Then and now...

December 9 2007

Then, September, 2005:

CompUSA has become one of the best-known retailers of computers and electronics in the United States through rapid expansion of its "superstores" across the country. For years the company relied on Lotus Notes for communicating with store managers. However, the large volumes of e-mail and a lack of effective rules and procedures in Notes for managing communications made it hard for managers to keep up with important information. To help boost profits through streamlined communications with store managers and other employees, the company deployed a Microsoft®-based communications and collaboration solution that includes Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 and Microsoft Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003.  Scheduled for completion late in 2005, the solution is expected to make it easier to manage targeted e-mail to store managers and provide employees with greater access to information.
(Bonus points to Avanade for publishing a PDF with markups visible)

Now, December, 2007:
Consumer electronics retailer CompUSA said Friday it will close its stores after the holidays following sale of the company to an affiliate of Gordon Brothers Group, a restructuring firm.
This was one of the organizations referenced in Microsoft's "Lotusphere spoiler" press release in 2006.  Looking at that list, many others have never migrated from Notes, and a few migrated only their e-mail environment and now run two costly infrastructures where one used to do the job.  It's also not the first time I've seen a company under market pressure choose to migrate as some kind of panacea, only to discover that, oops, the problems are a whole lot deeper than an e-mail interface that users didn't like.  And if the users didn't like that interface so much, why are some of these companies still running Notes applications five years later...surely they must have disliked the Notes application interface overall, right?  Or is it a case where business value (finally) trumps personal individual preference?

Ed Brill Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Microsoft  Add/View Comments [66]

Post a Comment

  1. 1  Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 12/9/2007 9:23:22 AM

    There are two companies in the UK that we speak to who moved Exchange and then deeply regretted it. Actually there may be more companies but these two at least admitted to it. Unfortunately you can't get someone to be a reference for making a bad decision.

  1. 2  Greg Wojcicki  | 12/9/2007 9:57:50 AM

    A few of things that stand out in this doc, first "lack of effective rules and procedures in Notes for managing..." and second the CIO states "“It was a mammoth job for us to assign user

    IDs with Lotus Notes,” Witt says, “so we

    simply had to restrict the number of people

    who had access to Notes.” This says to me that there was a training issue with the Domino Admins and second why restrict access to Lotus Notes? Didn't this CIO ever hear of iNotes web access?

    And this one.."“With Notes, we dumped a lot of

    information on them that may or may not

    have been relevant to the tasks that they

    needed to perform. With this new solution, we

    will be able to use Active Directory user

    profiles to craft e-mail messages that are

    much more targeted to specific users and

    their job responsibilities. This will cut down on

    e-mail traffic while improving our ability to

    deliver just the right messages to store

    managers.” So they never heard of groups or using OUs in the Domino Directory?

    BTW, if this is a sample of CompUSA management no wonder they closed 126 stores , more than half of their stores, earlier this year and will completely close after December.

    What a waste.

    { Link }

  1. 3  David Gursky  | 12/9/2007 10:14:35 AM

    Ummm. Somehow I think the demise of CompUSA has less to do with their email infrastructure as it did with their inability to compete with BestBuy. This is just a reflection of the "race to the bottom" that is common in retail.

  1. 4  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 12/9/2007 10:19:04 AM

    Another high-profile migration example, The Home Depot, migrated 17000 users from N/D to O/E in 2004. Check out their stock chart since then...

    { Link }

    Sooner or later, shareholders are going to wake up to this crap.

  1. 5  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 12/9/2007 10:39:34 AM

    @3 - I could agree that the two are causally related, but they certainly could share a common cause: poor management decision making where the appearance of action is more important than the consequences of that action.

    It seems likely that a big mail migration for CompUSA was sold with a "it'll lower TCO and allows us to do X, Y and Z in our stores," and no one thought to ask "what's the ROI period on the migration expense in terms of lower TCO, and why can't we do X, Y and Z on the Notes platform in the first place?"

    In the meantime, Best Buy focused on techniques like forming complementary revenues streams through their acquisition of GeekSquad.

    It's not hard to find companies who spend money on nothing, just so they can look like they're busy doing something important.

  1. 6  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 12/9/2007 10:40:55 AM

    That's should be "aren't causally related." sorry.

  1. 7  Duffbert http://www.twduff.com | 12/9/2007 10:49:21 AM

    Then there's always the fact that Enron was converting off of Notes and onto Exchange prior to their spectacular demise. :)

  1. 8  Karen Demerly  | 12/9/2007 10:49:47 AM

    There is talk (and every expectation) that we'll keep some of our Notes apps, after the migration (if we ever get to it).

  1. 9  Randy  | 12/9/2007 12:56:47 PM

    What I find interesting is that some of the Notes-to-Exchange migrations that these consultancy groups (Avenade, et al) use in their sales pitches as "successes", are very suspect. The "Lotusphere spoiler" press release that you reference in this topic (dated January 17, 2006) stated "First Data Corp., which employs 32,000 people worldwide, announced this month that it is moving from Lotus Notes/Domino to the Microsoft platform." It's been almost two years since that announcement. I'm sure the consulting group that led this migration is claiming this First Data Corp. project as another one of their "successes", but has anyone asked First Data Corp what they think about their migration to Exchange? After two years, how many mailboxes have they migrated from Notes to Exchange? How may Notes applications have the migrated to a Microsoft solution?

