Turnaround story in Oz...Delimiter: BoysTown achieves the Lotus position - without Exchange

July 2 2010

Duffbert and others have picked up this story which appears on CIO.com.au as well as the author's own site, Delimiter:

So Bergh sent a few members from his team over to a conference in Brisbane on how to move to Exchange 2010 to scope out the Microsoft platform -- check out the lay of the land and see what would be involved in a migration of Boystown's 480 staff. What they found disappointed him.

"They came back and explained to me that it's quite a lengthy procedure ... a rollout that will take months and things like that," he says. In addition, the featureset of Microsoft's latest collaboration opus didn't impress Bergh that much. He noted that there were new additions to Exchange 2010 that "Domino has had for two or three years already".

In comparison, Bergh says the eventual upgrade of his company's Notes environment -- which took place last December to version 8.5.1 of the software -- took just 15 minutes one morning when only a few staff were using their collaboration platform. ....

If Boystown was to use a rival collaboration offering, Bergh says, he would need to buy quite a few more corporate applications just to match the functionality that Notes already offers.
So it was just a month ago that the same website was taking a strong position of inevitability against Lotus Notes.  I think that makes this story on why a customer would choose to upgrade and continue/extend their investment in Lotus Notes/Domino all the more compelling.

I'm not satisfied in a world of just talking about existing customers upgrading...we had some great competitive wins in the last few months, and we'll be talking about some of those quite publicly, very soon.  Lotus Knows we are winning in ANZ, and all over the world.

Link: Delimiter: BoysTown achieves the Lotus position -- without Exchange >

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Lotus  Add/View Comments [12]

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  1. 1  Gregg Eldred http://www.ns-tech.com/blog/geldred.nsf | 7/2/2010 11:16:03 PM

    I absolutely love the line "If you buy Lotus Domino because you like the email system, it’s like buying a porche [sic] because you like the ashtray.” One way or another, that has to be worked into Lotus Knows.

  1. 2  Peter Presnell http://www.yellowverse.com | 7/3/2010 12:04:34 AM

    I agree with Greg. Lotus knows when you buy a Porsche you are expecting more than just the ash tray.

  1. 3  Michael http://www.mickstokes.com | 7/3/2010 3:19:22 AM

    Lotus Knows when you buy Notes & Domino you get more business value than just an email system.

  1. 4  Pierre Lalonde http://www.kiwi.ca/p/en/index.html | 7/4/2010 5:09:20 PM

    Good post. Fresh air to my ears. Could you help me with this one Ed?

    Have a large client with more than 20 000 seats that think about moving to Exchange cause he said that every time there is a new employee, the IT guys needs to create a Windows (Active Directory) account and a Lotus Notes account for the new employee. This occurs for employee movment also.

    I know that we can Sync the Domino Directory with the Active Directory, but is this the best practice?

    I will send him a like to your post for sure.

    Thanks for answering.

  1. 5  Keith Brooks http://lotustech.blogspot.com | 7/4/2010 6:03:28 PM

    @4 Pierre, sure they have to but you know what else they have to do?

    Call the ID guy to make an ID badge.

    Call Security so the ID lets them in.

    Get their license plate number too in some places.

    It's a bad reason to do this and yes there are ways around it if that is THE ONLY issue.

    It's not and don't be fooled, happy to discuss with you.

  1. 6  John Detterline  | 7/4/2010 6:39:49 PM

    I agree that stories like these need to be worked into the Lotus Knows campaign. I think tag lines about people NOT switching will draw more attention.

    I also point out in the article it mentions that people find it easier to use MS products because of the UI. The UI has to continue to evolve so it become a moot point. I think the next client release of Notes should be focused on eliminating the usability/functionality gap between Outlook and Notes. Every time the comparison is made the same line comes out Notes is more than just email. It's true and there has to be some new functionality that we can get Notes to provide that Outlook won't be able to touch.

    I also really like the idea of a lightweight java app that just provides email and calendar functionality.

  1. 7  Keith Brooks http://lotustech.blogspot.com | 7/4/2010 7:15:52 PM

    I forgot to add all of this could be managed via a nice little Domino workflow app and is in many companies.

    Also there is the VOIP/Phone extension people, the hardware in IT to order a laptop, HR documents, finance documents and so many others.

  1. 8  Pierre Lalonde http://www.kiwi.ca/p/en/index.html | 7/5/2010 5:46:46 AM

    @5 Keith, not sure what your last line meens. But it's true that there are many thing to get done around HR managment not only ID and logical access.

    @6 John I agree with you, we all know that Lotus Notes is way MORE than email, but Microsoft have been able to list Lotus Notes as an Outlook competitor product and this is wrong.

    Too many times I see user being trained only on the mail part of Lotus Notes; not even calendar. So we could understand these users requesting a lite client.

  1. 9  Darren Duke http://blog.darrenduke.net | 7/5/2010 9:57:45 AM

    @4, Pierre there is a free entitlement to Tivoli Directory Integrator (TDI) with Domino. This will allow sync of the directories (AD and Domino). This is new with R8, previously there was the ADSync tool that you could install with the admin client, but TDI is much better approach.

    I would consider this a "best practice" as this is exactly why IBM added this ($20,000) software for free.

    Ed had posted about this previously { Link } and Marie Scott and Duffbert did a training video on it { Link }

    HTH

  1. 10  Pierre Lalonde http://www.kiwi.ca/p/en/index.html | 7/5/2010 11:18:48 AM

    @9 Darren, thank you so much!

  1. 11  Renai LeMay http://www.delimiter.com.au | 7/26/2010 10:13:43 PM

    hi Ed,

    hope you're well!

    Just a couple of things. You mention:

    "So it was just a month ago that the same website was taking a strong position of inevitability against Lotus Notes."

    Uh no ... I don't have a "position" as a publication either way. I report the news ;) If you guys win a deal in Australia, I will report that news. If you don't, I will report that. When I do have a "position" as a journalist, it will clearly be marked as "opinion" ;) And that will be my personal opinion, not the opinion of the publication.

    "We had some great competitive wins in the last few months, and we'll be talking about some of those quite publicly, very soon. Lotus Knows we are winning in ANZ, and all over the world."

    I'd love to see these -- but I haven't seen any large Lotus Notes rollouts in Australia in some time. I'm calling your bluff on this one, mate -- if you have some "great competitive wins" in Australia, put them on the table.

    Cheers,

    Renai LeMay

    Publisher, Delimiter

  1. 12  Ex-Notes Guy  | 7/27/2010 8:52:48 PM

    Ed I wish there were more 'Turnaround stories in Oz'. Last year after 14 yrs with domino, which included flirting with other technologies in the last 2, I finally made the switch to .NET development. Why? I did it because there was no demand for my skills in Brisbane – zero, nada, zilch. Oh don’t get me wrong there are still organisations using it here – but they have no new work. If any they have been trimming their teams, so if you are lucky to get work - good for you. I am angry, hurt and frustrated at starting all over again – a newbie instead of guru. I just don’t think IBM is trying hard enough to push Domino as a development platform. So yeah enjoy Bankstown story for ain’t happening in my backyard.