What do we classify this statement as?

November 8 2007

From an e-mail today:

I was just in a Microsoft presentation where our company's decision makers were told that the Microsoft share in email has grown from 52% to 86% here in the [sub-region of the USA], and that while companies are constantly converting "from Notes to Exchange" there has never been a conversion in the other direction.
My response:

1) Microsoft actually lost share in 2006 on a worldwide basis according to IDC; both vendors have more than 40% of the market but less than 50%.
2) No analyst that I've ever seen tracks messaging share on a sub-region basis in the US.  I'm not even sure how they'd do it.
3) See lotus.com/compare for some public examples of conversions from Exchange to Notes, and remember the big ones that have been publicly identified over the years.

I also was surprised that the decision makers at this Notes shop took Microsoft's lie at face value.

Ed Brill Melbourne, VIC Australia Category:  Microsoft  Add/View Comments [63]

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  1. 1  Flemming Riis  | 11/8/2007 5:50:46 AM

    Well its hard to control what everybody in a company says or claim as truths everyone have problems with that i would guess.

    If whats relayed above is true people need to get out in the real world for a bit.

    as for migrations there are always moves between x and y claiming otherwise well dumb.

  1. 2  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 11/8/2007 5:56:28 AM

    Technically, Ed, we classify this statement as hearsay. Do you have the slide? Do you even have the name of the Microsoft rep that supposedly made the statement?

    I honestly don't doubt that it happened. But it doesn't matter what I BELIEVE, does it?

  1. 3  Jim Casale  | 11/8/2007 6:12:10 AM

    @Ed "I also was surprised that the decision makers at this Notes shop took Microsoft's lie at face value."

    Could it be because they want to believe anything Microsoft says? I have been seeing that type of thinking here. It's hard to argue against when they are not arguing logically. It seems if Microsoft tells my CIO the sky is orange, then as far as my CIO is concerned the sky is indeed orange.

  1. 4  Peter Smith  | 11/8/2007 6:16:02 AM

    Taking Microsoft statements at face value doesn't surprise me, we see it all the time in environments that seem to run on the addage "nobody gets sacked for buying Microsoft".

    In smaller companies even if they have Notes for mail & hopefully some apps, their major investment is in Microsoft technologies. The majority of their IT staff and IT management inherit Notes when they arrive, the original advocates have long moved on.

    For them we could add on "nobody gets promoted by questioning Microsoft". When you question MS in those environments you get "well you would say that, you work for/with IBM".

    Saying that 8.0 is a turning point. The new UI and integrated productivity tools are generating a lot of interest.

  1. 5  Simon Scullion http://simonscullion.com | 11/8/2007 6:38:27 AM

    Wow! Pretty blatant. I agree with you, what is hardest to understand is how the MS reps weren't made to squirm, by explaining what are, frankly, difficult to believe statements.

  1. 6  Andrew Pollack http://www.secondsignal.com | 11/8/2007 6:55:59 AM

    A recent study in a very prestigious journal has concluded within a margin of +/- 1% that 86% of all statistics are made up with no real basis.

  1. 7  Tim Bennett  | 11/8/2007 8:10:43 AM

    @3 Jim, I would tend to agree. Having worked at a number of Notes clients I have seen them very much as heterogeneous environments.

    However when it comes to Outlook/Exchange they tend to toe the Microsoft line. I have sat in a presentation where it has been stated that SharePoint is the largest deployed collaborative system.

  1. 8  John Turnbow http://www.navasota-unified.com | 11/8/2007 8:17:30 AM

    A lie... Just that simple. Not even a good lie at that.

  1. 9  Karen Demerly  | 11/8/2007 8:27:51 AM

    @4 speaks to my situation. At least the first three paragraphs. Notes 8 may be, I'm afraid, too late for us. We'll upgrade to Notes 8 only if the budget doesn't allow for a migration. There's no one here to tell the CIO and CFO that the Emperor (MS) isn't wearing any clothes.

  1. 10  Keith Brooks http://lotustech.blogspot.com | 11/8/2007 8:32:49 AM

    IMHO if the account manager(IBM/Lotus/Biz Partner) did their job better and showed up at the client more often or had more interaction with the client, these types of situations should not occur normally.