    Earlier this year the State of Nebraska announced their decision to migrate from Notes to Exchange. I'm sure that Avenade (a consulting company partly owned by Microsoft) painted a very rosy picture of their prior "successes" when they pitched their migration proposal to the State of Nebraska. I wonder if the State of Nebraska bothered to contact the IT folks from these companies to get their opinions on just how "successful" these migration projects have been. Or, did they just take Microsoft's (er, I mean Avenade's) word for it? How many mailboxes has the State of Nebraska migrated from Notes to Exchange? How may Notes applications have the migrated to a Microsoft solution?

  1. 10  Ed Maloney http://genericparts.blogspot.com/ | 12/9/2007 12:58:28 PM

    @5 - Nathan is spot on. It isn't the migration from Notes, but the general trend of management by buzzword that causes these organizations to fail. If they can't even get an e-mail migration right, what chance so they have on the really critical decisions?

    As for Compusa, they have been in decline for the past several years. MS purchasing a significant percentage of the company probably had everything to do with their decision to migrate to Sharepoint/Exchange.

  1. 11  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 12/9/2007 1:11:01 PM

    @9 at some point in the last couple of years, Microsoft was measuring its salespeople's success in this area on commitment, not on implementation. I don't know if that has changed, but it is why we see so many of the reference stories (including this CompUSA one) talking about plans and expectations, rather than results.

  1. 12  Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 12/9/2007 1:41:11 PM

    I think this thought is covered @2, but I have to point it out. The main reason in the case study for moving off Notes seems to be that they did a crap job of managing it. Isn't that like having a Maserati, driving it badly and then saying it's a bad car?

    "In addition, the company faced numerous challenges with the functionality of Notes" = they were assessing Notes R5 in 2003... four years after the product shipped.

    It then goes on to talk about the workload of store managers dealing with incoming e-mails - so that would be a problem solved with Exchange?

    "...the company was frustrated by the inability of Notes to easily integrate with other large enterprise applications" - firstly I can't believe that, and secondly, that's easier with SharePoint?

    Overall this follows the trends I see with all organisations who talk about making the move... a) no good business reason and b) a willingness to believe the Microsoft side of the story without checking on whether they have the full facts on the Lotus side.

  1. 13  Michael Drips  | 12/9/2007 2:57:01 PM

    I seriously doubt that whether or not an enterprise uses Notes or Exchange determines their success. Even a migration in one direction or the other should be of little impact.

    CompUSA lost market share to Best Buy and Circuit City and essentially couldn't muster up a strategy to compete with those two retail chains.

    Anyone thinking that CompUSA's business failure was due to switching to Exchange is need of serious psychiatric help.

  1. 14  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 12/9/2007 3:02:28 PM

    @13 let me be clear, that wasn't my direct assertion. But what I was trying to point out - and holds true for other bloggers pointing to this entry - is that the STATED REASONS FOR THE MIGRATION, namely improving store communications and efficiency, obviously didn't transpire.

    While the change in system wasn't CompUSA's downfall, it was one of several "let's change something and see if it helps" decisions (that's Nathan's point) that obviously didn't help, and probably hurt.

    Put another way, would anyone in that organization say today that it was the right decision to migrate in 2005?

  1. 15  Pete McPhedran  | 12/9/2007 3:15:38 PM

    I guess I'll ask the hard question: What did IBM do in an effort to change that thought process? I imagine everyone reading this blog understands the concept that it is easier (and less expensive) to keep a customer than to get a new one, so where did IBM fail in keeping this client? Or Home Depot?

    Don't get me wrong, for those that don't know me, I'm not bashing Domino or IBM, but I would really like to know why IBM couldn't keep these very large accounts on a seriously better platform.

    --Pete

  1. 16  Randy  | 12/9/2007 3:18:08 PM

    @13 - "...a migration in one direction or the other should be of little impact." Are you serious??? What many of these companies who migrate from Lotus Notes to Microsoft solutions wind up doing is supporting two messaging/application infrastructures. The one that they intended to migrate from as well as the one that the intended to migrate to. They realize much too late that wanting a successful migration is much easier that achieving one. You are partly correct though. One bad business decision seldom causes a large company to fail. It's a pattern of mismanagement that does it.

  1. 17  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 12/9/2007 3:19:00 PM

    Pete, I can only speak second-hand on CompUSA. I am not sure how much is covered by disclosure issues and IBM's conduct guidelines. For sure, we put in a lot of effort to show how modernizing the Notes environment would help them. We had people on-site and meeting with them regularly.

    At Home Depot, I was personally involved in at least one meeting, but there were many more. Let's put it this way -- HD employees were ordered not to tell IBM of their decision until after the migration was underway.

