Your typo or theirs? Or do you mean all Notes applications that are being replaced? :-)

  1. 14  Rob Ingram  | 5/16/2006 11:21:21 AM

    What makes Bill and Ray's 'vision' so incomplete to me is that Microsoft's is still proposing many varied points of user interface at the desktop for their users to understand and self integrate? Groove, Outlook, Excel, Infopath, Access, etc.....

    Hannover will deliver a single desktop access point, just as the original Notes did in Rays original vision!

  1. 15  Tony S Lee  | 5/16/2006 12:05:21 PM

    @9 Good link Ed, one of the better articles to tell both sides of a story. And to be honest the MS story looks MUCH messier.

  1. 16  Mike Brown  | 5/16/2006 12:10:31 PM

    The bit I liked was:

    "Getting corporations to do it [migrate] was hard because they'll have a lot of Notes applications and we have partners that have learned how to help with the migration or show them how to let some of those stay in place and still have the integration that those people want".

    I meand "show them how to let some of those stay in place"? That's a migration? I love to hear some of those kind of conversations! Just imagine:

    "Our highly trained MS-certified consultants have examined your infrastructure, and we have concluded that the best things to do with those Notes applications is to leave them the **** alone. We believe they're far too business critical and/or complicated for us to try and port them into our own s**t. We recommend you migrate your email only to MS solutions and then pay double licence fees so you can still use Notes too."

    Nothing like a little ROI, is there?

    Cheers,

    - Mike

  1. 17  Bill Geimer  | 5/16/2006 12:44:58 PM

    Well, if Billy Gates says it, it must be tr... FUD.

  1. 18  Charles Robinson  | 5/16/2006 3:52:01 PM

    MS has done some interesting stuff with their workflow technologies: { Link } The devil, as they say, is in the details.

  1. 19  Pat Lavan  | 5/16/2006 4:39:35 PM

    Despite Bill Gates's current assertion that Exchange was never turned into a collaboration platform, the truth is that Exchange Server WAS marketed as such. For Microsoft to now deny otherwise just smacks of doublespeak.

    Ed, maybe it's time to resurrect the Exchange/Outlook roadmap "graveyard" slide. Just as a gentle reminder :-)

  1. 20  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 5/16/2006 6:44:19 PM

    @13 I think Network World fixed the typo..."existing" not "exiting". Whoa. :-)

    @19 you're right....that was one of my first reactions -- Exchange 5.5, Exchange 2000 were both clearly marketed as Notes-killing collab platforms.

  1. 21  Bill Geimer  | 5/17/2006 12:09:59 AM

    Perhaps Mike Rhodin should send Bill Gates Nomad, or make sure he gets one of the first copies of "Hannover" with a Notes 1 database running on it, next to a composite application pulling in Microsoft Blogs selecting only anti-IBM bunk.

  1. 22  Dave http://www.agilevisiongroup.com | 5/17/2006 9:39:47 AM

    I'm not sure how much the truth actually matters in business anymore...

    I had a meeting with a client the other day, and pointed out all the problems with Microsoft vs. the benefits of IBM technologies.

    Their response totally surprised me:

    They stated that they didn't care if MS products were no good -- because they believed that MS would correct their problems over time, whereas IBM would not. They believe that it is better to go with a lousy product now, with the hopes that is will be improved in the future than with an IBM product for which they do not have any confidence that the product will be improved over time.

    So all the details of the FUD discussions become moot points. If people trust MS more than IBM, technical details will not change their mind.

  1. 23  Jason Smith  | 5/17/2006 9:45:56 AM

    Whatever the marketing schmaltz, the reality is no one was seriously doing collab on Exchange. And despite a good run by Notes, it's become pretty clear now that the messaging and collaboration platforms really should be separate; they are just different beasts. I can't speak for smaller companies (where Notes still has a strong value story), but US enterprises are massively moving away from Notes becauses it's just not a manageable platform, particularly for email. Hannover won't change anything for messaging I predict, but it will be interesting to see how it affects the collaborative app space. If IBM can get the manageability story right they stand a chance at staving off the defections to MS for collab apps that is happening for messaging.