    As to migrations, some very high level companies have gone over to MS, rarely do we hear about the large(5,000+) ones that go to Lotus, especially in the general IT news, US or anywhere.

    I recognize it's private/confidential/legal issues perhaps but there really needs to be some more publicity sometimes.

  1. 11  Jim Casale  | 11/8/2007 8:38:00 AM

    @7 Yes, I am well aware of the Microsoft line. I also see people here thinking that because they worked at two companies previously that had Exchange that "everyone uses Exchange". Never mind the fact that two companies we have business dealings with use Notes. And one of those companies went from Notes to Exchange and then back to Notes again. Go figure.

  1. 12  Randy Smith http://www.certprimer.com | 11/8/2007 8:44:36 AM

    @6 - "A recent study in a very prestigious journal has concluded within a margin of +/- 1% that 86% of all statistics are made up with no real basis."

    That might be fairly accurate, but the problem is that 86% of the people that hear/read those statistics actually take them as fact (by the way, I just made that statistic up).

  1. 13  Alan Lepofsky http://www.alanlepofsky.net | 11/8/2007 8:50:33 AM

    @9 Let me make sure I understand, so if your company have enough money to spend option a) is to migrate away from Lotus, or b) if you don't have enough money you'll upgrade your existing Lotus environment? In other words, the decision making process actually includes the fact that a migration is more expensive than an upgrade, yet it still being considered?

  1. 14  Lars Olufsen http://www.olufsphere.com | 11/8/2007 9:46:33 AM

    @12 - I'm fairly sure Andrew Pollack (#6) was making a joke on the entire concept of statistics.

    Notice the circular reference. ;-)

  1. 15  david racicot  | 11/8/2007 9:59:21 AM

    @9 + @13. I'm with Alan. Can you get your CIO/CFO to comment on this blog? (I long shot I know). But, I don't understand how any business would, "if they had the money to spend", want to spend said money on an email migration. Wouldn't they be better off giving the money to shareholders, employees, themselves? Wouldn't they want to have IT providing the most service for the least amount of money?

  1. 16  woonjas http://woonjas.linuxnerd.org | 11/8/2007 10:03:10 AM

    Are there some statistics available on 'stand alone' Exchange 2 Domino migrations? (not counting those that are forced as a result of mergers where the new parent already uses Notes/Domino).

    I've been performing a number of migrations from Exchange 2 Domino this year and 9 out 10 times, when I tell this to people, their response is more or less: 'you mean people actually migrate to Notes/Domino instead of away from?'

  1. 17  Jim Casale  | 11/8/2007 10:16:40 AM

    @13 Unfortunately the decision makers and company owners make questionable business decisions. The company I am at now has spent 1/2 million in the past to move to Exchange only to cancel it at the last minute. Fast forward 5 years and they are still looking at Exchange from a "Everyone else is using Exchange" mentality. So for around 1 million dollars in todays market we can switch from a reliable application platform to unreliable an unreliable email system. The average mailfile size here is around 4 GB and the largest being 45+. I question the business case for even looking at Exchange (even though MS says storage is unlimited in Exchange 2007). For some companies money is not an issue, just illogical decisons.

  1. 18  Bill McCuistion  | 11/8/2007 10:40:40 AM

    Mostly, I believe, the CxO's are heavily swayed by "consumerism" based information sources. Some base their decisions on what they see on the shelves of Best-Buy or in the local computer bookstores, where they see tons of MS-based stuff and base their thoughts on the shelf-space equals market-share equation.

    So, and I've said this before, put some IBM/Lotus products into the consumer-retail space, at least for a test, and see what happens.

  1. 19  Timothy Briley  | 11/8/2007 11:14:53 AM

    @17 - "The average mailfile size here is around 4 GB and the largest being 45+"

    4 GB average? Are you serious?

  1. 20  Craig Wiseman http://www.wiseman.la/cpw | 11/8/2007 11:31:43 AM

    @19 - FWIW, average mail file size here is ~4GB as well.

