Bullfight, six months later

September 22 2006

Is it any surprise to anyone that, six months later, the "red bull" seems to have gone back to its pen?  Quite a testimonial to the power of getting the truth out there -- the limited value of the analysis tools and the impracticality of migrating applications has been noted by customers, partners, and industry analysts.  Heck even Microsoft's blog on the topic has gone dark, reduced to an occasional Q&A about e-mail migration.

In my customer meetings over the last two weeks, I was heartened by what I see as a change in the type of conversation.  I mentioned it last week -- CIOs and CTOs are, for the most part, not focusing on e-mail migration.  It's not going to provide value to the organization.  Some of the Exchange shops I'm talking to are looking at the big jump to 2007 and wondering what the payoff for all that expenditure would be, but otherwise, they're looking more broadly at collaboration and the notion of dynamic workplaces.  And when you look there, Lotus has the best strategy.  The platform and capabilities we ship now are best-in-class for "situational applications" and deploying a services-oriented architecture.  The innovations coming in Notes "Hannover" change the conversation from e-mail and "groupware" to how new paradigms will deliver new value for the next 15 years.  And the emergence of Sametime 7.5 as a true platform for real-time business, the evolution of social networking tools, and the notion of how all this plays in the enterprise are making for some pretty interesting conversations.

This is all a pretty exciting time, and I feel like we're on the cusp of serious new innovations in 2007 -- from both major players.  You can't help but be excited.  And the best part is, the market is finally moving past yesterday's discussion and focusing on the future.

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category: Add/View Comments [18]

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  1. 1  Keith Brooks http://kbmsg.blogspot.com | 9/22/2006 12:23:37 PM

    As I said to a few people when Workplpace came out, wish I had never left. But then I couldn't wait through the 3-4 years of hard down time at that time. Now I could because at least I can see the road ahead is not as dark as it once was and it was very dark.

    Go get 'em!

  1. 2  Keith Brooks http://kbmsg.blogspot.com | 9/22/2006 12:29:38 PM

    You know what would help, is a canned spreadsheet or website one could populate with information (# of servers, users, dbs, etc.) and figure out the "rough" cost of migrating to Lotus or from Lotus. Why from Lotus? Because if you can show the cost to leave is so profound, they would never leave.

    Of course you have to use realistic $$ and #'s.

    If we have such a thing or if anyone has done one, please email me as I am in the middle of doing it to bring my client back to Lotus from Exchange.

    And the basic licenses costs is just a small piece of the pie. Until then I am working on one.

    Ed, does the SWAT team have this?

  1. 3  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 9/22/2006 1:20:04 PM

    I'm also glad to see more management types really understanding the value proposition of Notes. It's more than just e-mail, it's a general-purpose business application platform. I truly feel sorry for the people who use Notes for nothing more than e-mail because they're missing the point.

    Can we expect see more information regarding the business value of SOA and social networking? Personally I'm very interested in how they make business sense, because I truly don't get it right now. SOA I can see some use for, for some organizations, but business use of blogs, wikis and syndication have me baffled. I can see their benefit to some degree, but it just seems like it would be little more than a Discussion database.

  1. 4  Dave Madison  | 9/22/2006 1:21:45 PM

    You are right about one thing, Ed. This is no longer an email play. Which makes me wonder why you continue to focus on Exchange when talking about this. Isn't this a platform play, now?

  1. 5  Alan Dalziel  | 9/22/2006 3:49:57 PM

    I just had a conversation with a client who has been using Notes/Domino for years. They had a meeting with MS last week, and were offered free CALs for all the seats they wanted if they switched to Exchange . . . . so MS are still pushing the migration route. My client's perspective is still that unless they can do something about the Domino apps they have, they are not moving away from Notes. At least they realize that there is not much of a business case for the move.

  1. 6  David Raciot  | 9/22/2006 4:48:15 PM

    @5. So let's say that 'they' can do something about migrating Domino Apps. I still don't understand why they would. What do they get at the end of the day? Email and the same apps. Why waste the time? Isn't there something NEW they could be doing instead of wasting time changing platforms (like maybe they should retire)?

  1. 7  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 9/22/2006 4:49:01 PM

    @4 Simple -- I don't like shadowboxing. The 2003 generation of MS products don't even come close to what Notes/Domino, Sametime, Portal offer today. And the '07 stuff, while clearly being hyped to my customers today, isn't here yet. It's not like MS has a perfect track record of shipping what they tout during beta. My background, and my readers' background, still starts in the messaging space, and it is still where MS starts the conversation with a Notes shop (see @5 for a proof point).