  1. 18  Randy  | 12/9/2007 3:49:45 PM

    @15 - If these companies that wound up migrating to an M$ solution, only to regret it later, had done their homework and contacted other companies that were suffering from the woes of a failed migration effort, I'm sure that many of them would not have bought into the M$ hype and misinformation. Incompetency, gullibility, and naivety in the upper ranks of management are some of the biggest reasons for these fateful decisions to migrate. Their egos are often just too big to heed the warnings of their own IT staff about making these stupid decisions. And, they won't pick up the phone and ask their peers in other companies who have gone through similar migrations. Also, there could be other factors influencing these decisions. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with the State of Nebraska's decision to switch from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Exchange, but Jeff Raikes, the President of Microsoft Business Division, is a native of Nebraska and a trustee of the University of Nebraska Foundation. Also, his brother, Ron Raikes, is a State Senator of Nebraska. If the Raikes boys had any involvement in trying to influence the decision to migrate from Notes to Microsoft, I would think that this could be a possible conflict of interest. As a concerned Nebraska taxpayer I would sure like to see someone investigate this connection.

  1. 19  Jim Casale  | 12/9/2007 5:27:58 PM

    @15 Sometimes there is nothing that can be done to prevent a migration to Exchange. In those cases it is a question of politics. Those in a position to dictate policy are the ones that think Outlook is better. I know because I am there right now. They don't care that clustering is nowhere as robust as it is in Domino, they don't care that availability and uptime are nowhere as good as Domino. They only see one thing and there is nothing IBM can do to stop it. You cannot fight logically against people who are illogical.

  1. 20  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 12/9/2007 6:07:06 PM

    @18 - Mainstream media is still good for something...

    https://secure.townnews.com/journalstar.com/secure/services_forms/editorial/news_tip/

    Or email the news editorial desk of the Omaha World Herald: news@owh.com

    Alternatively, you could contact the Nebraska Democratic Party. I'm sure there's someone there with an axe to grind that would want to help you out.

  1. 21  Bill Brown  | 12/9/2007 10:08:15 PM

    @18 If you really think that something smells a bit off about that deal, then find a good investigative newspaper and contact them with your concerns. Odds are it won't be the local dailies. Try a weekly alternative paper, probably one published in or near Lincoln or near a large university.

  1. 22  Lars Olufsen http://www.olufsphere.com | 12/10/2007 2:44:41 AM

    @14 - Come on, Ed - You're better than that ... Let me quote you here:

    "is that the STATED REASONS FOR THE MIGRATION, namely improving store communications and efficiency, obviously didn't transpire"

    I see NO evidence to make that "obvious" conclusion. For all we know, staying with Notes COULD have yielded even WORSE results.

    A billion things could cause the impact seen on CompUSA, and there is not a single, tiny hint in those articles that should lead anybody to the conclusion, that CompUSA migrating from Notes to Exchange had any impact other than the intended improvement of effeciency, and no reason to belive that CompUSA doesn't still believe it to be the right decision.

    There just is no evidence to conclude anything like that. None in those articles, anyway. You might know more details, but they are not in the open.

    For all we know, the very thing that they have migrated COULD mean that they are now able to sell the company at a better price. We don't KNOW.

    In my opinion. This blog post is below par, Ed.

  1. 23  Michael Bourak  | 12/10/2007 3:01:19 AM

    @22 : there is one thing we can conclude : they spent money and certainly a lot in a messaging migration project, one of those projects that we all know have an extremelly long ROI in 90% of the cases...so they waste money !

  1. 24  Lars Olufsen http://www.olufsphere.com | 12/10/2007 5:16:16 AM

    @23 - no, you can't conclude that. There is NO evidence that the migration project was "wasting" money.

    Yup - we "know" that most migrations have long ROI, but that doesn't necessarily make it a bad investment or the culprit in this case.

    For all we "know", CompUSA could be folding due to spiraling cost of paperclips. There is NO evidence linking one thing to the other, and nothing to suggest any connection.

    Ludvig Holberg famously wrote in "Erasmus Montanus", that ...

    "A stone cannot fly. Mother Nille cannot fly. Ergo, Mother Nille is a stone!"

    In Holberg's play, that statement is used by Erasmus upon his return from University, to exemplify his newfound intellectual superiority over his uneducated family. He is quite the arrogant bastard, really!

    It is called a "Syllogistic fallacy" and is pretty much the WORST way you can handle indicia.

    It a really poor way of constructing argumentation and twisting them to fit your agenda, despite them having no weight or relevance to the matter in hand.

    I think Ed is above this. I think Ed has tools to explain his point without syllogistic fallacies. And I think that it's a slippery slope to begin making such "obvious conclusions" based on no information at all.

    What's next - refering to CompUSA as "evidence" that migrating to Exchange will cause you to go belly-up?

    Who's talking about FUD now?

    By the way, Mother Nille - of course - was no stone! Erasmus' home town turned on him. And in the end, Erasmus had to claim that "The earth is as flat as a pancake" to avoid armyduty and win the love of his fiancée.