    Mine is 3.9GB, my archive is 12GB, and contains mail back to 1992. I migrated my email into Notes when I moved to it (three companies ago) in 1995.

  1. 21  Ian White http://www.ianwhite.net | 11/8/2007 11:35:22 AM

    Sales - its what sales people do if they can think they can get away with it - unless IBM up the Lotus Notes above the line budget to a significant extent (which I doubt), then this has/is/will happen over and over again. Sad but true - and of course IBM invented FUD

  1. 22  Craig Wiseman http://www.wiseman.la/cpw | 11/8/2007 12:43:35 PM

    It just occured to me that I couldn't .personaly/by myself/no other users. migrate to a stock Exchange 2003 Standard server. (Without service packs...)

  1. 23  Henry Ferlauto http://www.geniusinside.com | 11/8/2007 12:49:03 PM

    I don't think it's a question of classifying the statement. This is a (major) marketing issue.

    IMHO IBM / Lotus needs to "reintroduce" Lotus Notes (and related products) to the world. 10 years of "it's ugly as sin and all other related complaints) will not go away overnight.

    There will be no single silver bullet in this case. It will take many approaches. The videos from Ron Sebastian and others are a good start.

    I think the biggest thing IBM can do is get some major customers (preferably some of the household names) to upgrade to ND8, then film some modern "first person" videos about the benefits. e.g. The CEO, CFO CIO, etc. speaking directly into the camera and succinctly stating some of benefits.

    The commercials should be short and sweet, stating just one or two benefits. But have a huge library of them. Even a few from the same customer. The idea is over the long haul to convey the message that Lotus = good. Where good can have numerous meanings.

    @17 & @20 - I hope you're on Seagate's Christmas card list. They owe you big time.

  1. 24  Colin Williams  | 11/8/2007 12:49:21 PM

    I've been known to have some delusional moments but maybe the migration I'm starting next week (100 users from Exchange to Notes) is all in my head??? Perhaps I'll call Microsoft and ask them.

  1. 25  Keith Brooks http://lotustech.blogspot.com | 11/8/2007 1:07:21 PM

    To be fair, the email was referring to one region and it is possible but how would you ever figure that one out?

    But isn't that like saying 40% of the replies to Ed's blog come from outside the US so 40% of the world is using Lotus ;-)

    No idea what the stats are but I know Ed has posted form time to time stats about browsers.

  1. 26  Kevin Mort  | 11/8/2007 1:39:23 PM

    The sentiment of there never being a migration from Exchange to Domino was tossed my way recently as well.

    Needless to say I went after it with some truth. ;)

  1. 27  Karen Demerly  | 11/8/2007 1:58:18 PM

    @13/Alan,

    "This will put us inline with our ERP investment.", "This will streamline...", "This will be an investment..." We're in a downturn, so this proposal may be rejected, but IT will pitch it as a need, no doubt.

    As someone mentioned, "...people here thinking that because they worked at two companies previously that had Exchange that "everyone uses Exchange"."

    And @15, no, my CIO and/or CFO will never come on here and address this - seriously, why would/should they? Respectfully, they're kinda' busy.

    We might wind up like @17.

  1. 28  Jim Casale  | 11/8/2007 2:16:59 PM

    @27 Oh I guess it's not that bad. We can always create about a dozen or so PST files to hold the majority of the mail and keep the rest on the server. And we certainly won't have an issue with clustering two servers here and one on our DR site, it's Exchange 2007 right? Those huge attachments won't be a problem for Exchange either. And if per chance there is a problem I can always do a point in time restore just like I used to do in Domino. I can restore just one mailbox since it's Exchange. Let's not forget since EVERYONE here has admin access to their local workstation, users downloading all sorts of useless addons to Outlook would never happen. So it's not so bad ending up like we might end up ;-)

    @23 I would have to be on IBM's Christmas list. Can you say DS4800 and 4GB fibre channel drives with multiple arrays?

  1. 29  Alan Lepofsky http://www.alanlepofsky.net | 11/8/2007 2:29:41 PM

    @23 - like this: { Link }

  1. 30  Alan Lepofsky http://www.alanlepofsky.net | 11/8/2007 2:32:40 PM

    @16 & @24 - can we help turn these into references?

