Lotusphere 2005: "The Boss Loves Microsoft"

January 18 2005

Well, it was overdue, but early this morning, I finished up the slide deck for "The Boss Loves Microsoft".  Now, I'll make changes to it if somehow an Exchange roadmap mysteriously materializes out of Redmond this week, but otherwise, it's done.  
This is the fourth year for this session at Lotusphere.  I looked at the previous years' presentations extensively, and reflected on session evaluations, to format the 2005 edition.  This year's edition actually has a few segmented chapters to it, which should make it easier to follow, and hopefully more likely that I'll pace myself a bit.  Oh, and for Peter de Haas's benefit, I've replace the "graveyard" chart.
The session is on the Lotusphere agenda on Wednesday, January 26, at 1:30 PM, in Swan 6.  See you there!
For those not attending Lotusphere, I'll post a PDF shortly after the conference.

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Lotusphere 05  Add/View Comments [17]

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  1. 1  Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 1/18/2005 9:47:48 AM

    Ed, with the presentation being called "The Boss Loves Microsoft" aren't you expecting fewer people this year? How about changing the title to "The Boss Doesn't Know Any Better" or "The Boss Thinks He Has No Alternative"?

  1. 2  Philip Storry http://www.not-so-rapid.com/ | 1/18/2005 10:04:30 AM

    I like Darren's suggestion - The Boss Thinks He Has No Alternative. It's not as snappy, though - should it perhaps be a subtitle? ;-)

    I can't wait for the PDF. I want to know what replaces the graveyard chart...

    "Top ten MS Zombie Products"?

    "Sherlock Notes and the Case of the Mysteriously Disappearing Roadmaps"?

    "Every Time You Use Lotus Notes, Microsoft Strangles A Product..."?

    Although my personal favourite is this one:

    "Quincy, MS: Product Coroner".

  1. 3  Steev Castledine http://www.stevecastledine.com | 1/18/2005 11:37:01 AM

    How about - "The Boss Loves Microsoft because he also is having a mid-life crisis - Wife 5.5 has aged a bit and theres all these new fresh Domino 'bits of stuff' going around the 'Workplace'"

  1. 4  Kevin Doolin  | 1/18/2005 12:05:08 PM

    I'll be there. It's a requirement for me. Always need ammunition to bring back home, cause if Microsoft sold divining rods, this Oil company would buy them ....

    kev

  1. 5  Chris Whisonant  | 1/18/2005 12:15:23 PM

    This is my 3rd Lotusphere and will be my 2nd "Boss Loves...". I think this is always going to be a hit because so many corporations have upper management who just don't know. All they do know is that all their other CxO friends use M$ so it must be the best. They don't know that 1468 of the Fortune 2000 companies use Lotus! =)

    Not only do I have to deal with it in the software world, but sometimes with hardware too. I specialize in iSeries and that's what our main Domino servers run on as well. Just because a Wintel box is cheaper doesn't mean it's better!

  1. 6  Cheyn Rushing  | 1/18/2005 12:17:23 PM

    Or - "Airline Magazines, The Boss, and You"

  1. 7  Simon Barratt  | 1/18/2005 12:17:26 PM

    @4, Chris, That's an interseting number you came up with there!!

  1. 8  Peter de Haas http://www.peterdehaas.com | 1/18/2005 1:30:33 PM

    Thanks, I "look foward" to the presentation, hope you will share it one way or the other.

  1. 9  Chris Whisonant  | 1/18/2005 2:40:17 PM

    @7 - Thanks, thought I would chime in.

    Speaking of Lotusphere, I'm going through the session list to choose my courses and I love the title of this session:

    BP106 Episode IV: A New Hope - Extending IBM Lotus Domino with Web Services

  1. 10  Axel Janssen  | 1/19/2005 4:23:21 AM

    I have my doubts how relevant this Notes vs. Exchange battle still is.

    What was allways good to develop with groupware like LotusNotes?

    Workflows.

    And now in Java-Enterpriseland there is all this talk about Service Oriented Architecture, Webservices and before all service orchestration with languages like BPEL and BPELJ or apache behive targeted at the automation of business processes (this is workflow).

    What more?

    Distributed data, so that user can work offline without being connected to corporate network and replicate his data with the common and centralized organisational data.

    So now we have in Javaranch those little rdbms with low memory footprint like derby and replication solutions.

