Back before my vacation, a few bloggers were talking about the abrasive, mixed message that IBM was sending to the market by having a web page from ibm.com Global Technology Services describing their Notes to Exchange migration offering. My stance at the time was that IBM, as a portfolio business that is dedicated to every client's success, should be the best possible systems integrator for Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco, or whomever else in our GTS business, even while we are competing with those companies in our software business.
Some of you didn't like that answer, and I certainly understand why. It's one thing for us to be great at every business that makes sense within the various segments, it's another to play them against each other in negative ways.
At any rate, the topic bounced around the blogosphere enough that there was plenty of internal chatter about this within IBM. As of yesterday, the web page in question had been removed from ibm.com. You all were heard, and you collectively made the right call. I was too willing to fly the IBM flag overall, but on further reflection, one of my peers convinced me that it was the wrong approach.
I still believe the "Lotus community" could do more to understand collectively why Lotus as a brand within IBM matters. The acquisition was 15 years ago, we can stop talking about it now; other than being IBM's first large software acquisition, it really doesn't matter today. IBM's strength is the ability to draw on diverse resources across our entire organization to provide client solutions; it's the unique value of IBM to be able to do that. How we build product, what we build, who builds it, who supports it, who deploys it -- those are all things that are completely identical to how the other hundreds of IBM software products operate today. Sometimes it puts us in conflict across IBM, no different than other companies with multiple product lines. Heck it's not even just a big company issue -- I remember the discussions back when I was at US Robotics 18 years ago about the Courier vs. Sportster modem market overlap, back when we were all of about 500 employees.
IBM as a company will never sing in perfect unison, but we dig harmony. Except that sometimes, there's a sour note. This time, you all helped correct it.
Post a Comment
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Joel | 8/22/2010 12:39:14 AM
I would just like to say that....
My first modem was a USR Sportster 28.8
I also agree with David's sentiment. It is one thing for a company which develops both MS and IBM applications to advertise that it does migrations from one product to another, but what are the chances that MS would advertise an Exchange to Domino migration service on their website?
A concern I, and presumably others, have is that IBM isn't selling the brand of Lotus to the world at large. There are still way too many people in the business world that if you say "Notes" to, have no idea that it is a modern, viable product.
If you say "Lotus", many people's first reaction will be "I remember Lotus 1-2-3. We ran that back in the 80's and early 90's on DOS". There are at least two professional generations of programmers now who have never run DOS. They grew up learning Java and PHP in HIGHSCHOOL, not college. Why should they care about Notes/Domino? Ditto for the new guy who just took over sales at a company, particularly a small or medium sized business. How is IBM pushing the product to him? I know there are targeted sales and IBM is probably doing rather well in this scope. What defines "rather well", however? What is IBM doing to make people like this fictional manager, or the fictional young programmer WANT their products? I've been developing for Notes/Domino for over 10 years now, but if I weren't, why would I want to? Why do I care?
This somewhat goes along with the comment I posted here (which in turn posts to another such discussion.. apologies if the chain is getting long, but it's relevant):
{ Link }
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Randall Shimizu | 8/22/2010 4:33:44 AM
This is a welcome change hopefully IBM's upper management will take more not of what's happening in the Lotus and other IBM user communities.
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Henning Heinz | 8/22/2010 6:42:04 AM
@1 David
No, IBM will still do what a customer demands. IGS is a huge business for IBM. Nearly 60 billion $ revenues and 190.000 employees is huge. Still you sometimes get the impression that other outsourcing vendors take more influence on the IT infrastructure of their customers.
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Erik Brooks | 8/22/2010 7:52:25 AM
I've got no problem with IBM helping people migrate to Exchange. But I do agree there was a problem with the way that message was delivered on that page. If I recall there was even a phrase such as "legacy e-mail environments such as..... Lotus Notes..." And that ain't cool.
I would, however, be curious to understand the IBM sales incentive structure of a current IBM customer considering migrating to Exchange. Is there more money for IBM in migrating 50,000 seats, or in retaining those 50,000 seats? And how's the compensation for the IBM reps involved?
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Antoine Leboyer http://www.gsx.net | 8/22/2010 10:16:46 AM
Lotus was acquired by IBM at the time when L Gerstner was its Chairman and CEO. Gerstner opposed what was the conventional idea at the time which is that shareholders value would be enhanced by creating baby blues, ie breaking IBM in smaller divisions. We all know that his strategy paid off remarkably.
Fast forwards to now. Lenovo has acquired IBM's former PC business so is keeping a number of businesses inside IBM still the right thing to do ? What value is derived from Lotus being part of IBM ? What is the value of Lotus being part of IBM for the Lotus Community ?
Best, AL
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Nathan T. Freeman http://ntf.gbs.com | 8/22/2010 11:22:08 AM
@6 - "...within the IBM sales organization, I don't think anyone has an incentive to drive customers away from IBM technology."
