Notes – I wouldn't sell it like that

One of the requirements of my role is that I need to be independent in my technology arena – which happens to include the collaboration technology arena. I get involved in all sorts of discussions with people who are assessing their collaborative working environment, mostly with large organisation. Every now and then we have a discussion about the relative merits of the two major players in the arena Microsoft and IBM. As such I try to keep up to date with the individual technology arenas and customers feeling about them.

Today I read through Ed Brill’s presentation on “My Boss Loves Microsoft – where does that leave Lotus?” I have seen most of the arguments before a hundred times and to be honest – they don’t carry any weight with anyone I have ever talked to. I’m assuming that because this session is a popular re-run people are actually using these arguments but it’s not the reality I am living in.

These are the places where my experience contradicts Ed’s.

• Influential people hate the Notes client, and they are the people who count. They are communication people not application people as such they couldn’t give a stuff about the applications. The counter argument that you can use DAMO doesn’t meet with a positive response. Most of these people tried it in earlier iterations when to be honest it sucked. The applications that they care about are the ones that they want to layer on-top to make their communication experience better, and their experience is that this is easier in Outlook.
• The virus and security discussions doesn’t hold water either because they all know someone who is running Exchange successfully – “If my mate John at XYZ corporation can do it why can’t you”.
• Hitting Microsoft with analysts reports, etc. just sounds like ‘sour-grapes’. I’ve heard it said to me “Microsoft must have a story that works because others are doing it.” Some of the technical spin in the presentation make this worse. Compare the two slides titled “Want a Full Microsoft Solution for Real-Time Communications” and “”Want a Full IBM Solution for Real-Time Communications” there are real differences in what the two solutions require, but adding Office 2003 SP2 & Outlook 2003 as separate lines and SharePoint Portal Server is just shoddy.
• What is with IBM and Active Directory like it’s something that people either don’t already have or something that is  a problem to them. Everyone already has an Active Directory the lack of integration between it and the Notes directory is a problem that IBM should be encouraging people to resolve, not ignoring it as an issue.
• The market is still very confused by IBM’s strategy. The presentation itself demonstrates this. At one point it says all you need is Sametime, Domino and Notes and then goes on to talk about Websphere and Workplace. They are particularly unsure where they stand with applications. I know what applications I have today but where should I develop them in the future. For whatever reason Notes is not regarded as today’s platform for development and everything already developed is regarded as ‘expensive legacy which is out of control.
• I wouldn’t talk to much about Microsoft’s delayed/postponed/cancelled move to SQL Server too much because the stated move to DB2 isn’t going to well.
• No-one ever talks to me about disk savings from Single Instance Storage.

No if it was me I would focus where this presentation doesn’t. I would focus on resolving these perceptions. I would accept that Notes is not the best client for communicators and say what I was going to do to make it the best client for them. By best I mean that I would focus on the communication management methodologies, like GTD, and ensure that Notes is significantly faster than Outlook when the chosen methodology is being used.

I would set a clear direction for application development so that businesses can understand that the absolutely best development environments are available from IBM and that together these environments make a compelling case. AN example of the issue – I want to develop an application to store some documents – what is the best way to do that today. I could develop in WebSphere, in Notes, in Quickplace, etc..

I would focus on Microsoft’s Achilles heals – scalability, availability and TCO. They haven’t got these issues done by any means. The Domino story is far cleaner.

I would communicate the integrate collaboration story in a much cleaner way. I would talk about the collaboration scenarios and demonstrate how easy they are. I would then work with partners and customers to make sure that they are implemented in the most efficient way removing every single blockage to the initiation of collaboration. Make sure that people understand the importance of each feature in the integrated set and give it the appropriate amount of time. Focus on the end-user much, much more.