  1. 24  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 5/17/2006 10:49:51 AM

    @23 Jason - could you clarify "massively moving away"? Notes revenue has been up double digits five of the last six quarters. While there is migration discussion in the market, even Gartner says "few have actually made the move".

    I don't buy the idea of separating mail from collaboration. If that were the case, everyone would have gone with a POP3 server years ago. It didn't/hasn't happened. Why not? Because integrated capabilities are the only way to get to "contextual collaboration" and all the innovation that is coming.

  1. 25  Patrix  | 5/17/2006 10:54:44 AM

    @23: Nonesense. Notes/Domino is very managable and reliable for big corps. Especially compared to Exchange. I work at a 100 000+ employees corp. We have large Exchange and Domino environments. Exchange drops out now and then. Sometimes for hours. Domino has not experienced any major outage for the past 3 years. As for the "massive moveaway" Notes sales is increasing so I don't know where you got that info. Care to give some reference?

  1. 26  David DeWell http://workdomosphere.blogspot.com | 5/17/2006 12:25:34 PM

    I personally am tired of the bickering and arguements back and forth. Sure, I am a Notes guy but this is getting damned childish.

    Sharepoint actually looks interesting, still pales in comparison to Domino but is looking better. Workplace is still far and away.... well, far and away. I either missed the boat of the point of Workplace or it is still out there not close to what it needs to be to sell.

  1. 27  Charles Robinson  | 5/17/2006 1:34:02 PM

    @24 - "integrated capabilities are the only way to get to 'contextual collaboration' and all the innovation that is coming"

    You're climbing a slippery slope here, Ed. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe one of the keys to IBM's contextual collaboration is Sametime. The presence and awareness built into the Notes client is nice, but it's severely limited and you need to install a separate Sametime client to get the full features. I don't call that very integrated.

    I disagree with trying to have one platform do everything because there is no way for it to do it all well, and "good enough" doesn't hold up. I would like to see Domino more modular, but still able to operate as the central brokering service for Notes clients to get to the various services offered by other best of breed applications. That's pie-in-the-sky, I know, but I'm in a dreaming mood this week.

  1. 28  Warren Postma  | 5/17/2006 3:03:03 PM

    Just thought I'd throw my $0.02 in here.

    I really hope "Hannover" is great, because I can't stand Lotus Notes 6.5 as an email client. I hope that in addition to all that shiny new stuff, that the glitches and stupidity in Lotus Notes 6.4 that makes your average lotus notes user just trying to read and reply to email go slowly crazy, might be fixed. And have mercy on the IT grunts who have to support this stuff.

    As part of a corporate acquisition/reorganization, we migrated a group of users onto Lotus Notes email, who were formerly using a plain vanilla POP3/IMAP email system, and we migrated right the heck back off Lotus Notes, in less than a year, because of user out-cry. Our users were all traumatized, and all of them hate Lotus Notes with a passion.

    So, I hope that the new Lotus Notes 7 sucks a whole lot less.

    To be fair, I hate Outlook, and Exchange, even more. But as nice as the collaborative platform technology in notes is, using it as an email client is an exercise in sheer agony. Look at Mozilla Thunderbird. NICE. Then look at Notes again. NOT NICE.

    Best of luck, to everyone working on Hannover.

    Warren

  1. 29  Steven Joseph  | 5/17/2006 4:10:57 PM

    Comments like @28 just baffle me beyond belief (and I could be considered biased) but how hard can it be to read and reply to an email message? (In spite of the fact the POP3/IMAP are not email clients so we can't really figure out what the issues could be...)

    Over my 20 year IT career I've used PROFS, VAX Mail, cc:Mail for DOS & Windows, Prodigy Mail for DOS, Pine, Notes 4.6x, 5.0x, 6.5x and 7.0, Outlook , GMail, HotMail, Yahoo Mail (the last 5 ALL on a daily basis) and I just can't see how hard it can be to us ANY of these mail packages nor can I see anything in them that would "traumatized" me such that I would "hate (any of them)with a passion". Guess I'll have to look at t-bird and see what I've been missing (Note: 817,0000 hits on Google for I hate Thunderbird. See I'm biased....)