Hold on there, Tex. Let's consider the meaning of "incentive." Incentive is a reward for behavior, where the size of the reward is proportional to the value of the behavior. When you're talking about sales people, "incentive" is commission.If you pay more commission for behavior A than behavior B, then you create an incentive for behavior A.
This is economics 101. An increase in price reflects a higher demand and therefore supply increases to meet that demand. If IBM sales people get bigger commission checks for selling whatchamacallits then they do for selling thingamajigs (higher price), then they're incented to sell whatchamacallits (increased demand), and the sales of whatchamacallits will increase (increased supply.) Price (comp plan) is the method of communication.
"The fact that an IBM rep who gets to meet with a CIO, CFO, or CEO has a hundred different product lines to cover, including hardware, software, consulting, and services, is an attention issue." -- Ed Brill
So in this context, the question is simple: do your sales people get bigger commission checks by selling Notes to Exchange migration services than they do by selling Notes maintenance? Whether you want to discuss it in public or not, the reality is that every one of your business partners that's ever interacted with an IBM sales rep knows the answer. Every customer that's ever gotten a proposal from IBM for migration knows the answer.
Indeed, you yourself often talk about the huge costs of migrating email platforms on this blog. "Huge costs" for the customer when you're selling consulting services is known as "huge revenue." And huge revenue means huge commission.
The specifics of the comp plan don't really even matter, Ed. There's simply no way IBM is paying sales people commission on license renewals that's comparable to the commission they'd pay on migration services. The revenue numbers for those deals aren't even in the same order of magnitude. We all know it and denying it is just disingenuous. So they are absolutely incented to drive customers away from IBM technology, simply because the action of change is itself a big revenue generator.
What could you do about it? That's a question for smarter people than I, but I can think of one thing that might reduce the differential between the commissions, and therefore at least reduce the incentive. You could discount the revenue calculation for the purposes of commission based on the loss to IBM of existing revenue.
Let's take a scenario with totally made up numbers. Say there's a customer with 10,000 Notes seats, and IBM's charging them $200,000 a year in maintenance. The customer asks for a migration services proposal, and the IBM rep comes back with a $1 million price tag. What if instead of making commission on the $1 million in services, the loss of license maintenance is discounted from the services revenue, let's say for 3 years. So from a commission standpoint, he's paid for $1 million - $600,000 = $400,000 in services.
Perhaps then the incentive between selling migration and fighting for renewal might be in the same ball park, especially if the commission rate on software is greater than the rate on services. (Which is damn sure ought to be because software has zero real marginal cost.)
If IBM simply pays out commission on a $1 million deal instead, then that is absolutely, positively an incentive to drive customers away from IBM technology. Because it's an incentive to drive customers away from *whatever technology they happened to already be on.* The incentive as it (probably) exists today is vendor-neutral, and that's bad. The incentive should favor driving revenue towards other parts of the IBM portfolio.
IBM is, after all, a portfolio business.
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Nathan T. Freeman http://ntf.gbs.com | 8/22/2010 12:37:52 PM
@9 - It doesn't have to be the same rate if the revenue numbers have a geometric difference. If the rep is faced with the choice of competing for $1 million in services business, or defending $200,000 in license business, it doesn't matter if services only pays 10% while software pays 30%. That's still $100,000 vs. $60,000.
Selling migration services of any kind means that the rep is incented to sell *change.* IBM might make it more rewarding for the rep to sell change from non-IBM to IBM, or even non-IBM to non-IBM, than from IBM to non-IBM. But as long as the reward for change is greater than the reward for staying the same, change is being incented.
If you want to argue that the differentials are even greater, and that in my example the proportions are more like 5% for services and 30% for license renewals, and so the rep finishes ahead for defending the account, then you'll have to get into details.
Honestly Ed, with the last 3 years of discussion on this blog, there's no way anyone would even believe that claim without specifics. It is common believe among your BP readers that IBM doesn't pay ANYTHING to reps for license renewals. If that's true, then no amount of wrangling about profitability of the deal is going to matter; selling migration services pays infinitely better than defending licenses.
If you want to make the claim that IBM sales people don't have an incentive to drive customers off IBM technology, then you'd have to answer these questions:
1) Are IBM sales people paid to KEEP customers on ALL IBM technologies?
2) Are IBM sales people paid the more for selling migration services when the migration is from Oracle to Microsoft as they are when it's from IBM to Microsoft?
3) If IBM sales people are paid for sell software maintenance to customers, are they paid at a rate with a large enough differential to make up for the pay they would receive for selling migration services to that same customer? This sounds like a hard number to calculate, but I bet your competitive team has excellent numbers on the per-user cost of migration vs. the per-user cost of license maintenance. Cost-to-customer is revenue-to-IBM in both those scenarios, so it should be as simple as looking at a comp plan and doing a little multiplication.