    No - nothing good comes from this. None at all!

  1. 25  Axel  | 12/10/2007 5:46:42 AM

    Migration is very costly. I agree a lot.

    And as they will tend to concede to little budget for migration for various reason, the migration will not even help to make the next migration easier and cheaper:

    - guy who is promoting migration has an incentive to create figures, which show to low costs.

    - non-IT guys often have problems to understand the complexity of many historical grown IT-systems.

    On the other hand, we can`t build our business on the premise: Its hard to migrate to other system.

    So how about positive signal for the future:

    How we can build systems to be easier to migrate, if there is a case for migration. Sounds a bit like a suicidal business style.

  1. 26  C. Kemp   | 12/10/2007 6:06:44 AM

    My goodness this topic has no merit. I think everyone knows this. What a desperate notion.

    Ha-ha. If this were true then how do we explain Kamrt? They had a $200 million dollar spend with blue right before they went bankrupt. Someone must have installed Outlook on the network.

  1. 27  Michael Bourak  | 12/10/2007 6:08:40 AM

    @24 : I don't think Ed draw those conclusions...and it seems you are a bit upset at the moment. But as we agreed that ROI of mail system migration is most of the time very long, I'm happy with that.

    btw, the news in itself if far from funny cause it will certainly means people lay off etc...

  1. 28  Peter Wilson  | 12/10/2007 6:37:54 AM

    Another story on how the UI rules to executives. I guess even Microsoft face these battles...slow uptake on Vista, Office 2007 isn't really hitting the spot. Organisations now considering options such as Linux for XYZ servers, just staying on XP for Vista (Next).

    Emails a hard one though. If I'm a CEO/CIO when might I consider moving back to Notes? I'd first need a pretty slick UI (getting there in Notes 8...maybe something even snazier). Maybe some free document management Notes apps...hey, don't really need Sharepoint.

    Maybe some free consulting (play dirty like Micro$oft) and bundled licensing deals (Notes & Sametime thrown in for free) to consider a migration back??

    Pete

  1. 29  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 12/10/2007 7:44:08 AM

    @26 it's not usually a good idea to troll from a static personal IP address.

    @Lars I'm sorry you feel like this crosses some line. I think it is reasonable deductive logic to say that, a project that was supposed to improve store communications did not succeed in its overall objective if the stores closed months later. Sure there were other factors, but if the stores were communicating better, why didn't they communicate effectively about the challenges in the stores that were leading to declining sales or increasing costs? It's not THE reason but it is A reason.

  1. 30  Kevin Mort  | 12/10/2007 7:59:09 AM

    Cool maybe they'll have some nice after the holiday sales.

    : )

    @5 - "and why can't we do X, Y and Z on the Notes platform in the first place?" That's just it Nathan, they don't ask that. They simply say "Notes can't do that" with no clarification nor back-up information to prove the claim.

    @17 - Ed, as I am sure you well now that's a common situation. It isn't necessarily that "IBM did nothing" but rather that the decision was made and the project begun before IBM had any chance of adding significant input. I know I've seen that happen countless times. As much as I think the direct IBM reps and BPs should be very active in their accounts to be aware of this stuff, when a company wants to keep you out of the loop, they'll do it.

    It seems to be "hip" to migrate these days, and frankly I haven't seen where the benefits are. It seems to me that more of these folks are simply interested in migrating for the sake of doing something, and making promises which turn out to be empty.

    The truth is that no, we don't have clear evidence that migration to O/E = death. Certainly there are shops who have migrated and are fine. I would more agree with the idea that there were deeper underlying issues at CompUSA and that the migration might have been some way to make it look to The Street in 2005 that they were trying to make things work. Perception is reality.

  1. 31  Stuart McIntyre http://collaborationmatters.com | 12/10/2007 8:11:31 AM

    @30 What I always find interesting is the additional expense and effort that companies will go to in order to migrate away from Domino/Notes rather than simply upgrade their existing infrastructure and clients to the latest versions.

    How many organisations do we see still running R5 and R6, especially on the desktop, when a relatively simple upgrade would leverage significant benefits for their productivity and business as a whole...

  1. 32  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 12/10/2007 8:34:26 AM

    @30 - "That's just it Nathan, they don't ask that. They simply say "Notes can't do that" with no clarification nor back-up information to prove the claim."

    well, there are actually two scenarios...

    1) It didn't occur to upper management to ask the question, in which case the organization is doomed, because its leadership doesn't know how to identify opportunities for investment return; or...

    2) Upper management asked the question, and was told by someone that "Notes can't do that." This answer could come from a) middle management; b) a consultant; c) a competing vendor such as Microsoft; or d) their IBM rep.

