ZDNet Australia: IBM’s Lotus not dead yet
April 19 2010
Provocative headline and some assertions you and I might not agree with, but Longhaus's Peter Carr takes a look at the Australian market and trends/transitions in cloud computing:
Within this context, point victories within a holistic collaboration suite are no longer a basis for claiming market victories. For example, if one is to point a finger at the changing fortunes of Lotus for email, then based on our experience in the collaborative portal market of late, one must also point their finger at the changing fortunes of Microsoft through SharePoint.It's provocative (as Peter always is), but I think Peter raises some good points about opportunities and challenges. In case you all wonder whether I only want to read "happy talk", I don't. I'm also working on getting some more context specifically for the Aussie market...
While seemingly relinquishing their enterprise-direct position for email solutions in the Australian market to Microsoft, it appears that Lotus has found renewed energy in delivering the well-known collaboration brand not only on-demand direct from the cloud, but also through their well established partner-networks. And over the past few years Longhaus has increasingly seen the importance to Lotus of its IBM partner network whether through improved global programs or simply in the solid performance of other key IBM brands such as Domino and WebSphere in the back office.
Link: ZDNet Australia: IBM's Lotus not dead yet >
Post a Comment
- 2
Ben Poole http://benpoole.com | 4/20/2010 2:25:58 AM
Bruce, your take on Notes and Domino is very similar to the shape of the market here in the UK. But I think Carr's piece is pretty much spot-on: Notes might be relegated, but there are other Lotus offerings on the up (as they should be, given the level of investment they're getting from IBM!)
- 3
Palmi | 4/20/2010 2:54:18 AM
We (Iceland) also see some trend of IBM movemnt or lets say MS moveaway. let see what next 12 motnh will do.
- 4
GarryL | 4/20/2010 5:18:54 AM
@2 Agree about the UK. We use Notes but will be looking into Sharepoint 2010 as we are after a more team centric way of working (which both Quickr and Connections offer). The kicker difference really could be the BI and external data connectivity options direct into Sharepoint - correct me if I am wrong but neither IBM product offers this.
- 5
Giulio http://www.buzznotes.com.au | 4/20/2010 7:20:32 AM
Ed,
You might say he is provocative, but from over here in the trenches, I dare say he is spot on.
I know that IBM, (the big blue super-tanker that it is), is finally changing course in this remote part of the world. But the lack of action for the last few years around here has only made the task harder. Best of luck with turning things around.
- 6
David (The Notes Guy in Seattle) | 4/20/2010 1:34:42 PM
In whitewater kayaking we have a saying: "If you focus on the rock, you will hit it. You must focus on where you want to go, not on what you are trying to avoid."
The focus in this conversation seems to be on avoiding the death of Notes. Well remember what happened to the guy in the scene from Monty Python's movie from which this topic gets it's title? Right. They save him from a long and slow death by knocking him on the head (leaving viewers ROTFL). So why in any way, shape or form, would you want to associate your product with that quote?
Do successful sports teams focus on avoiding losing or do they focus on winning?
I say it's time to change your game plan. The new catch phrase should be taken from a different scene in the same movie, the one with the killer bunny: "I *warned* you, but did you listen to me? Oh, no, you *knew*, didn't you? Oh, Notes is just a harmless little *bunny*, isn't it?"
- 7
Andy Steven http://www.uptime100.com.au | 4/20/2010 4:59:23 PM
I work in Adelaide (Australia). It's dead here, not dying, last year I sold a few Foundations servers, but when you quote you are the lone voice it makes it very hard.
My estimate is in the last 2 years 80% of businesses have migrated to MS (I have names and numbers if you think this figure is high)
Work wise I have thrown in Notes, SBS is a very easy sell (shit product yes) but the irony is my internal Notes system gives me a massive advantage over my competition.
- 8
Tripp Black http://www.mindwatering.com | 4/20/2010 5:37:24 PM
@7
In the US, Notes isn't dead. There's hope. That said, we've personally seen 3 big conversion from Notes to MS lately. In each case, there was no real business case. It was a few IT folks who wanted Exchange and did what it took to get there. MS customers are well trained to expect $$$ each upgrade and that upgrades are rip-n-replace. Unless they try out a Linux OS or run Domino, they don't believe that either are superior and aren't willing to listen.
Very few of my Lotus customers need our help to upgrade Domino except for Sametime. It's still easy. Not true for SBS, we make money every upgrade, especially for each 32bit to 64bit 2003 to 2008 upgrade. There's incentive to keep the status quo because it's a gravy train. I may not enjoy the pain of a SBS 2003 to SBS 2008 upgrade, but the income during a recession is nice. So are those Exchange to Notes conversions. Those simple Notes apps always prove harder than expected to "migrate" to SharePoint than expected - especially if they use readers/authors field restrictions and a workflow.