If the answer to any of these questions is "no," then there is absolutely an incentive for IBM reps to drive customers away from IBM technology, and you should change your thinking. :-)
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Nathan T. Freeman http://ntf.gbs.com | 8/22/2010 1:00:01 PM
@11 - Then please don't say things like "...within the IBM sales organization, I don't think anyone has an incentive to drive customers away from IBM technology." Because it's clearly not defensible. Maybe they don't have a *greater* incentive to drive them away from IBM technology, but they clearly have an incentive to drive them away from whatever technology they have, whether it's IBM or not.
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David (The Notes Guy in Seattle) | 8/22/2010 1:52:14 PM
It's Sunday. Is this really what we do for fun?
I like to use analogies to simplify and clarify. In this case I will use Dr. Seuss' great story "The Lorax". Lotus Software plays the role of the Truffula Trees. Nathan and I are filling the role of the Lorax. Customers and Lotus professionals play the roles of Humming-Fish, Swomee Swans, and Brown Bar-ba-loots. Lastly, IBM Global services plays the role (in part) of the Once-ler.
You know the story.
OK, story time is over. Now that the web page has been updated to not explicitly solicit migrations from other email systems to Exchange, is the next step to update it again to promote migrating from "legacy systems like Exchange and Groupwise to Lotus Notes"? Yes?
What exactly is IBM's mission statement and how do these apparently incompatible roles within the company fit that mission statement? I can tell you with great certainty, this appearance of discord does not stand up to Microsoft's very clear and singular objective when they are presented side-by-side to a CxO and that has made all the difference. All the product comparisons in the world were irrelevant to the CFO at my company when he chose to migrate. He deals with business strategies daily and he saw a foggy message from IBM. Others do too. IBM businesses need to sing as one voice if they are to be heard.
To use another Dr. Seuss analogy: "Horton Hears a Who", the CxO's of the world play as Horton. IBM is Who-ville. They really do want to hear you, but you have to sing as one voice.
Then again, what do I know about running multi-billion dollar companies?
BTW, be sure to check out my blog at it's temporary home: { Link }
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Eric Mack http://www.EricMackOnLine.com | 8/22/2010 1:53:04 PM
It's hard for me to reconcile the apparent gap between what my IBM friends in sales tell me about how comp plans work and and what I read.
Ed, I understand your predicament and I would rather have you communicating via your blog as you do than not communicating at all as many of your peers do.
Still, it's frustrating. I know IBM values the BP community and we want to help but we need a fair shot.
Anyway, thank you for being willing to continue the discussion.
Eric
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Eric Mack http://www.EricMackOnline.com | 8/22/2010 2:28:43 PM
No, Ed, not accusing you of anything. However, as otehrs before me have noted, we get so many different answers when we interact with IBM reps that it is hard to reconcile.
I understand that IBM's a big company with a portfolio of products - you've explained that well. I think the frustration you may sense from me and perhaps others is in our own inability to reconcile the apparent conflict of interest.
Rereading my comment @14 I can see how you might perceive my comment as an accusation. It wasn't. It actually started out simply as a thank you acknowledgement for your willingness to engage in the conversation. I'm thrilled that you chose to write this post when you could have chosen to simply remain quiet after your previous comments on my blog and others.
So, I will try once again to convey in writing my gratitude for your willingness to engage and the challenge I have as a loyal Lotus BP trying to reconcile what I see and read. [OK. I think I see the problem. I just realized something that may be part of my problem. I called myself a loyal Lotus BP and that I am. Funny, but I nevrer think of myself as an IBM BP. Perhaps that's my problem. As an old-timer (My first modem was a $1100 D.C. Hayes SmartModem 300 - I still have it) I admit I sometimes think of IBM independent from Lotus. I guess I should wake up.]
Anyway, please continue the conversation. We are all learning and I appreciate your willingness to let us do that out in the open. It's what increases my passion (and sometimes frustration)for what we are doing.
Thank you, Ed.
Eric
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Nathan T. Freeman http://ntf.gbs.com | 8/22/2010 2:43:20 PM
@15 - Heh. It's kind of telling that you just named 3 different kinds of reps, but only in terms of IBM Software licenses. The whole issue is the IBM sales rep who cares about stuff other than software.
Again, I refer back to your quote from a few weeks ago: "...an IBM rep who gets to meet with a CIO, CFO, or CEO has a hundred different product lines to cover, including hardware, software, consulting, and services..."
I don't think anyone's accusing you of falsehood, Ed, so much as simple error. Perhaps instead of "...I don't think anyone has an incentive to drive customers away from IBM..." you meant "...I don't think EVERYONE has an incentive to drive customers away from IBM..."
After all, if you have specialist reps who get compensated only for new licenses and others who get compensated only for renewals, it seems extremely likely that IBM has sales reps who get compensated only for services. And those reps MUST have an incentive to drive customers off IBM technologies, otherwise you wouldn't ever actually do any business in it, and we wouldn't be having this conversation in the first place!
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Rick Sizemore | 8/22/2010 2:52:20 PM
@12 Nathan, I think IBM is unique in the tech industry. Where most multifunction companies aren't as broad based in their solution portfolio as IBM. HP is a services and hardware company, dell is the same as well, generally software agnostic. Microsoft, Oracle, etc, have professional services arms that support the companies software exclusively.