    Is this a "move my cheese" thing? Do these folks hate anything differnet that comes there way?

    We have 9000 Notes users and no doubt, some hate Notes, and 3 refuse to use it, but I just don't get it. Ironically, the earlier Hannover shots we saw had me in more of a state of panic, but they've been "simplified" a bit recently such that they show basic day-to-day email features without all the fancy SOA/Eclipse/Activity Centric/"Buzz Word dejur" things it can do. It looks like a nice mail client.

  1. 30  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 5/17/2006 4:23:04 PM

    @26 - honestly, I agree with you. I'm getting tired of having to defend my product against such unethical behavior as this kind of smack talk, the "red bull" tools you've dissected, and all the other FUD. If we could get back to competing on our merits, I'd personally be happy. Remember that I considered dropping the "boss loves Microsoft" presentation from Lotusphere, but there was an outcry when I suggested that. I had a small audience for this topic here at DNUG today -- perhaps the Germans aren't distracted by all this hype?

  1. 31  David Bell  | 5/17/2006 4:34:12 PM

    @27 - Sametime 7.5 components will be providing the awareness/chat/etc capabilities in Hannover. That is integrated. And I believe the next releases of Notes/Domino are heading directly into that more modular architecture that you're talking about as they are re-tooled to perform in SOA's.

    @29 - couldn't agree more.

  1. 32  David Price www.kbnconsulting.com | 5/17/2006 6:33:30 PM

    @28 I have been doing messaging migrations to Lotus both as an corporate architect as well as a consultant for the past eight years or so. I was at a client today upgrading to ND7 on iSeries,. This company believes they will add $1.5 million to the bottom line this year and ongoing due to decreased time to market of new products. They plan to do this with Lotus Domino and companion products.

    This company was a migration from Exchange and the users hated Notes at first. The primary reason is that training and communication was skipped, over my repeated protests. Post migration the push-back was so strong that we were able to offer training. That was over three years ago and this company continues to invest in Lotus, upgrade and deploy new applications.

    Frankly I don't care enough about my email client to love or hate it, let alone be traumatized by it.

  1. 33  Keith Brooks www.keithbrooks.com | 5/17/2006 6:56:12 PM

    My Notes client looks fine on my smartphone :-)

    Ed knows I'm just being cheeky.

    As I said to someone today, my Notes client looks not that far removed from when I first got R2/3. In fact I have cd's from r3, r4, r5 maybe I will load them all to play with this idea.

    From a UI view, I use the bookmarks, not the workspace view anymore which DOES make life much easier. As Ed and others have posted, if the training is there, then the problems go away, well most of them.

  1. 34  Brian Vincent  | 5/18/2006 1:38:21 PM

    Perhaps Mr. Gates is getting his information (or lack there of) from the IBM/Lotus website.

    Type in Lotus Notes, Lotus Domino, or Lotus Websphere into Google. First link is an IBM page that appears to be a catchall for Lotus stuff. From here there are no direct links to the flagship products. You must click products by category or A - Z and perform a trial by error search for what you want. Using A-Z in the case of Lotus Domino will take you to a dozen “Domino” products without a product family page to guide you. If you take the category approach you will not find Domino under Applications - Desktop & Enterprise, Data & Information Management, Organizational Productivity, Portals and Collaboration, or Software Development. You will however find it under the unlikely category of Messaging Applications. The overall experience leads users to dozens of pages without an answer. Once you find a page such as Domino Enterprise Server the page is mostly a list of links to redbooks and whitepapers in pdf format. Pity the poor non technical guy who ends up here.

    Type in SharePoint or Exchange into Google. First link you will find takes you to a beautifully executed web page where you can learn all about these products. These pages are easy to read, easy to navigate, and overall a pleasant experience.

    With Microsoft I got what I was looking for out of the gate, with Lotus I’m still looking.

    Ed this is your marketing message to the world. Those who went to Lotuspere or read your FUD bog may know your strategy. But anyone who’s not a Lotus fan boy is in for a frustrating and confusing experience. The question is how many just walk away and stop trying to find the answers?