    I'm sure most readers here have seen all four sources for that answer in the real world. We're fortunate that over the last 3-4 years, option d) has mostly gone away. (Thanks, Ed) The power of b) or c) goes down with effective marketing -- you'll second-guess the answer you get if it doesn't sync up with some meme that's already planted in your head.

    a) is the toughest to deal with. A lot of IT middle management sees stuff like migration projects as good resume padding, so there is a perverse incentive there. Having upper management attention driven by budget rather than returns also makes this one difficult to deal with.

    @31 - That apparent strangeness makes perfect sense when you consider that the importance of big IT projects is usually measured by their budgets rather than their returns. It's a basic problem with the economic theory of the firm.

  1. 33  Concerned Admin  | 12/10/2007 8:58:55 AM

    Sad part about this is that most Notes admins dont know enough about Notes to explain to senior management why moving to Exchange is a bad idea. I have seen several migrations from Notes to Exchange and initially its all roses. The users love outlook because "they use it at home" and the admins love it because it's "tied to AD". Then the honeymoon is over and client side viruses and mail restore issues come home to roost. Keep up the good job Ed. BTW Compusa never adapted to the ever changing customer computer market and THAT is what has killed them.

  1. 34  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 12/10/2007 9:04:40 AM

    @33 thanks for the input, but please use your real name and e-mail address in the future or your comments will be deleted.

  1. 35  Jim Casale  | 12/10/2007 9:08:25 AM

    @33 You mean in Exchange I can't easily restore just one mailbox to a separate location so a user can retrieve a document they accidentally deleted? That isn't what Microsoft said ;-)

  1. 36  Richard Gray  | 12/10/2007 9:13:22 AM

    I was reading along and hit the name Gordon Brothers Inc. About 10 years ago I got my start with Lotus Notes implementing Notes 3.2 on OS/2. To my knowlege they're still using Notes today. So am I!! :)

  1. 37  Mike Robinson http://www.invcs.com | 12/10/2007 9:18:30 AM

    @19, there's *always* something IBM can do to delay,sway, or attempt to turn the "away from Notes" direction. There's aggressive pricing, support perks, etc. They do work (having been part of a couple first hand). We've been part of some very small to large (i.e., 10 of thousands of users) migrating to/from Notes. Most have been through acquisition but there have been a few that were strictly rip-and-replace. It isn't new to anyone that organizations with a large microsoft presence across the board (desktop/server OS, productivity apps, programmability) are prime for "going all the way" to Notes as far as email and collobrative apps. Possibly a preemptive action for those of you who can see the storm coming in the horizon is to "suggest" and try to implement the added value of Domino on Linux, *try* to integrate java based apps and services to compensate for those who think .NET is the holy grail, and other things that can loosen the MS grip MS has across the enterprise. In all the migrations I've seen it's been easy to suggest moving off of domino on Windows servers, I've virtually not seen that with Linux (I'm purposely not mentioning the Unix platforms b/c *that* has been a source of frustration for some who have used problems with Unix to go all MS).

    The obvious is that monkey wrench that Lotus throws into this is that that apps are hard to migrate, so attempt to expand on the entrenching of apps/services/infastructure that's non-MS based to further increase the difficulty of moving off it.

    I'm not sure if something like this exists, but it would be great if there was Notes to Outlook and back to Notes migration. At times I think that would be a far better tool as it can show all the pitfalls and poorly thought through migration issue and deployment issues.

  1. 38  Max  | 12/10/2007 9:24:35 AM

    //Sad part about this is that most Notes admins dont know enough about Notes to explain to senior management why moving to Exchange is a bad idea.//

    Why should Notes Admin have to explain to senior management?

    Theres almost always the same, if you run any IBM software you´re out on your own, while MS or any other software-company got all kinds of slick sales-staff to talk.

    Still on Domino.

  1. 39  Jim Casale  | 12/10/2007 9:42:18 AM

    @37 Pricing is not an issue here. IBM could give it away for free and certain people here would still pay to have Exchange here. They have no issue pissing away money for no good reason. Case in point, we invested in Commonstore a few years ago and then they decided not to use it because it didn't do what they wanted it to do. Tens of thousands down the drain. I could go on with how little money means to them once they decide they want something. As for support we are on Passport Advantage and we get great support. If anything, Ed and team have gone out of their way for a company our size.

  1. 40  Dan Holzrichter  | 12/10/2007 9:48:27 AM

    Anyone know how big the share of apple sales are through compuUSA?

    I think the idea that you are going to improve efficiency by moving email from Notes to Exchange is a bad one. There are some things in Exchange and outlook that are easier (account provisioning, password management), but the cost of migration is way too much to overcome. Besides, on the server side Domino makes up for some of the client shortcomings. I think that Notes would have a better shot at exchange if it offered a simple mail client more like Notes Buddy, which tied into AD for password management.

  1. 41  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 12/10/2007 9:59:44 AM

    @31 - Not all of Notes' problems are solved in newer releases. Notes R5 through R7 looked identical. If the biggest problem end users have is the look and feel (which is the case with mine), an upgrade does nothing for them. Yeah, follow up flags and color coding were nice, but Notes wasn't any friendlier and that's what they cared about. The "upgrade and all your problems go away" argument is borderline delusional.