For IBM, they have an IBM Software Group focused services team, ISS*, you will never see that service organization migrate from IBM to other. IBM Global Services is completely different, they have practices focused on basically all technology sets, so they have a MS practice, one of the largest, as well as dozens of others, SAP, Oracle, etc.
When you say "rep" that is really not a descriptor, it has no meaning in the broad view, as your can have a brand rep, client rep, services rep, practice rep, and on and on, each have something they focus on.
So yes, IBM as a whole, could have conflicting priorities, as IGS's Microsoft practice is focused on services for MS products, migrating in your example. But the S&D organization has Client Execs and Software IT Architects that are assigned to the accounts, and their focus is doing the best thing for the customer, and IBM's breadth of services allows that, the customer focused relationship is unique.
While I don't see any value of moving email for email's sake, I can understand moving as part of some larger strategy, having competition in the industry drives all the vendors to do better.
Are there instances where it's more profitable for an individual IBM rep to migrate from an IBM Software solution, sure. As long as the strategy is well justified, as well as being in the best interest of the customer, and the relationship, then those situations are OK. It's part of the Client teams job to ensure that those interests are balanced. I'm sure that your scenario has happened, but I've also seen instances where IGS walks away from an opportunity to migrate, specifically because it's an existing Lotus account and they don't think it's in the overall best interest of the customer or IBM.
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Nathan T. Freeman http://ntf.gbs.com | 8/22/2010 3:25:02 PM
@18 - Rick, I'm not sure any multifunction companies are as broad based as IBM. Perhaps GE or AT&T? At any rate, I'm not one of the folks complaining that IBM should never do services business in anything but it's own software. Of course Global Services is going to assist customers with moving from Domino to Exchange, just as they'll assist customers with moving from DB2 to Oracle, or Series i to Dell, or J2EE to .Net. That's part of what makes the companies billions and billions of dollars every year.
Nobody expects NBC to refuse to sell ads to Westinghouse and LG, even though they compete with GE's Appliances division. And GE Capital will finance your purchase of an LG television. In fact, LG's manufacturing facilities probably have a lot of GE products in them. In a portfolio business, some lines of revenue are obviously going to come from working with the competition for other lines.
I'm challenging Ed's statement, not IBM's business practice here.
That being said, if you take GE as an example, there is no "GE client rep" who sells a customer advertising time on NBC, electrical distribution systems for a manufacturing plant, and washer/dryers, all at once. IBM is unique in establishing that kind of relationship with its customers, and if there is something to criticize about the business, this is it: The "IBM Client Rep" has conflicting incentives, some of which probably yield worse business outcomes for IBM, and *certainly* do for IBM's partners.
It would be nice for that to be fixed. I'm not expecting the fix to be driven from Ed's blog, though. Actually, I'm not EXPECTING the fix at all. I'm just dreaming of it. :-)
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Michael Dwyer | 8/22/2010 11:58:51 PM
I was at a training course last week, and someone let slip that there was a Sharepoint to Notes tool and service coming out soon. I hope that this will get headlines in the IBM GS site and with the IBM reps.
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Albert Buendia | 8/23/2010 5:39:36 AM
Hi Ed. Blogging about updated pages, I suggest to have a look to the Tivoli for Domino IBM webpage. I think it needs an update. Imagin you are a new customer and want to plan your backup copies. Some simple questions arise:
1) What Domino versions are supported? I supose...all but where I can confirm/find this information ? I've read Tivoli wiki, Information Center, pdfs without any luck.
2) My friend is a small business. So he is asking if it's possible to make Domino backup copies with a SINGLE backup tape drive attached to a Domino server. So... where is the response at the Tivoli web site? He was thinking to buy and use Tivoli for Mail but if you need a TSM Server, he will look for another backup solution.
3) Would it be possible to recover single documents (document level), not all the NSF database? He uses DAOS and so, transactional logging.
So Ed, I think these are basic questions that are easy to reply with an updated web page. { Link }
Curiosly, you can find a lot of information about backuping Exchange servers but for Domino the "quick" information is poor or does not exist.
Thanks Ed !
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George Paglia | 8/23/2010 8:37:49 AM
@6 - Ed, just to digress for a second on @2 - I agree with Joel when he says: 'If you say "Lotus", many people's first reaction will be "I remember Lotus 1-2-3.....' I find this much too often when I train new employees and even in IT interviews.
When you said: 'As for Lotus as a brand, we have this discussion frequently about brand awareness. The Lotus Knows campaign, which has been running for a year now....' You know I REALLY like the campaign, but after a year, it hasn't addressed one of the key issue, WHAT is Lotus?
Yes, you've gotten the name in front of the very people who need to know, but you haven't given it any clarity. With 8.5.2 coming up how about a Lotus Notes/Domino/Quickr/Sametime/Connections ad showing, what else, but the iPad / iPhone / iPod Touch? (or will that cause issues with Mr. Jobs?) You could even add in an Andriod and Windows Mobile device.