  1. 31  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 11/8/2007 3:02:26 PM

    @30 - I'd LOVE to see more about SMB's moving from Exchange to Domino. :-D

  1. 32  Luis Guirigay  | 11/8/2007 4:21:55 PM

  1. 33  Luis Guirigay http://lguiriga.blogspot.com | 11/8/2007 4:23:48 PM

    I just spent this week working with a customer in a Exchange to Domino migration.

    I guess they didn't attend the MS conference. :)

  1. 34  ToJoBe  | 11/8/2007 4:49:40 PM

    We moved one of our operations from Exchange to Domino/Notes in the fall of 04 after they experienced two server outage periods of three weeks each. Their Domino server has crashed twice since then (righted itself immediately all by itself both times) due to a DWA issue that Lotus support fixed in a few days.

    We moved another division from Exchange to Domino/Notes earlier this year and they are tickled with the results. Also zero crashes.

    I've been working with another location that got so excited about ND8 after initially considering a move to Exchange that I've had to try to slow them down a bit (Don't forget good design practices). Going to visit them (with Lotus) in a couple of weeks to plan their migration and to hopefully convince yet another location that is considering moving from under Exchange's shadow.

    Nobody chooses Exchange. They submit or surrender, but they don't choose it...

  1. 35  Henry Ferlauto http://www.geniusinside.com | 11/8/2007 4:57:48 PM

    @29 - Headed in the right direction.

    My thoughts:

    (1) Needs to be short enough for a television ad.

    (2) Needs to be customers, not business partners.

    (3) It's too superficial / general.

    You need to convey a SPECIFIC story. Tell a story how Lotus (Notes, Sametime, etc.) helped close the deal, saved the company a bunch of money, improved the company's responsiveness, etc.

    The new ads from Apple for the iPhone are EXCELLENT examples of how a specific product saved the day.

    { Link }

    Some scenarios to consider:

    (1) Have customer talk about how quickly they created a blog and with the included template and started getting feedback that directly affected product development and that improvement in the product brought increased sales. Don't forget to differentiate by talking about how the appropriate security / workflow made it compliant with corporate communication policies. Need to differentiate yourselves from WordPress and all the rest of the "free" products out there.

    (2) Have a sales rep or sales director tell a story how using Sametime to give a web presentation and having a "parallel" chat where account exec and technical resiources could feed each other questions which empowered them to easily overcome every objection from what was at first a very skeptical customer.

    (3) When 8.0.1 gets released - How with just one simple upgrade a company gained back "X" GB in disk storage and saved "Y" thousands of dollars in their budget because they didn't have to purchase hard drives for their e-mail system the entire year.

    (4) Expertise location - Talk about how an important client need to know something "now" and with Sametime and Connections they were able to put everyone together in a few seconds. Would be a good unified communications story as well. e.g. Customer called in to regular phone line. Employee found co-worker then bridged call together. For extra drama have that resource be someone like Ed who lives out of a suitcase and the VoIP call was from an airport waiting room. (a.k.a. Ed's summer house.) :)

    Wrapping up...

    What ever the scenarios are, they must be "real world" and the people must be believable. Watch the video @29 and then watch the Apple iPhone ads. Which does a better job of saying why you should purchase the respective product?

  1. 36  mike  | 11/8/2007 5:21:32 PM

    @10 .. Totally correct. Microsoft account managers push and push it all in your face, whereas here (I can only speak for where I work), we don't hear boo from our IBM Lotus counterparts.

  1. 37  Eric Lohry http://www.nfprotein.com/eric | 11/8/2007 5:27:36 PM

    We just hired a new IT guy. He didn't even no how to spell Notes. He's in Detox right now. I'll let you know how it comes out.

  1. 38  Richard Moy http://www.dominointerface.com | 11/8/2007 5:59:07 PM

    Must have missed the Microsoft boat. We were just involved in a very large migration from Exchange to Domino.

