BusinessWeek: Microsoft’s Enterprising Endeavor

March 17 2006

US$500 million for a marketing campaign.  It had to come from somewhere....

IBM, with a $90 billion-a-year business of selling technology to businesses, doesn't intimidate easily. Ken [B]isconti, vice-president for IBM Lotus Workplace products, calls Ballmer's speech a "thinly-veiled promotion" for the upcoming Windows and Office launches.

"Windows and Office attempt to prolong Microsoft's pre-Internet, proprietary, one-size-fits-all computing model," [B]isconti says. "We embrace open-technology standards, which give customers the ability to mix and match the technology they use." He also points out that while IBM offers a vast array of tech services, its $15.8 billion-a-year software business is second in size only to Microsoft's.

Indeed, while open-source software has mounted a serious challenge to Microsoft, IBM is the only company that can offer a wide array of software for large corporations that runs on both the server and the desktop. Its IBM Workplace products, launched two years ago, provide Internet-based applications designed for specific jobs in corporations -- from call-center operator to bank employee. Revenues for the Lotus unit, which includes most of the Workplace products, increased 10% last year.
The BusinessWeek article is a pretty straightforward on-the-spot reaction to yesterday's Ballmer bluster and the new MS campaign.  I suppose this is a better approach to chiding customers to upgrade than calling them "dinosaurs".

One of MS's key messages yesterday seems to be to emphasize that IBM is supposedly a services company.  IBM is also a US$15.8 billion software company.  Would it make sense if IBM started trying to paint Microsoft as a games manufacturer due to Xbox?  This is a silly attempt to create pure FUD.

Link: BusinessWeek: Microsoft's Enterprising Endeavor >

Ed Brill Category:  Microsoft  Add/View Comments [16]

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  1. 1  Roberto Boccadoro  | 3/17/2006 10:01:05 AM

    Xbox is not a game; you can actually install a Domino server in there (Daniel N. did it) :-)

    RoB

  1. 2  david racicot  | 3/17/2006 10:03:56 AM

    Brilliant Ed. "MS Makes Games and Plays Games with your IT future" ... would be a nice headline.

  1. 3  Ports http://www.mrports.com/ | 3/17/2006 11:52:21 AM

    "Mouse company attempts collaboration". Or would that annoy Disney?

  1. 4  Karen  | 3/17/2006 1:24:21 PM

    Also here...

    { Link }

  1. 5  Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 3/17/2006 1:56:05 PM

    @4's link - is that Iggy Pop with Steve Ballmer?

    So, people are important in collaboration and computing. Now where have I heard that before...?

  1. 6  Mikkel Heisterberg http://blog.lekkim.heisterberg.dk | 3/17/2006 2:03:59 PM

    Well the story also got Slashdotted so now you're sure the story is out... :-)

    { Link }

  1. 7  Karen  | 3/17/2006 4:24:42 PM

    @5 - it's Tommy Hilfiger (looking a lot like Iggy Pop though, huh?). Not sure what the point of that photo was. Ed, can we get an IBM exec next to Jay from Project Runway? Tommy is so five minutes ago compared to Jay. It'd be a great anaology. (laugh)

  1. 8  Chris Reckling http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/dw_blog.jspa?blog=416 | 3/17/2006 4:45:39 PM

    $500 Million buys a lot of FUD. If they need to spend that much money, Vista must be a real stinker.

    Chris

  1. 9  Danny Lawrence  | 3/18/2006 1:27:58 PM

    Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't MSFT have a rather large consulting division as well?

    Also (as has been pointed out by many small Notes/domino Consultancies) IBM will actually install and manage Exchanged servers. The only Domino servers anyone at MSFT has seen are the ones they use to plan future features for Exchange or Sharepoint or whatever the MSFT Collaberation flavor of the month is.

  1. 10  Axel  | 3/18/2006 8:04:00 PM

    Complaints about IBM being a service company comes often out of a (possibly wrong) perception that IBM offers "over-complex" tools that needs IBM consultants.

    Thats the real allegation behind the service company argument and it is often exagerated.

    On the other hand, I think simplicity is an important reason behind the succes of JBoss (and other openSource solutions).

    A proactive reaction of IBM might be to work together with customers to make the processes of implementing and running IBM software easier for customers.

  1. 11  Randall Shimizu  | 3/19/2006 2:29:22 PM

    @10

    Some people complain that IBM software is complex, but let's remember that IBM offers the Redbooks online for free to help customers. Microsoft does have the free technet to help with specific solutions. MS also has the MSpress which they charge for. I do think that Microsoft's technet solutions offer fairly quick and fast info. It's probably something that IBM might want to consider.

  1. 12  Gennady  | 3/19/2006 6:22:39 PM

    The eWeek article on the same topic { Link }

    states the following:

    "IBM also may be the largest deployer and maintainer of Microsoft products, through its Global Services division. IBM routinely signs outsourcing deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars, much of which involve deploying and maintaining Windows based PCs and servers."

    Does IBM GS offers services to convert Notes sites to Exchange?

    Does IBM GS participate in sales and marketing of IBM products such as Notes/Domino?

    If Microsoft products are more difficult and more expensive to maintain wouldn't IBM GS benefit more from supporting Microsoft products?

    And finally do IBM Notes/Domino sales people have to meet a quota selling consulting services?

  1. 13  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 3/19/2006 9:06:19 PM

    I don't work in IGS so I don't think it is appropriate for me to comment on their business model. Notes/Domino sales people do not have a quota on selling consulting services, and explicitly are NOT paid on IBM Global Services revenue.

  1. 14  Axel  | 3/20/2006 1:32:11 AM

    Randall,

    slowless of the development process due to complexity has not only to do with finding the right documentation.

    Most IBM products do have excelent documentation (Domino help, Helpcenters for Websphere products, most of the books from IBM press, some of the redbooks).

    Domino/Notes has a history of being quite good at supporting fast process. It had none of the modern test stuff.

    Now we are entering more & more in integrating with J2EE space: Quickness of the development process is getting about:

    How quick you can run your unit/regression/integration/stress/what-ever tests?

    How quick you may adapt to changing requirements?

    How reliable/fast is your source control system?

    How quick you may re-deploy your app on test servers?

    How quick do changes of IDE configuration reach the whole team?

    A vendor of infrastructure, servers, middleware, frameworks, dev-tools etc. will be successfull, if his products help to enable different groups of developers to make their dev-process faster. Its about getting feed-back from the dev-organisations who uses the products.

    kind regards

    Axel

  1. 15  Randall Shimizu  | 3/20/2006 5:23:08 AM

    14

    My only point is this, customers want quick solutions to their problems. Regardless of Microsoft's many faults their Technet site is very effective for this. IBM has their own methods such as Redbooks and other whitepapers. I don't think IBM's technical resources help is seriously lacking, but there is always room for improvements.

  1. 16  Paul Robichaux http://www.e2ksecurity.com | 3/20/2006 10:11:14 AM

    @15: when last I looked at it ({ Link } the Workplace documentation was incomplete in many respects. Axel makes a good point about developer documentation: there's tons of it for both Domino and Workplace, but if you're a sysadmin, you're going to be unhappy with the current set of Workplace docs.