- 9
peter b | 4/20/2010 7:54:50 PM
The article does seem more "accurate" than "provocative". (Though I hope it is provokes IBM)
The article is not all bad news though.
@5 Giulio, the supertanker analogy not only applies to IBM but to Notes customers also, especially government departments. Once they change their direction from one product to another it takes a lot of effort to get them back again.
I also am hoping for the best for IBM.
- 10
damian | 4/21/2010 5:16:36 PM
Lotus not dead "yet" I agree the article is a provocation.
That is OK because our current word is a big provocation ;-)
- 11
Samrat | 4/23/2010 1:20:20 AM
I agree @GarryL here in India too I have personally seen a big Giant lotus user moving out of application development from lotus because of BI and external data connectivity issues.
I am a Lotus Developer, and too feel the lack of external database connectivity smoothness in lotus. This may be a major point of consideration for customers when they decide upon new portal development.
But at any point of time Lotus has got many advantages over sharepoint.
(beside its cost and External DB connectivity capabilities)
Hope the best for Lotus. :-)
- 12
Rob Novak http://www.lotusrockstar.com | 4/23/2010 8:51:59 AM
@2 @11 I think I'm missing something - what about Domino (Quickr) or Connections (Portal) leads you to believe they have limitations when it comes to external database connectivity? You can obviously do just about anything with any back end. Is it the implementation or some kind of integration tooling in SP10 that makes you say this? And about BI - IBM has an entire suite of BI products and a dedicated consulting practice, so I don't understand what is lacking (unless it's clarity of the offerings!)
- 13
GarryL | 4/23/2010 1:53:32 PM
@12 With reference BI, yes there are several vendors who can provide you with these. The main point us that MS already own the worlds most used BI tool - Excel. By tying this into SharePoint 2010 (these services are called 'SharePoint Insights') they can provide company wide reporting & dashboarding at a much lower cost than the 'mainstream' vendors. Wow this sounds like a plug! The appeal here for many is that it is all 'baked in'. Rather neat I think.
Out of interest what are the IBM alternatives to PerformancePoint & Excel Services, Web parts, Status indicators etc?
I am not typically a massive MS fan, but Sharepoint 2010 is looking to be a strong platform for many business.
- 14
Lerxst | 4/23/2010 7:16:51 PM
I know a certain CEO of a startup IBM partner who looked at LotusLive. He had some troubles, partly because he'd upgraded to IE8. He ditched that effort because in his mind the Lotus solution was just broken. It took very little time for him to not even want to consider it any further.
So they were going to deploy Notes & Domino internally but would only have one person who couldn't spend 100% of their time on setting it up so they got antsy and went to GMail.
Then, the same CEO said you know what I want to use ConnectWise. Supposedly there's some integration with ConnectWise and Exchange that isn't available for any other platform. So guess where they're going now?
Several people have iPhone too, so that's become another point of "why not do hosted Exchange" since apparently they're the only way to do mail on iPhone. *sigh*
They'll probably deploy Sametime and the plugin to Outlook but that's assuming they set up a server for it in house.
SO here it is, Notes isn't losing because the technology is inferior to MS. It's more of here's a 3rd party app that the company wants, and they've been convinced that to do that they really should be on the vendor's hosted Exchange solution to get this "integration."
Notes, and Lotus in general isn't dead but more efforts need to be undertaken to amp up the initial impression of the package and understand that if you want to fix the usability argument then realistically one must step though an Outlook setup step by step and see how well (and poorly) that can go.
Sadly we have a hard road ahead no matter the spectacular work the Lotus team has done. There's great momentum in the product but really in the mail space it's going to be difficult.
For example, the auto setup option in Outlook is pretty cool.
As an Aussie, a Lotus Notes developer, and on the ground, I have seen the Lotus Market ebbing for about a year or so now. Two of the last four contracts were in institutions who considered Notes a legacy application to which they were shackled. No new development was taking place, only maintenance; and one of those two places were actively implementing Sharepoint. Another international company I used to contract through, a major player in the Canberra scene, is actively promoting Sharepoint to it's staff for the Canberra market. Funnily enough though they use Lotus Notes themselves; so they are responding to the IT mandarins in the federal government.
Lotus is still in key federal government departments however you have a feeling it's in the shadows; being maintained on the side lines. Hopefully it will pass.