Just a thought.....
George
P.S. What would really get attention would be to spoof the current iPad ad: { Link }
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Nancy Bodycombe | 8/23/2010 10:18:26 AM
If there was a Like button here I would select it. It is discouraging enough to see so many companies migrating off of Domino without IBM encouraging it ! I am glad so many people commented and IBM took notice.
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Craig Boudreaux | 8/23/2010 10:59:29 AM
What I find amazing is that IBM seems to think that the Lotus Knows campaign is actually working. If it was, 1-2-3 wouldn't be the only product association named.
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Eric Mack http://www.EricMackOnLine.com | 8/23/2010 3:26:12 PM
Ed, you wrote "measurements say it is working". I'm curious. How does a marketing team measure the effectiveness of their ads, especially when not tied to sales for a specific product? It seems that something like this would be very hard to measure.
Or, in the case of awareness is it as straightforward as polling folks and asking what does "Lotus Know?" and see what they say?
This is a sincere question. I'm preparing for tomorrow's webinar and as I think about creating awareness for your product, I don't have many answers. I would like to learn from your experience with general awareness campaigns like this.
(Please know also that I am not a marketing guy - at least not by training.)
Thanks.
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Eric Mack http://www.EricMackOnLine.com | 8/23/2010 5:28:28 PM
Thanks, Ed.
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Francesco Pellegrini http://www.frameweb.it | 8/23/2010 6:08:07 PM
Ed,
I try to throw my 2 cents into this very interesting discussion.
I really do agree with Nathan about the fact that things happen because sales people get higher rewards from selling anything else than Lotus Notes license renewals; in my experience I did see this happen more than once.
But being IBM a global company it is sadly possible: you sell hw, sw and services and my hair has turned white seeing things like these happening many times.
I can even think (for only one moment) that this IBM selling migration services from Notes to Exchange can be considered acceptable...
What is really mysterious to me and drives me nuts is that there are people in IBM that can think to ADVERTISE THIS ON IBM.COM.
This is really unbelievable.
How can there be a person paid from IBM Marketing to write such a text?
And what the manager of this person was thinking when he/she approved its publication?
This is taking me back to the dark and infamous OS/2 ws Windows 3 days, and I do not want to see that thing happen again.
Why should I be willing to use my time to convince a customer to spend his budget for IBM sw maintenance instead of selling them whatever service, when I learn that IBM itself prefers selling migration services against their own product?
And I'm also sure that no one would ever think of advertising zSeries to Fujitsu or AIX to HP-UX migration services without being instantly crucified and exposed in the cafeteria...
Francesco
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Joel http://mikeyblueeyes.blogspot.net | 8/23/2010 11:35:53 PM
Ed,
Re: Comment # 2
I had an old account at notes.net way back when and, if my memory is correct, when the site was switched to devworks, something got splinched, to use the Harry Potter term. I can log in using that account, sometimes, but others I get the message that my e-mail is used for another account (which is the true condition, since I used it when creating my new account). I just need to remember to use the correct one to log in. At any rate, I left another post with the correct account.
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Mark Davids | 8/24/2010 2:58:12 AM
Nathan's points about incentives for sales people are broadly correct - IBM services makes more money in a migration than IBM software licensing does from someone who stays.
So what happens when IBM realises that it can make more money by migrating everyone away from Domino?
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janne | 8/24/2010 7:37:18 AM
Wounder what would have happen if GTS posted something like this
"GTS will help you migrate all your webSphere infrastructure over to Oracle J2EE platform. Contact us for a offer you cant reject"
or
"No more mainframe! GTS will help you migrate from IBM mainframe to HP-UX. Contact us for a once in a life time opportunity"
Would this be okej, no way!!!!
I think that the quark period (from big bang theory) would be a long time compared to the time it would take IBM to fire someone.
Janne
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Kevin Mort http://www.flagshipsg.com | 8/24/2010 9:02:26 AM
The next step is to have IBM Systems being able to take a larger position at Lotusphere. That and I can't tell you how many times xSeries has been positioned as being "great for for your Exchange servers" as the first pitch. Certainly they are, but why not mention Domino in that statement as well?
It's great that all of the partner solutions are presented at LS, and I can certainly understand the IBM peds being towards the back so partners can shine, but coming down the escalator and having competitive hardware front & center, how does that help IBM? It's kindof insulting to those of us who are IBM partners actively positioning (and winning with) IBM gear.
Hopefully with the consolidation of STG with SWG we might see some changes there.
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Matthew Cunneen http://www.satsumas.com | 9/2/2010 2:43:51 AM
Firstly let me say that as a 20-year veteran of Lotus Technologies, in particular Lotus Notes and Domino, I have built a career and a business from delivering world class solutions with these products and continue to do so in my business today. I have always loved Lotus products and believe that they are unmatched in their ability to provide rapid application development capability with workflow, collaboration and security as the pillars around which a solution can be created.