  1. 39  Henry Ferlauto http://www.geniusinside.com | 11/8/2007 6:13:09 PM

    @38 - It's a very large boat, has great name recognition, and a lot of people got hurt for using it.... Titanic.

  1. 40  Eric Lohry http://www.nfprotein.com/eric | 11/8/2007 6:28:37 PM

    Further to my comment @37. In our small market, nobody has heard of Notes/Domino. We are a legacy customer going back to cc:Mail (remember that?). We stuck with Domino because it worked. Every IT guy that walks in the door suggests we switch to Exchange because they have never heard of Domino. One actually referred to it as "an odd-ball software". I just ask them. "when is the last time our Domino server crashed?" Answer: a VERY long time. I am showing the "new guy" that Domino is an APPLICATION server. Bottom line: IBM has a way to go in marketing ND8. They need more business partners that call on the SMB market

  1. 41  Alan Lepofsky http://www.alanlepofsky.net | 11/8/2007 6:42:17 PM

    @35 I completely agree. The scenarios you describe are very similar to the talks I give in customer briefings. I tend to not "make up scenarios", and instead provide real world examples of my day to day life within IBM using the tools to get my job done. Notes apps, DogEar, Profiles, Sametime, Quickr, etc.

  1. 42  Alan Lepofsky http://www.alanlepofsky.net | 11/8/2007 6:47:50 PM

    Ops, I hit Send too soon. I wanted to add one caveat, the commercial with the pilot is one of the few commercials on TV from any company, for any product, that I hate so much that it actually makes me angry when I see it. I pray I never fly on an airline where the pilot relies on his phone to look up the weather on the web to make the decision to take off or not! "Houston, we have a problem!"

  1. 43  Alan Lepofsky http://www.alanlepofsky.net | 11/8/2007 6:49:51 PM

    Ok, so we now have @11,16,24,33,34, and 38 talking about recent migrations from Exchange to Domino. Can you all please work with either you account team, partner, Ed, myself, I don't care... but let's turn these scenarios into references.

  1. 44  Henry Ferlauto http://www.geniusinside.com | 11/8/2007 7:09:43 PM

    @41 - Great, now go make some TV commercials! :)

    @42 - I don't read that much into the pilot ad. The tower and the dispatchers have the "real" weather forecast. I look at this way, he was able to take action with the use of "product x" and that action lead to a positive result.

    All of the other iPhone ads have the exact same format. That's the key takeaway.

  1. 45  Henry Ferlauto http://www.geniusinside.com | 11/8/2007 10:21:29 PM

    Addenda...

    Alan - Please watch this Sametime demo.... { Link }

    It's very slickly produced, and very professional, but it's very "old" in my opinion.

    It has four sections (Intro, Opportunity, Win, Learn More). It runs several minutes and it's in the third person.

    e.g. Announcer with deep voice says, "Fred called Mary because the sales order isn't going to make it..."

    It also just spews technical jargon for the first couple of minutes in the intro section.

    Also lots of stock clip art.

    While everything in the message is quite realistic, it has as much emotion as a cinder block. It will not connect with anyone. And remember, a lot of Lotus' perception problem is emotional baggage.

    As Mike Rhodin has said one a few occasions, IBM needs to prove that they make "cool" software. The demo does not match the stated goal.

    The message (in this case, "Lotus Sametime saves the day") could easily be a 30 or 60 second "iPhone like" television ad.

  1. 46  Eric Lohry http://www.ericlohry.com | 11/9/2007 12:19:26 AM

    @45 God forbid I would actually agree with Henry, but he hit the nail on this one. Sametime is a lot "cooler" than the video portrays. Get out of geeksville. The "decision maker" isn't always the CEO; sometimes its the USERS who demand something. Market to them.

    @18 and "consumerism". We bought cc:Mail in a "shrinkwrap" at a store a gazillion years ago. Never looked back, but that was the first purchase.

  1. 47  David Bell  | 11/9/2007 12:49:08 AM

    @4 - "nobody gets sacked for buying Microsoft" - for a new solution maybe not, but for wasting shareholders money in futile exercises like migrating to Exchange because they feel like it, then its about time people were.