    So what relevance does this fighting exchange stuff really has? How about providing Notes developers with some articles or tutorials, which empowers them to use those new opportunities of a j2ee-nized domino?

    Axel

  1. 11  Roberto Boccadoro  | 1/19/2005 5:31:56 AM

    @5 - Chris

    I guess you just revealed the secret number Ed was referring to in his other post "so, now it gets personal?"

    Ed, gotta come up with something different :-) Will be there to listen to what you found to surprise us.

  1. 12  Roberto Boccadoro  | 1/19/2005 7:52:29 AM

    @10 - Alex

    you ask : So what relevance does this fighting exchange stuff really has?

    Having been fighting this battle for 11 years now, let me tell you what my basic idea is: Mail

    Once you get the mail, you have a foothold in the customer and is easier to go in and talk about your other offerings. Right after that comes IM, then workflow, then........

    The mail is the first step of the "software sale" path in many cases still, and that is why is still relevant.

  1. 13  Axel Janssen  | 1/19/2005 8:29:12 AM

    @Roberto: might be true, but depends on the market segment.

    I am confronted with more and more experienced customers who ask different questions like total costs of ownership, maintainability, agilness and adaptibility.

    But big YES. Everybody sees only a part of the picture.

  1. 14  Sean Burgess http://www.phigsaidwhat.com | 1/19/2005 10:22:50 AM

    @10 Axel

    Is it just me or does it seem like you want to rebuild everything in J2EE?? While there might be a buzz about everything you have described, I think you are missing the big picture.

    When a developer thinks about building a Notes/Domino application, he thinks mostly about how to implement and enhance the customers process. He doesn't worry about things like authentication, replication, storage, directory services, encryption, or mail routing. He knows that all of those things are taken care of by Domino and have been time tested. He can spend more time with the customer addressing their needs instead of reinventing the wheel for the 15th time.

    Oh, and if you think efficient, stable, and reliable replication is so easy to accomplish, why does IBM make Notes/Domino replication such a big selling point? If it's so easy, wouldn't Exchange have it by now? And for that matter, wouldn't all the big RDBMS's have it built in working for effective disaster recovery?

    All of those technologies that you listed don't have the pedigree of Notes and may not be able to do everything that they are supposed to do. If you want a prime example, just think back to the Java Applet craze of the late 90's.

    The things that I take for granted as a Notes/Domino developer just do not exist in the Java/J2EE/Web Services world and aren't going to in the near future. When they do, Domino will no longer have an edge and might go away, but then again, maybe Domino will have a different edge.

    Sean---

  1. 15  Axel Janssen  | 1/19/2005 11:00:48 AM

    @Sean: I don't want to rebuild everything in J2EE. My customers ask me, too. As I said. The picture is big. There are customers of all shapes and colors.

    And please. As in every platform there are issues with difficult to maintain legacy code EVEN in Notes. So your "developer spent mmore time with customer logic" might be a bit simplified for some situations I know very well. Of course we can't generalize and there are a lot of really good and succesful Notes aplications.

    But: Do you think that J2EE dev cares about such low level tasks as authentification, replication, storage and all the other stuff?

    I see a lot of customer environments where Websphere, Webphere Portal Server, Tomcat, Webservices and Java in general just do their work. Don't know what´s crazy about it. Heck. Even heard yesterday about a bigger .NET project, which... . The Lotus Workplace client stores his data in one of those small rdbms and he replicates with the server. Why not call it replication. And we'll see more of this rdbms replication stuff in the comming months.

    Sean. I am a Notes Developer but I am a Java developer, too. Tomorow I'll write some code in VB6. Just at this very moment I am doing Notes development, too. And its ok. But if you guys allways say that the other stuff won't work in the comming 5 years or so, its just not true and a bold statement.

    Its not about if I am right or you are right. Its just about leting marketing guys make the bold statements and we only if we are drunken.

    peace

    Axel

  1. 16  Anonymous Tip  | 1/19/2005 11:34:26 PM

    "Well, it was overdue, but early this morning, I finished up the slide deck for "The Boss Loves Microsoft". Now, I'll make changes to it if somehow an Exchange roadmap mysteriously materializes out of Redmond this week, but otherwise, it's done."

    - Don't know if this is a roadmap or more fuel for the presentation, you be the judge.

    Microsoft's Exchange Roadmap Takes Another Turn

    "Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday announced an update to the product roadmap for its Exchange messaging server that rolls Exchange Edge Servicesâ– "

    { Link }