    @35 - Yes, you can. I wonder how many people who take such joy in bashing O/E have actually used it for any length of time. That's not directed at you specifically, just a general rhetoric question. :-) I'm by no means a fan of O/E, but I can say from first hand experience it's not as bad as all the Domino bigots make it out to be.

  1. 42  Stuart McIntyre http://collaborationmatters.com | 12/10/2007 10:37:53 AM

    @41 - No, not all problems will go away, but they will be significantly reduced. Many of the foibles and UI issues were resolved between R5 and 7.0 and the new enhancements such as Sametime and Quickr integration will make users' lives much more bearable, even if the overall R7 look and feel wasn't significantly changed. I would argue that this is akin to Windows95 and XP - at first glance the UI is remarkably similar, but the day-to-day working environment hugely improved by XP.

    Re: O/E - I am currently an enforced Outlook2003 user, and no it isn't all bad - but that isn't the same as saying it is a positive experience either. The issue is more that it isn't the panacea that many CIOs make it out to be either...

  1. 43  Pete McPhedran  | 12/10/2007 10:46:30 AM

    @Many

    Back to the question I posed in @15, I don't accept that "IBM couldn't do anything", "it was too late", "it's political", blah, blah, blah.

    Those are excuses and for a Company the size of IBM with the corporate political experience and sincerely, brilliant, people that work there, politics should not be a reason to lose an existing customer to an inferior product. Let's pretend that no one disagrees with that last point for a moment as I am only trying to discuss the problem of IBM not being able to keep an existing large customer, not debate the merits of Domino vs Exchange.

    @Ed, I understand that IBM was doing *something*, but clearly not enough. From what you could provide above, it sounds like it was a grasp at a save, vs simply maintaining a client.

    In my mind, and some experience, the problem comes in the form of IBM not taking care of the customer, the existing customer. A well positioned account rep wouldn't let Microsoft get an audience with the client, or they would be so ingrained with the client that the client wouldn't need to look elsewhere, but rather go to IBM when they had a question, concern or problem.

    Clearly this client had the perception (real or otherwise) that their existing system wasn't working. This is the time when a good client rep would jump all over that and fix the problem, real or otherwise. This is the time to throw resources at the problem, bring in the experts and understand the problem as the client sees it and find a solution. Maybe that's an upgrade, maybe it means you pull in 2 developers to fix or augment a template, maybe it's a trainer (yet another sore point in the IBM world) to show the client how to accomplish the things they want to accomplish. What is the cost of any one of those options? Worse case several thousand dollars for a few people's time, airfare, hotel and an expensive dinner, let's say it hits $10K. What did it cost IBM in terms of a lost customer? Renewal revenue, new product revenue, costs of (ineffectively) trying to convince them to stay, costs of bad publicity. Company X left, I trust them, so my decision to leave is further justified...

    Sorry, I know it sounds like I am bashing IBM, but I am not, I also want to learn techniques for retaining customers and I want IBM to retain their big clients so I can hold them up as examples when I am trying to sell to a mid size or SMB client.

    Smart customers get the feature/benefit, costs savings, etc... The lemmings need more. Although IBM has been bashed for poor advertising, by me too, this isn't an advertising problem. This is a customer relations problem and I have always known IBM to be great at that. What's going on?

    --Pete

  1. 44  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 12/10/2007 10:52:42 AM

    "A well positioned account rep wouldn't let Microsoft get an audience with the client, or they would be so ingrained with the client that the client wouldn't need to look elsewhere, but rather go to IBM when they had a question, concern or problem."

    Since almost every organization in the world is also a Microsoft customer, how would IBM ever block access to the CIO for that MS salesperson? At one customer, where they just recently made a strategic decision to move forward with IBM Lotus, we heard them say that the CIO has x number of hours for vendor meetings each month...and that MS and IBM were getting the same amount of time because of the way the CIO conducts vendor meetings. Period. Nothing we were going to do to change that CIO's behavior, or to keep MS away from him.

    In that same situation, we DID throw a whole bunch of developers, trainers, and storyboard discussions at them. It STILL did not matter, they continued for months to entertain the MS discussion.

    It is simple -- MS's reps have 100% focus on two things -- Windows and Office. The IBM managing director/client executive has to worry about hardware, software, services, business consulting, outsourcing, financing, and every other component of the matrix that IBM offers. I haven't ever figured out the secret to getting them to focus 100% on one aspect of their "turf" rather than their whole battlefield.

  1. 45  Kerr  | 12/10/2007 11:16:31 AM

    @44, I'm sorry Ed, but if IBM couldn't be bothered to camp out in the parking lot and kidnap the MS reps when they arrived for the meetings, then that's just not showing enough commitment! Get with the program.

    ;)

  1. 46  Brian Benz http://www.softwaresoapbox.com | 12/10/2007 11:45:08 AM

    IMHO Notes and exchange infrastructures are enablers, not communications itself. To paraphrase a popular NRA quote - "Email doesn't talk to people, people talk to people"....