However, as the world moves on things change and for my company we have been put in situations where some of our largest clients considered moving away from Lotus Notes and towards Microsoft technologies. At these times we stood side-by-side with the IBM Lotus Sales team to work tirelessly to help educate our client on the potential pitfalls and huge costs that this move would entail. Unfortunately on a few occasions despite the best efforts of all concerned the decision was taken to move.
This is where I believe this post goes to the heart of the issue. What to do NOW! My client has chosen to move away from Lotus Notes, despite our best efforts to keep them and then they ask if we, as their incumbent Lotus Notes application partner can assist them with this transition, as no one knows that part of their business better than we do. I run a small business with a dozen or so employees and a client who is asking for my assistance – of course we said ‘Yes’. This is commercial reality and also fundamentally right as the client needs to come first, not the technology. IBM by their own admission (although it was retracted) and indeed the actions of GTS, prove this to be true.
What has happened since then has actually been more telling than anyone appears to be talking about. Our intent was to help the client rather than saying ‘no’ and letting an entire squad of Microsoft salespeople in to take over the client. This ensured that the best technical choices were made when it came to application migration. The result – the simple document libraries, one form workflow, discussion database style applications have been moved over to SharePoint. The three or four business critical, complex workflow, multi-dependant applications that were built in Lotus Notes are now being web-enabled in Domino at a fraction of the cost of migrating and re-engineering them in Microsoft technologies. Domino and IBM are being kept in the stack!
My simple question is this – if we had not tried to help the client and just let them go, as a result of their decision would IBM still be in the picture?
As a result of this experience my company now has great experience in migrating applications from Lotus to Microsoft. We sincerely hope that companies choose to stay with Lotus in at least some shape or form, BUT if they are considering a move to Microsoft we are well placed to assist them and give them some REAL life stories about both where the advantages are, but equally where the challenges and the pitfalls exist. The plan from our perspective on each occasion will be to keep IBM in the stack, as inevitably this will be in certain instances the best and sometimes only cost effective option available to the client.
The most disappointing thing for me personally around this entire position my company has taken in response to changes in the market, is the way that IBM have reacted to us. Whilst the details of that will remain private, IBM has made decisions that concern us, which are not fully informed and have been taken without the courtesy of a face-to- face meeting.
This post, IBM’s retraction of the webpage and my own experience on this issue unfortunately are all indicators of a defensive business in decline. Perhaps if IBM were to consider all the facts and respond more rationally and confidently to them instead of being in defensive ‘we are under attack’ mode, they would agree that the best place for them (and us as business partners) to be is the migration space. This way our clients can also make an informed decision, and be able to see that Lotus is actually - in many cases, the best option.
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axel | 9/3/2010 4:24:23 AM
If its really true, that IBM plays foul with business partners which gained some expertise in migrating away from lotus, I would see this as a highly unethical, amoralic, inacceptable and plain evil atitude from IBM.
The Global Services branch of IBM participates in those domino-sharepoint migration efforts and business partners are being excluded? So this profitable migration business is for IBM only?
Seriously. If half of which Mathew Cunneen is insinuating is true, I see this clearly as a case for antitrust courts.
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Henning Heinz | 9/3/2010 5:13:04 AM
@35 As the details of that will remain private most of your post should have been too (at least this is my opinion).
Also there are Business Partners that seem to have a different opinion like you e.g. Graham Dodge (what a pity he stopped blogging).
{ Link }
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axel | 9/3/2010 6:15:56 AM
From Graham Dodges logic, IBM shouldn't be considered as a Lotus Business Partner, though Lotus in the end is nothing more than an IBM brand.
AND: jeanne (33): I know that IBM Global Services Germany has bought a big project for a huge german telco company which is on the Oracle SOA BPEL platform AND NOT ON Websphere Process Server. And THAT THEY WILL STAY ON THE ORACLE SOA PLATFORM. IBM Global Services just stafs the project with the enlightened engineers of their choice.
I find this completly ok and it doesn't only happen "against Lotus". This is just part of IBM's business model since Lou Gerstner.
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Giulio http://www.buzznotes.com.au | 9/3/2010 7:56:11 AM
@Axel. Some strange things are going on as it's not consistent. Satsuma would seem benign in their offering when compared to binarytree for instance ?
They openly move clients across all the main players. Seems their business partner status is intact. I am not picking on Binarytree for their strategy, but merely pointing out the inconsistency in what appears to increasingly be knee jerk reactions by others.
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Matthew Cunneen http://www.satsumas.com | 9/3/2010 6:34:34 PM
@37 I understand that you believe my post should have remained private. The issue I have is that IBM would not even do me the courtesy of a meeting so that we could discuss this topic in private. So a post on a blog became my only way of outlining our position.
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Nathan T. Freeman http://ntf.gbs.com | 9/3/2010 7:16:47 PM
@36 - "If half of which Mathew Cunneen is insinuating is true, I see this clearly as a case for antitrust courts."