    If you'd like me to talk about the platform, my assessment of Office 2007 - taken as a whole -- is that MS is aiming 34 products against the wall in the hope that some of them stick. But they are having yesterday's conversation. How is a ribbon bar going to deliver new value to corporations? How is Groove any more appropriate to enterprise architecture with an Office brand on it than it was as a stand-alone product? I could go on and on, but that would be shadowboxing :-)

  1. 8  Peter Wilson  | 9/22/2006 9:26:38 PM

    @2 Keith - That will never happen because until other products, software, if push come to shove can be given away...both by Microsoft and IBM. You're best bet in would be to negotiate the best deal you can with both companies. All the best.

    I'm interested in what Activities will be in Notes 8 as something different...

    Pete

  1. 9  Henning Heinz  | 9/23/2006 8:03:24 AM

    If people only use 10% of the Microsoft Office capability maybe people only use a fraction of what Notes and Domino can do?

    Companies that migrate to Exchange do not buy 34 Microsoft products either (most of the products are quite useless anyway). At least that is what I see.

    There is a messaging market and both products are in this market (you can check this at ibm.com ->Messaging Applications->Advanced Messaging.

    I think the Exchange to Domino comparison is correct and valid. If you remove all the buzz, a lot of people still spend a lot of time within their mailbox.

    Call it shadow boxing or something else. If you lose against Exchange chances are high that you also loose with the rest.

  1. 10  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 9/23/2006 12:42:39 PM

    @7 - I've evaluated all the Office 2007 and Sharepoint Portal stuff, and I agree with your assessment. It's a lot to throw out there and there is no way it's all going to be viable.

    What is the "yesterday's conversation" Microsoft is having? And what is the conversation of today and tomorrow?

  1. 11  Giulio http://www.buzznotes.com.au | 9/24/2006 10:49:36 PM

    Speaking of migration "Bull", remember the "PKF incident".

    { Link }

    I have it from a confident source that it was mis-reported by zdnet.

    { Link }

    Only the Sydney office was to be migrated 150 users out of 800. Also, the decision did not factor any application migration either and the decision was not based on any analytical basis either...

    Also, I really liked the presentation you did for us at LotusEnergizers in Sydney. Are you able to publish that presentation ?

  1. 12  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 9/25/2006 8:56:52 AM

    @11 I think the local team was going to publish the presentations on a quickplace. I'll check.

    As for PKF, I've heard similar things, but of course without a published rebuttal, the story stands as-is.

  1. 13  Dave Madison  | 9/25/2006 2:07:26 PM

    @7 and @9. Fair enough, but it seems by doing so you are playing defense. Email is more or less a commodity at this point. It would seem to me the conversation should be around how to be more effective in collaborating beyond using email. I understand the majority of user use Notes/Domino for email, and MS customers spend a lot of time in Outlook. I don't think either company will make many inroads by bashing the others email solution. What will win is how can you convince your customer they can be more effective in collaborating. Thus the investments IBM is re-making in Sametime, and the investments in Workplace, and MS in Sharepoint and their RTC products. If it's just an email play, most CIO's will likely say "why do I want to do the same thing I'm doing today on a different platform?"

  1. 14  Nathan T. Freeman http://www.openntf.org/nathan/escape.nsf | 9/26/2006 10:06:12 AM

    "How is a ribbon bar going to deliver new value to corporations?"

    Actually, by making it easier to work with the complex features of much of Office, it should reduce training and support costs, and improve productivity. Assuming it's a genuinely better UI, that is. (And I disagree with my friend Mr. Robinson -- I think it's a substantial improvement.)

    Remember now that much of Office is a nasty mish-mash of menus, toolbars, right-clicks and dialogs. The purpose of the Ribbon is to unify all those vectors and provide strong visual cues to boot.

    The Notes client is 100 times worse than office in this regard, given that you've got all the same menu/toolbar vectors, PLUS actions in applications, the bookmark bar, the Workspace, the status bar, the replicator page... the list is frightening. Notes is in desperate need of the kind of re-thinking that MS is doing with Office. It's just fortunate for you, Ed, that their boldness on this front is unlikely to directly compete with you. And that they'll probably screw up a great concept with a lousy implementation.

  1. 15  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 9/26/2006 10:43:58 AM

    @14 - I tried out a more recent release than the last public beta and I found the Ribbon less annoying since it autohides. I'm not convinced that it will require less training, at least in the short term, but if it is implemented well and consistently it could be a major improvement. It's just going to take every computer literate person on the planet wrapping their heads around it. :-P

  1. 16  David Raciot  | 9/26/2006 1:28:15 PM

    @11/12. This urks me. I think that zdnet should be asked to go back and investigate and publish the findings. And I am really curious how only one department (150 seats) got to migrate away from a standard corporate platform used by all (800 seats).

  1. 17  Randall Shimizu  | 9/26/2006 5:37:07 PM

    @7

    Ed:

    Microosoft collaboration strategy seems to be convulted as ever. Groove Office 2007 seems to be a way to get enterprise users to start off small. But I wonder if this intended as upgrade path to Groove server or a path to LCS.