    Current events reveal the platform decision changes as what it was....a desperate and ill-fated move by a confused and retrenching management.

    Looks to me like pointing at and trying to fix the enabler masked the original problem long enough to kill the company. So in that sense I can see how the decision contributed to their downfall.

    Good post!

  1. 47  Pete McPhedran  | 12/10/2007 11:52:18 AM

    @44, Ed,

    Ok, I understand the aspect of getting equal time at that level, I didn't mean prevent them from actually getting in the door, but rather prevent them from getting a foothold with a competing product.

    Maybe I don't know how IBM client reps work at IBM, but I am not aware of any IBMer that is responsible for the whole shebang, from hardware to software, plus services. Usually they are 100% focused on that which gets them their bonus, just software or just hardware or just <whatever>.

    Also, I don't think it's prudent to reduce MS reps to 2 products, don't underestimate how much hosting Microsoft does, or how much CRM and Accounting software MS does too.

    I am glad to hear that resources were deployed to counter that particular account, I guess it's just one for the books. Thanks for the clarifications. Appreciate it.

    --Pete

  1. 48  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 12/10/2007 11:57:02 AM

    Yeah, all IBM customers have a "client manager" (sometimes a "client executive" or "managing director") who is responsible for the "whole shebang" as far as that customer is concerned. They then manage the software, hardware, services people engaged on that account, along with people like a client IT architect.

  1. 49  Richard Schwartz http://www.rhs.com/poweroftheschwartz | 12/10/2007 12:55:59 PM

    @43 (and others): We should also consider the possibility that IBM looked at the customer, made a determination that the likelihood of them staying in business for much longer was very low, so a multi-year return on keeping the custmer was unlikely, and therefore decided not to waste a lot of time and money trying to save Notes and Domino in the account.

    @29 Ed: re "a project that was supposed to improve store communications did not succeed in its overall objective if the stores closed months later"

    Sorry, but it is not "reasonable deductive logic". Is there even such a thing? Logic either is valid, or isn't. Reasonable doesn't really enter into it. (Although I've probably been guilty of using similar phrases myself on many an occasion ;-))

    { Link }

    "Deduction: a process of reasoning that moves from the general to the specific, in which a conclusion follows necessarily from the premises presented, so that the conclusion cannot be false if the premises are true."

    It's not reasonable deductive logic because the premises are weak and incomplete, and there are ways in which the conclusion can still be true even though the premises are correct. Specifically, we don't know any of the following: that the problem of store communications was correctly diagnosed in the first place; that the implementation of the (supposed) solution to the (supposed) problem was ever fully completed (as opposed to having its funding cut off due to poor revenues before all objectives could be achieved); or that the implementation was completed but was simply not done competently and correctly; or that that the bottom-line impact of correcting (supposed) problem could have ever been sufficient to offset other operational problems and external business pressures that were driving down profits.

    -rich

  1. 50  Kevin Mort  | 12/10/2007 1:04:15 PM

    @32 - You're correct Nathan. The issue goes far deeper into how the organization is managed.

    What I also see is the idea that anything not MS is substandard. You essentially don't have as much support for non-MSFT solutions in many cases.

    @35 - That is a fair point Charles. However, I also challenge the O/E bigots (of which there are plenty) to use Notes & Domino on a current release before they bash it.

    The issue goes both ways of course.

    K.

  1. 51  Mark Hughes  | 12/10/2007 1:20:49 PM

    @37 i do not think java is the answer, just show them how easy it it to write vb.Net(they already know it) in ls in designer and integrate processes back and forth. There is not much you can not do in the Windows OS with buttons made in LotusScript. For example we uninstall software off of remote computers with our asset tracking database in Notes.

  1. 52  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 12/10/2007 2:14:54 PM

    @50 - I agree with that completely. For several years I was content to be one of those people blindly beating up Exchange and upholding Outlook's simplicity in light of the brain-bending complexity of Notes. Then I took my current job where I work with Outlook and Exchange and things aren't quite how I thought they would be. A mile in the shoes, as they say. :-) On the whole I think Notes/Domino gets more right than Outlook/Exchange, but there is still plenty of room for improvement.

  1. 53  Lars Olufsen http://www.olufsphere.com | 12/10/2007 4:10:41 PM

    @29, Ed - you say ...

    ..."If the stores were communicating better, why didn't they communicate effectively about the challenges in the stores that were leading to declining sales or increasing costs? It's not THE reason but it is A reason"

    But your deduction is based on the assumption that the migration had a negative impact on this communication (or lack of same), and you have no evidence or even indications that this is the fact.

    For all we know, the communication could be well improved, albeit not enough. But without the migration, it might have been even worse.

    There is no evidence anywhere that connects the migration to the outcome.

    It's not that I feel it "crosses a line" as such. It is more that I feel I'm used to you being much more well-founded in your posts, and I find that a very important quality in the community.

    Richard - #49 - does a better job at explaining my point. Thanks Richard!