Well, at least you're consistently outrageous. That's an awful lot of conclusion jumping from the statement "...IBM has made decisions that concern us, which are not fully informed and have been taken without the courtesy of a face-to- face meeting." Anti-trust allegations over what, for all we know, was removing Matthew from their local rep's Christmas card list?
What's "half" of that allegation? That they were, fully informed and still refused a face-to-face?
Matthew, while I acknowledge the position of "we do what's best for our customer," I'm always kind of torn about this particular approach from an IT consultancy. Picture the following conversations...
Attorney: "This is a good plea offer and if we go to trial, we'll probably lose. You should take it."
Client: "Thanks for the advice, but I want to go to trial anyway. I think we can win this thing, in spite of your skepticism."
Attorney: "Okay, I'll continue representing you. After all, I just make more money that way."
Doctor: "This procedure is risky and medically unnecessary. I advise you against it."
Patient: "Well, doc, I'm going to do it anyway. So it can either be you performing it, or someone else, but it's going to happen."
Doctor: "Okay. One more billing treatment for me."
Mechanic: "This car has an aluminum block 4-cylinder engine. If you put an NO2 injector in it, you're going to melt your motor the 3rd time you use it."
Driver: "Well, I want nitrous injection. Do you want my business or not?"
Mechanic: "Fine."
Architect: "While I understand your desire, the idea you have is structurally unsound. If we build it like that, the whole house will slide down the mountainside at the first heavy rain."
Client: "I disagree, and if you won't make the change to the plans, I'll find someone who will. Are you going to do it or not?"
Architect: "I'll do it."
Are any of these professionals *wrong*? Certainly not. Is it an ethical compromise? Probably, but we could debate the philosophy of expert occupation until the cows come home. Are any of them risking their reputations by putting their financial gain ahead of their professional opinion? Absolutely.
You might reply "but it's not about the money. It's about the customer's needs." And I might agree if you hadn't said "This is commercial reality." At root, it's because you want the business.
Again, I'm not saying this is fundamentally wrong. It's all about what one believes is the proper role of a professional expert. It's certainly no less wrong to hold the ethical idea that implementing something against your own advice is hypocritical.
The issue isn't exclusive to IBM, or even to IT. It's at the heart of the very idea of professional obligation, and different occupations interpret it differently. In my examples above, the attorney would absolutely continue to represent his client; the doctor may or may not perform the procedure according to his personal beliefs; the mechanic would almost definitely install the nitrous; and the architect would never, ever build a structure he knew to be unsound.
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Matthew Cunneen http://www.satsumas.com | 9/4/2010 5:15:55 AM
@41 - Nathan these are excellent points well made. You points you are correct, at the core of this discussion is that my company wants to do good business. BUT - I don't think that we compromise our principles and values to win that business, nor are the alternatives for the client ethical or safety related, like some of your examples. We are talking about IT solutions and in most cases either solution can work and we are not faced with an ethical dilemma when the client chooses.
Again I agree that at the heart of your examples is professional obligation and I believe that we intepret that very well and very clearly. My point is exactly that, what is our professional obligation when our client makes a well considered choice - I believe it is to help. I just hope that IBM and other IT organisations could recognise that and not penalise my organisation as a result of that decision, if it is not in THEIR best commercial interest.
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Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 9/4/2010 9:22:13 AM
@42 - You don't think IT solutions have ethical implications? Take your typical email migration scenario: a customer with a reasonably well-run Notes/Domino infrastructure who wants to switch to Outlook/Exchange is going to invest huge amounts of money to go from having corporate messaging and calendaring to having corporate messaging and calendaring. Even with a perfect transition, it's likely that they will end up with a messaging and calendaring system that will cost more, be less reliable, and more prone to viruses on the desktop. So they spend more, and get less.
This is money that could go into capital investments, additional marketing, payroll increases, new hires, regional expansion -- or any of a hundred other business ideas that have the potential for a positive ROI, rather than an effort that is pretty much guaranteed to never have it's return measured at all because it's so obviously going to be negative.
Well, it's their money, right?
What if it's a publicly traded company? Does that change the circumstance? Now you're talking about a poor business decision that has cascading effects into securities trading, retirement funding, even governmental policies.
What if the company regularly deals with it's customers' private information through email? If users have a practice of sending files containing credit card numbers or SSNs through Notes email, and know to click the "encrypt" checkbox, what's going to happen when those same users are on Outlook? Are they going to realize that the private customer data should no longer be sent via email, or will they simply assume that Outlook must be just as secure as Notes, and continue their existing practice?
IT decisions like migrations are almost always management-driven, almost never include hard ROI considerations, and are typically triggered by "the new guy in charge likes Outlook/Microsoft." But the implications of such an IT decision affect the employees, shareholders and customers of that enterprise far beyond the emotional consideration of some CxO.
