GCN.com: IBM to offer hosted Notes

September 17 2008

Can't elaborate on this yet...but soon:

IBM will soon offer Lotus Notes as a hosted service, according to Bob Picciano, who is the IBM general manager of Lotus Software and the WebSphere Portal. Picciano spoke at the Interop conference, being held in New York this week.

The hosted offering will be targeted for organizations with 1,000 to 10,000 employees, and will offer, in addition to the basic Lotus e-mail and calendaring, additional collaboration tools. ...

IBM expects that the cost of this service will run $8 to $18 per employee per month.
Link: GCN.com: IBM to offer hosted Notes >

Ed Brill Addlestone, UK Category:  Notes and Domino 8  Add/View Comments [21]

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  1. 1  Chris Miller http://www.IdoNotes.com | 9/17/2008 1:57:49 PM

    Interesting to see how this is being handled. The only way currently is an all web based solution that has no metering, no provisioning, etc etc.

    so for $8,000 a month (using the 1,000 emplyees at the cheapest price point) you get email, calendaring and some collab tools?

  1. 2  Keith Brooks http://www.vanessabrooks.com | 9/17/2008 2:02:04 PM

    What was the old hosted Notes solution, Compuserve based or was it AT&T? Circa 1994 perhaps?

    Is this the Bluehouse line?

    But does one get 6GB of storage or is it 16GB now like from Gmail?

    And how do BPs fit into this?

    What about the real S of SMB who could benefit from this? 25,50,100 or 200 users?

    Even at $18/user it's cheaper than any support staff or BP they can bring in to handle the work, for small business people.

  1. 3  jack dausman http://www.leadershipbynumbers.com | 9/17/2008 2:10:50 PM

    Interesting, and worth a deeper look. I would think that Lotus BPs would find this a good thing, because their value add would still be in place.

  1. 4  Flemming Riis  | 9/17/2008 2:17:16 PM

    step in the right direction , hopefully licensing like Microsoft SPLA will follow for people wanting to offer the same services

  1. 5  Mike Lazar  | 9/17/2008 2:42:53 PM

    I'll be interested to see what the service entails. This seems to be a direct response to Microsoft Online.

  1. 6  John Turnbow http://www.recondite2.com | 9/17/2008 2:49:02 PM

    What are the "additional tools"?

  1. 7  Richard Schwartz http://www.rhs.com/poweroftheschwartz | 9/17/2008 2:58:23 PM

    @2 Both CompuServe and WorldCom (which became Interliant) had hosted Notes solutions in the mid '90s. The AT&T Network Notes offering came a bit later, if I recall. By 1997 or 1998, there were quite a few other players in the game.

  1. 8  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 9/17/2008 3:18:21 PM

    @7 - The Interliant guys were REALLY deep Domino experts too. I miss working with them. Eric Sachs was a badass.

    Network Notes was 1995. Their strategy completely missed the boat, because it was all about getting on their proprietary SPX network. When I suggested in their initial strategy meeting that they should allow people to access the hosted servers via the Internet, they looked at me like I had 3 heads.

    Good times.

  1. 9  rob axelrod  | 9/17/2008 3:18:27 PM

    @Keith - First there was Compuserve which served as more of a clearing house for Notes mail transfers across organizations that used Notes prior to everyone having internet mail. Then came AT&T followed by an initiative by Lotus called Lotus Notes Networks which was a group of hosting companies which included Interliant (which at the time was called WorldCom), BT, Deutche Telecom, Pac Bell, Comcast and some others. They were all plagued by the fact that most companies weren't ready to outsource critical things like email, the lack of scalability of the Notes server at the time and ambiguity of cost structures. The good things that came out of it for all of us were clustering and partitioned servers and a bunch of other stuff that was originally designed for "carrier grade" Notes.

  1. 10  rob axelrod  | 9/17/2008 3:21:10 PM

    Edit - I didn't mean Comcast. And that is what I get for starting a comment and then leaving it on my screen for 15 minutes before submitting. Nathan and Richard beat me to the history lesson.

  1. 11  Mike Lazar  | 9/17/2008 3:40:12 PM

    And if my history is correct, Navisite bought what remained of Interliant a handful of years ago. But I could be wrong.

  1. 12  Turtle http://www.weightlessdog.com/shell.nsf | 9/17/2008 3:48:37 PM

    @2 @7 - AT&T Network Notes was launched in 1994 and discontinued in early 1996. CompuServe had the CompuServe Lotus Notes Information Service, which I recall was mostly about interfacing Notes mail with CIS mail, and allowed you to sync CIS' message forums down to NSFs on your local server, reply to them in Notes, and sync replies back up. Expensive-ish and slow. I still have lots of Network Notes T-shirts from Lotusphere 95, though...

  1. 13  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 9/17/2008 5:57:53 PM

    I'm not sure what "additional tools" means yet either... this is a Notes messaging type of license, but not all components are a part of it. Like I said, I need a few more weeks before I can comment in broader detail. @Keith, no, not Bluehouse.

  1. 14  Kurt Binnie  | 9/17/2008 6:19:20 PM

    This sounds promisingam I'm wondering how services like BES and existing apps servers would be handled. Also from a Canadian perspective it would be good to know where data is hosted. This is something that Google cannot guarantee.

  1. 15  Keith Brooks http://www.vanessabrooks.com | 9/17/2008 9:35:50 PM

    @7,8,9,12 Really I did live through those various versions, and Don Price could vouch for more of it.

    @13, Ed thanks for letting me know its not Bluehouse, but it begs many other questions. None of which I want to post.

  1. 16  Alan Head  | 9/18/2008 4:28:07 AM

    So similarly priced to public MS Online prices. Will be interesting to see how the featureset compares. Great way to demonstrate the value of Lotus-based collaboration vs the competition. Impressed by the new GM's strategy so far...

  1. 17  Massimo Santin http://www.santineassociati.com | 9/19/2008 1:41:38 AM

    What about the role of business partners in this scenario?

    Will the BPs sell the new subscription? Will the BPs sell the renewals? Could the BPs develop and sell solutions run on these systems?

  1. 18  Martin Audley  | 9/19/2008 5:28:30 AM

    I understand that IBM couldn't make money at the very smallest scale, but surely the way to get deeper into the SMB market with Notes is to start the cautious (meaning "less technical") SMB managers off right here.

    Google has managed it with Gmail - individuals first, then they draw in the SMBs.

  1. 19  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 9/19/2008 7:11:52 AM

    I don't think IBM has processes that make sense to sell something worth $8 a month. Writing an invoice for 1000 pcs costs the same as for 1 piece.

  1. 20  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 9/19/2008 8:45:33 PM

    @18 Lotus Foundations is the SMB play at the moment, and "Bluehouse" for collaboration when that becomes available. There is the ability to scale down somewhat on this, but someone has to administer the server side, and if we are doing it, it's going to be harder to do so for quantity 1 at an efficient cost vs. 1000. Thus, I don't understand @19, this is about more than writing an invoice.

  1. 21  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 9/20/2008 11:27:54 AM

    Of course it's more than writing an invoice. It's just an example.