  1. 48  Gary Grant  | 11/9/2007 3:29:40 AM

    For complex IT, few non-geeks really understand the difference between products. They often figure if everyone else is buying product X, it must be the best one for them as well (for good reason in many cases...). The perceived reality of what everyone else is doing is therefore a major factor in the purchase decision.

    Perhaps IBM could do some market research. Ask 500 non-technical C level executives from a selection of companies of varied size just one question.

    "what % of worldwide corporate email do you believe is based on Microsoft Exchange or other Microsoft technologies".

    If the answer really is that everyone thinks the world has gone or is going Microsoft for email, then I suggest some marketing focused on changing that single mis-conception.

    One the other hand, if enough of the researched execs reckon it's divided market, then there is no sense in worrying about dodgy market share stats because the generally perceived reality does in fact reflect the actual reality.

  1. 49  Greg Wojcicki  | 11/9/2007 6:09:30 AM

    Remember the famous quote by Benjamin Disraeli...“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

  1. 50  Kevin  | 11/9/2007 10:04:44 AM

    I also love the spin that gets attached to these Domino to Exchange migrations. For our branch, they say we are getting "significant feature enhancements" with the migration.

    I have no clue what those are supposed to be, although I suspect they refer to BES & web access, both of which could have been deployed under Domino.

    Henry, I totally agree with your assessment. A few to the point, real life scenario consumer marketed ideas might just work.

    Relating the technology to the consumer level is what happened with the "everyone uses Outlook at home" argument, and it worked wonders for Microsoft.

  1. 51  David Vasta http://www.iSeriesAddict.com | 11/9/2007 12:33:14 PM

    @42 - Allen - I said the same thing first time I saw it too. You mean to tell me the 15 million dollar weather radar is not as nice as the iPhone.....let me off the damn plane!

  1. 52  David Vasta http://www.iSeriesAddict.com | 11/9/2007 12:35:14 PM

    As for the marketing of Notes 8. Make it new shinny and make the adds fun, like a cheesy info-merchial. You could even hire that Oxy Clean guy. Lotus 8 - BAM! It's just that good!

    That would be so much fun!

  1. 53  Drew Ingersoll  | 11/9/2007 1:08:17 PM

    @51/42 - actually he is looking at destinations weather as he has been put on ground hold - he see's the weather clear up in destination and forces tower to let him go earlier rather than waiting for ground hold clearance from destination.

    My Ad would be

    Some IT geek guys sitting around talking about former employee "Mary" - while talking about how nice and productive she was - you show clip(while they talk) of Mary who is all frumpy, braces, glasses working, maybe clumsy wearing a Notes 4.6/5.0 tshirt - guys also say how plain/homely she was. Then cut to guys at table and in walks "Mary" as a knockout (think hot model) wearing a nice tight Notes 8 shirt. The guys with jaws dropping exclaim "Mary?" "What happened?" - she answers "I've been upgraded, boys - and I need to check my inbox" - She then walks over to PC and says "Who wants to see my new interface" and as the guys jump up it is cut to a close up of the new Notes 8 screenshot with a title.

    Also do the same thing with a bunch of women talking about a guy - this guy wears a Domino shirt.

  1. 54  Steven Kennett  | 11/9/2007 2:04:32 PM

    Damn I'm picturing that hot model in a Notes 8 t-shirt, I really should get out more! Great idea though.

  1. 55  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 11/9/2007 2:24:25 PM

    Here's the shirt she can be wearing...

    { Link }

    (And in advance, "no I will not give you a larger version" and "no you can't put it on a T-shirt")

  1. 56  Henry Ferlauto http://www.geniusinside.com | 11/9/2007 2:50:50 PM

    @46 - Get used to it! :)

    @50 - You too are a wise man.

    @52 - Lotus needs to get David Barnes back into the Lotus fold. His original claim to fame was chief OS/2 evangelist back in the mid 90's. Best product presenter I have ever seen, period. Later on he transferred to the Lotus division, I think in the early R5 days. This was after a stint being evangelist for IBM's Via Voice software.

    But I believe he is still with IBM working from his home in Austin.