Personally, I believe the IT field as a whole is FAR too young in terms of it's professional standards. Information technology in the enterprise should be subject to as much external scrutiny as it's financial records, if not more. Implementing insecure systems that handle employee or customer records should be tantamount to criminal negligence. Implementing broad changes without demonstrable ROI should be considered securities fraud.
What's the difference between spending $5 million on an email migration because the CEO likes Outlook and spending $5 million on corporate travel expenses because the CEO likes to fly his family around the world on the company dime? Nothing. It's a senior manager acting as a consumer with the corporate treasury as his bank account. The only difference is that there are accounting auditing standards that reveal the travel fraud. There are no IT auditing standards that reveal the migration fraud.
For the record, this isn't a new position for me. I've made similar remarks on this very blog before. Our industry is pathetic in terms of professional standards, qualifications and obligations. We don't police ourselves like we should. We don't hold each other to a level of scrutiny that even auto mechanics do, much less real expert professionals like lawyers, doctors, accountants and engineers.
None of this, of course, has anything to do with your relationship with IBM. I have no idea of the circumstances or impact of what's changed there, so I could never speak to whether it's in their commercial interest. So please understand that I'm neither defending nor decrying whatever has gone on between you and IBM.
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axel | 9/4/2010 11:10:42 AM
Nathan, you are constantly insinuating that a platform transition towards microsoft will end up the company worse.
This is simply not predictable. It depends on the customer, their infrastructure, the people working there, their needs for the future, the extensibility of their existing systems, etc.
We don't know. And IBM shouldn't go after business partners, that earn their money in migrations, even more so as IBM does it itself.
Disclaimer: I have no clue about exchange or other microsoft technologies. Really interested, but too lazy to learn this stuff. Am earning my money with Websphere, openSource Java, Linux and Lotus Domino technologies.
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Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 9/4/2010 1:12:18 PM
@44 - I'm not insinuating it. I'm stating it outright. If you have a functioning Domino infrastructure for messaging, and you go through a migration to Exchange, you'll be worse off than you would have been, even if your Domino infrastructure needs additional tuning. The cost of migration is simply to great for there to be positive ROI. But don't take my word for it, ask Gartner. { Link }
But sure, let's assume that migrating to Microsoft DOES somehow make the company better off. Then wouldn't your professional opinion be "yes, we agree, you should migrate?" Then there's no ethical conundrum. If the expert professional can see that there is positive ROI, even when considering the IT-specific costs that bean counters might typically miss (eg: what is the cost of unplanned downtime? What is the risk of diminish security features?) then their recommendation should be to do it.
But that's not the situation Matthew's talking about. He said "...we stood side-by-side with the IBM Lotus Sales team to work tirelessly to help educate our client on the potential pitfalls and huge costs that this move would entail." Clearly his expert opinion is that the company WOULD be worse off.
It doesn't matter what I say in this or any other thread about it. It matters what the professional recommends to the client while still in the decision phase, and how that relates to what they choose to do in the execution phase.
And I'll say it one more time: there is no information in this thread about IBM "go[ing] after business partners that earn their money in migrations" other than Matthew's statement about not getting a face-to-face meeting. While you have no clue about Exchange, you have even less clue about what actually happened between IBM and Satsuma, because Matthew specifically said that would remain private. (Well, I suppose someone might have privately communicated more information to you. But I doubt it.)
But again, this is not the point of my response. I'm talking about the ethical considerations of being a professional expert in a field where there are no standard ethical guidelines. Satsuma's relationship with IBM is outside the scope of my conversation.
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axel | 9/5/2010 4:14:37 PM
Nathan,
In many cases you can't really predict the ROI of changing the social software platform. It depends on a myriad of factors like hireable IT-experts, future needs, health of the current infrastructure, etc. As the systems is based on too many complexities, its very hard to set up some "standard ethical guidelines". IBM can only make money, if its parts pursue their business oportunities. Who the heck will develop those "standard ethical guidelines"? IBM sales reps? Business Partners? Freelancers?
Matthew didn't say, what IBM did to his business.
And I said no other that from my understanding about fair competition, IBM shouldn't hamper business-partners to employ their skills in supporting a customers change towards another platform. For me its an important building block for healthy competition. If this didn't happen in the case mentioned by Matthew, I missunderstood him. That doesn't change my point. For a healthy competition customers should be free to completly change the underlying social software platform if they choose so.
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Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 9/5/2010 4:29:50 PM
@46 - I am mystified by your reply. Because an IT system is complex, it's hard to come up with behavioral guidelines for the people working on it?
Who develops practices standards for doctors, lawyers and accountants?
Welcome home.
That is good news. So now that your website no longer tells customers you'll help them move off your software, will you be practicing what you preach or is it just a formality so as to placate those who complained, your most loyal customers?
BTW, I wouldn't compare this to Courier vs. Sportser. Those were both products of the same company at that point. Also, the impact of eliminating one of line of modems I think in no way compares to the impact of eliminating Lotus software on your customers who use it and those professionals who make a living by it.