  1. 54  Richard Schwartz http://www.rhs.com/poweroftheschwartz | 12/10/2007 4:16:08 PM

    @53, actually I got it wrong.

    I wrote: "there are ways in which the conclusion can still be true even though the premises are correct. "

    I meant "there are ways in which the conclusion can still be false even though the premises are correct.

  1. 55  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 12/10/2007 6:18:41 PM

    @53 Fair enough... I still think that, given the wording chosen in the Avanade story that there's more than a casual relationship between these, but it may not be causal.

    At any rate, as far as me being well-founded, I've been avoiding the temptation all day to point out that Microsoft's retail industry director is one of the CompUSA then-CIO's endorsers on LinkedIn. That may be completely unrelated. :-o :-)

  1. 56  bob  | 12/10/2007 10:23:12 PM

    I like it how Ed deletes every post that tries to point otherwise ...

  1. 57  David Bell  | 12/10/2007 11:25:07 PM

    @28 - "Maybe some free consulting (play dirty like Micro$oft)"

    Free consulting from MS ? No such thing. As real as a "no closing cost" refinance on your mortgage.

    You might *think* you are not paying for a migration, but you're definitely paying for it somewhere along the line.

    I've heard that Ballmer even promised a free migration to a CIO friend of his that cost $4m when all was said and done. Nice freebie ! Needless to say they are no longer friends.

  1. 58  Stan Rogers http://stanrogers.blogspot.com | 12/11/2007 12:38:42 AM

    @"bob" -- Ed has a clearly-stated policy that he will delete postings that do not carry a real name and email address. There is a lot of negative/critical content in the comments on this site -- but anything you can find has been left by people who are willing to stand behind what they say.

  1. 59  Christian  | 12/11/2007 3:46:05 AM

    @bob - i can read your post!

  1. 60  Bill McCuistion  | 12/11/2007 1:34:38 PM

    Perhaps CompuStore (and others in similar situations) take their lead from the White House's email migration, where, if you recall significant #'s of messages were "lost".

    Imagine the crimes that can be swept under the carpet of the sinking ship, all with a "simple" decision to migrate.

  1. 61  Bill McCuistion  | 12/11/2007 4:22:16 PM

    Please appologize to CompuStore, s/b CompuUSA.

    The Holy Grail used to be to get a computer on everyone's desk. Then it became to get just one computer on everyone's desk.

    The Email as the universal inbox is seductive, perhaps so seductive that I supose that ship has sailed. The cow's are out of the barn. I really don't see more inboxes as an answer, but rahter a really good "squelch" knob that can filter and focus attention to what is important. A good spam/virus filter helps, as does rules, but at the end of the day, good managers will always manage well and poor managers will look for excuses.

    I quit shopping at my local CompUSA when they did away with their bookstore. Although I did get a great Notes/Java reference book for $1.39. My friends joked that must be what a Notes/Java book is worth in Houston.

  1. 62  Bruce Elgort http://ideajam.net | 12/11/2007 4:49:54 PM

    Maybe this is why:

    { Link }

  1. 63  Carl Tyler http://www.iminstant.com | 12/11/2007 5:51:59 PM

    @62 Now that is funny.

  1. 64  Carl Tyler http://www.iminstant.com | 12/11/2007 5:54:03 PM

    @62, Wait that was a 7 year deal, so can we conclude CompUSA failed when IBM consulting left them?

  1. 65  Bill McCuistion  | 12/11/2007 6:25:42 PM

    The biggest thing I noticed at my local CompUSA from 1999 to 2006 was in the quality of the sales-floor staff, and the absence of the bookstore. It was perhaps the best tech-bookstore in Houston (outside of a very small technical bookstore in downtown). Over-time I felt like they (CompUSA) had outsourced their retail operation to ill-qualified cash-register monkeys who didn't know the difference between green lettuce and dBase IV. I will say that their POS / cash register system was good, and recognized a repeat customer, and was respectful as to amount of snail-mail/spam it sent to me.

    Don't know what impact IGS had on their operations, but doubt they pushed getting Red Books into their book stores. The funny thing is, is that I could always find a copy of the IBM Technical Journal there.

  1. 66  Irv Schor  | 12/12/2007 10:09:46 AM

    Best Buy (big box stores), CDW (web/catalog), and the increasingly technological 'ease' factors probably contributed to CUSA's demise. Best Buy came in next to (with 1/2 mile) of many of the CompUSA stores and sold computers to end users for less (and by the way seemed to end up with a lot of former CompUSA retail sales folks), The CDWs of the world had a stonger presense that CUSA's B2B attempts with an inherent distribution model, and some aspects of technology just got easier people to understand, making the value add of handholding less important to customers. CUSA tried being a Best Buy (Big Screen TVs, Audio/Home Theatre), but too little-too late. P.S. @38 - A Notes Admin isn't an Executive. A Microsoft Sales Rep has a better chance of playing a round of golf with an Exec/Sr. Mgt. on any day than a Notes Admin. This is a consulting/payola game - let's get those marketing coffers greased with some ND8 fund$ :-)