    I don’t care much for Bill Gates and sharepoint/outlook/exchange but I have to side with him on this one. Anyone listening to him and then going to the IBM/Lotus website to confirm his message is likely to walk away believing the FUD.

    Seriously Ed, get some focus groups on that website and your workplace strategy plan. Redesign, refine and then do it again. Dont give Bill any more ammo.

  1. 35  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 5/18/2006 2:03:42 PM

    @Brian 34 - while I agree that the IBM website needs help, that doesn't excuse the Chairman of a competitor. Bill Gates has staff that attend Lotusphere, read this blog, talk to the same analysts that IBM does. For some reason, all of those Microsoft employees haven't been able to "collaborate" with Mr. Gates in the last 21 months to get him the current Lotus strategy correctly. Either that or Mr. Gates is simply choosing to say what he wants regardless of the truth. I am not sure you realize that readers will interpret "I have to side with him on this one" as meaning you are siding with a liar.

    While I don't want to discuss internal conversations, I do hear you on the website issues, as do others on the Lotus team. The site needs some help, there's no question about it.

  1. 36  Brian Vincent  | 5/18/2006 6:29:10 PM

    @35 Don■t get me wrong I'm not saying Bill is innocent, I'm sure he had a script provided from his crew of just what to say and what he could get away with. Sure its not fair, but when has MS ever been known for playing clean ball.

    As for the website, take no prisoners and claw your way to brighter times. Remember ■yellow is the new black■ and there is an awful lot of black in that ugly outdated IBM issue site.

  1. 37  Charles Robinson  | 5/18/2006 10:32:51 PM

    @Brian - the issue is that Gates claimed IBM stated that current Notes applications will not run in Hannover. That has never been said by anyone but Microsoft. The message from IBM and Lotus that has been repeated is emphatically the opposite. Hannover is the next release of Notes, it has new features but it still runs all existing Notes applications. I don't see how you can defend Gates for perpetuating a myth his Marketing machine created and continues to support that has no basis in reality.

    I'm not a fan of the IBM website and curse it regularly, but if you do a Google search for "lotus hannover" and click the first link you can find the information you're looking for from that jumping off point.

  1. 38  Alan Dalziel  | 5/19/2006 12:45:47 PM

    Kurt's follow up to BG's comments were even more laughable (from { Link }

    KURT DELBENE: Yeah, I'm even more biased than Bill probably, but the other thing I would add there is compare us in terms of the depth of our vision across the entire information worker space and the consistency of architecture versus a set of products that you have to deploy on the IBM side, and I think you would find that I think the vision is broader and it's more consistent and easier to deploy.

    Consistency of architecture? Earlier in the Q&A BG was responding to a question about how none of the products in the M$ collaboration space share a backend storage architecture . . . I guess that's consistent in that none of them have the same rather than the IBM/Lotus vision which is to have a common data store for the whole catalog of products (DB2).

    And don't even get me started on "easier to deploy". I can prop up a server to support http, smtp, pop3, imap, nntp and email, workflow and collaboration apps in less than 3 hours (with one CD) using Lotus Domino. Somehow I don't think that's possible with the M$ suite . . . . .

  1. 39  Brian Vincent  | 5/19/2006 1:37:54 PM

    @37 I am not saying Bill Gates is truthful. I am saying is the facts are not readily apparent to non technical people reading Lotus/IBM forward facing marketing. FUD is essentially "truth" to the average Joe non-techie, if you cant refute it in 3 mouse clicks or less. Much like debate you only have so many minutes (or clicks) for your rebuttal. Keep in mind Joe Non-Techie includes most CEO's, COO's, CFO's, and ironically often CIO's.

    I know us Lotus professionals know the truth. But we also have a 20 click attention span for all things Lotus.

    I give Bill Gates the point on this cause the argument could easily be refuted, but it hasn■t been effectively. Every time IBM does try to refute it they go into a very long winded explanation and that actually re-enforces the FUD. The workplace strategy as presented is still unclear to most. The Lotus website and product information for domino reflects this. As long as that is confusing C(whatever)Os will be inclined to listen to a clear albeit untrue message from the famous/infamous Bill Gates.