    Now that the end user experience is of such great importance and worth talking about, it's time to bring him back and put him on the trade show circuit.

    Here's his very brief profile on Wikipedia: { Link })

    I also think IBM needs to better utilize Majorie Tenzer (Vice President Marketing & Channels, Lotus Software IBM Software Group). She is one of the most energetic speakers Lotus has, and they do not use her nearly enough.

    I site the "Lotus Collaboration Summit" in NYC as case and point. She was there, but did not have a speaking role. A wasted opportunity to energize the faithful and the media which was in attendance in significant quantity.

  1. 57  Alan Lepofsky http://www.alanlepofsky.net | 11/9/2007 3:11:54 PM

    @56 - David mainly works on emerging technology such as QEDWiki. Here are some of his YouTube demos" { Link }

  1. 58  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 11/9/2007 3:32:08 PM

    David Barnes has a wikipedia entry and I don't? Color me jealous. Hmm, Alan, maybe you can write one for me and I can write one for you. That way we'd get around the wikipedia restriction on self-contributing, right? :-)

  1. 59  Henry Ferlauto http://www.geniusinside.com | 11/9/2007 5:09:08 PM

    @57 - You know I saw those a week or two ago and I didn't even recognize him it's been so long.

    He's a bit reserved here. Get him on a stage with a live audience of a few hundred or thousand people and let him ham it up.

    @58 - Are you sure you didn't date Carly Simon at some point in your past? :)

    Seriously, on a semi-related note, the videos David did for "Making Mashups" are what Lotus should be doing for demonstrating composite applications in Notes.

  1. 60  Lucas Williamson http://www.advancedclp.com | 11/13/2007 4:43:46 PM

    IMHO it really doesn't matter whether the stat is true or not. Since many people will blindly believe it (for whatever reason), what should IBM do about this?

    What does any company need to do to sway the balance in its own favour? PRIME TIME advertising telling EVERYONE a 'different truth'. Find the most positive number that is true for whatever audience, subset of companies, populations etc, and throw it into a PRIME TIME add to counter the MS stats. The type of people who believe the ridiculous stats also believe what they see on TV no matter what the message.

    I'm not talking about 'too clever' weird ads with some esoteric hidden message. I'm talking about straight forward tell it how it is advertising. I'm talking about BIG dollar PRIME time TV advertising(like Apple's series of ads in the last couple of years) which CxO's can't miss. You can't rely on them reading the right print magazine, or watching some cool uTube marketing effort.

    Hands up if you think Apple didn't benefit significantly from that exercise. Certainly in Australia, it appears that it has been a key contributor in the resurgence of Apple's. All of a sudden it was OK to own an Apple again (in fact it was cool)!

    Technology is like a fashion item. You have to have 'approval' from sociated to be wearing (using) it. i.e. It has to be cool and acceptable. Notes is far from being this at the moment. It is unfashionable and uncool. IBM needs to rebuild the brand and make it 'OK' for people to be associated with again.

    Much of IBM still seems to be stuck in an age where they think features and capability will win the hearts of CxO's. More likely it is:

    a) Whatever other people tell them is the "real" truth

    b) Whatever their user's claim to want the most (which is linked to the 'fashion'

    c) Whatever lets them keep their job or not get yelled at

    Fashion and groupthink is a powerful enemy which must be overcome. Most people have the courage to be 'different'.

    Anyway, that's my 2 bits worth for what it's worth. Hope you've got a big advertising budget!!

  1. 61  Lucas Williamson http://www.advancedclp.com | 11/13/2007 4:45:29 PM

    Ooops.....should have been "Most people DON'T have the courage to be 'different'".

  1. 62  Kerr  | 11/14/2007 6:22:44 AM

    @58, No original research ;)

  1. 63  Cheyney Rushing http://www.healthylittleones.com | 11/14/2007 8:25:23 AM

    Maybe the sub-region was an area encompassed by 5th Street to the North, 7th Street to the South, with East and West boundaries Main St and Division Avenue respectively and 6 of the 7 companies *surveyed* in that 'sub-region' use Microsoft?