If its good enough for Sherlock Holmes...

"Still learning at the same old university" was the response given by Sherlock Holmes when Inspector Lestrade asked him why he was investigating a minor crime, and I think the same credo holds true for all of us who spent the time to promote, demote and otherwise comment on the ideas found at the recently concluded Lotus IdeaJam.

In the end I only added one idea (since my other ideas had been already added by other people) but I had a great time promoting and demoting other peoples ideas. The best part was that along the way I got a close look at what other consultants/customers/Loti were thinking. I did waste some time reading misplaced feature requests (wrong Jam guys... this one was for strategy) but even those posts helped me become more aware of what is happening in the Yellowverse.

Of course there were the inevitable wankers (can I say that here? I guess I'll find out) who only wanted to tell the world about their own Notes application and why it should be bundled with every Domino server licence sold by Lotus, but even after automatically demoting each of those posts I still found myself incredibly... well... better educated I guess.

Thanks Lotus, for asking our opinion and a warm fuzzy hug to everyone who voted.


PS: I think Eric Mack's GTD is getting close to being a candidate for auto-bundling with Notes/Domino licences but not until he fixes the problems with Domino Web Access.

PPS: A Knighthood for Ed Brill... sheesh... what'll they think of next?
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Why does IBM allow Lotus to behave like this?

Everyone who works with Lotus software has the right to expect strict corporate control from IBM but it looks like the blue-suited executives are just turning a blind eye to this problem. Speaking personally, I am really worried at some of the suggestions that are getting airtime over at IdeaJam. Hey, don't get me wrong... there's lots of good stuff too, but some of the ideas are just plain dumb and its just possible that Lotus management might take those ideas seriously.

Thankfully Ideajam also gives visitors the ability to vote against an idea. Even if you have no ideas of your own to throw into the pot, get your butt over there and vote against some of the stupid stuff that people are suggesting:

• A knighthood for Ed Brill....
• Change the Lotus logo to a picture of Bhudda...
• Move Lotus Corporation to the Isle of Man as a tax shelter...
• Don't sell Lotus software south of the Mason-Dixon line...
• Revoke the US Declaration of Independence (that one came from somewhere in England)...
  
• Re-release Lotus 1-2-3 as a commemorative edition...

... the list goes on and on. Unfortunately it seems that IBM is standing back and letting this event run for the full 72 hours so it looks like its up to us to fix the problem. If you want to protect Lotus Management from stupid ideas then you know what to do. Click here then Vote early and Vote often.

I know I have!
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OT: IBM's plan to silence Business Partners

I've figured out IBM's nefarious plan. By golly, they're a sneaky bunch and they even got Ed Brill to leave the country while they did it. Now Ed can claim 'plausible deniability' of the whole scheme on the grounds that he was on the other side of the planet at the time.

It's obvious when you think about it. They put up this IdeaJam web site and then invite all IBM/Lotus Business Partners to add their two cents worth during a 72 hour blitz. Now imagine what happens next week when you call up your Lotus rep to have your regular Weekly Whinge about All Things Yellow. Your rep will just read off the following prepared statement currently being distributed to all Loti:

"Your call is important to us. Unfortunately the Lotus feedback line has closed for 2009 and no further correspondence will be entered into. Please hold on to your thought until August 2010 when the lines will be reopened for another 72 hours. Have a nice day."

Don't let IBM get away with it! Get over to IdeaJam right now and add your years worth of marketing thoughts and helpful suggestions before they close the phones.

BTW: I've heard that Ed Brill is buying a beer for everyone who registers at Idea Jam. I'll check out that theory at the Sydney Lotus User Group meeting on Monday night.
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How big is the largest company without email?

I was reading yet another article about who owns what percentage of the Fortune 500 email market and I started to wonder "What is the size of the largest company (measured by Full-Time Employees) without an email system?". Obviously blue-collar manufacturing or shop-front retail companies have an advantage here but they still require administration staff and those employees all need to communicate. I'm looking for a company that never moved beyond WordPerfect 3 and Lotus 1-2-3 R2.01 and probably never will. Maybe they (gasp!) never even bought computers?

Lets set some ground rules here. The organization must be:

1. a registered-for-profit entity (charities have different dynamics and lots of unpaid workers).
2. have been in business for at least two years.
3. not a company dedicated to proving some email-replacement technology eg twitter
4. not a single store retail shop eg. a local shoe store

You don't need to name names, but if you nominate a company you must be able to back up your nomination with information about how their staff communicate and co-ordinate.

Any guesses what the magic number is? I'm guessing we'll top out somewhere between 20 to 30 but I really don't know.

BTW for the purpose of this post Microsoft Exchange DOES count as an email system.
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OT: Lotus IdeaJam on the Australian Plan

"On August 19 at 8:00 am EDT US" is fairly meaningless to the rest of the world. For those of us living in eastern Australia (and that includes Ed Brill for the next few days):

The IdeaJam will open: Wednesday, August 19th at 10:00PM AEST
The IdeaJam will close: Saturday, August 22nd at 10:00PM AEST

Register now at http://lotusknows.ideajam.net/register
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OT: Passwords passwords everywhere...

For a while I used the same password everywhere except for access to financial records but even that got too difficult to co-ordinate when I accessed sites that made you change your password on a regular basis. Now I need to keep my passwords in a file and as of two minutes ago I have 63 current passwords stored in that file. This is getting ridiculous!

So how many passwords do you have and how do you keep track of them?

BTW: I'm not going to tell you what my password file is called or where it's located or what piece of obsolete software I need to use to read that file but I will tell you that it doesn't have a .doc extension and it doesn't show up in 'Recent Documents'.
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OT: When is an IBM Business Partner not a real Partner?

What is your definition of a Business Partner? There are some IT shops who have 'Business Partner' relationships with both IBM and Microsoft... and maybe Google and a couple of other technology providers who also play in the Notes/Domino space.

There's nothing illegal in doing that but I suggest that IT shops who sell both Notes/Domino and MS Exchange/Sharepoint are not worthy of being called 'IBM/Lotus Business Partners'. Call them resellers if you like but I don't see how someone can be your Business Partner and yet still sell your competitor's product.

These schizophrenic resellers may say they are providing a choice for their customers and that they run two independent consulting practices just like accounting firms run separate auditing, tax and compliance divisions but IMHO that's just a crock. Accounting firms can certainly cross-sell services but winning a client for your Audit division doesn't mean that you automatically lose that client for your Compliance division. On the other hand, winning a sale for Exchange is a direct hit to your Notes license revenue and a slap in the face for IBM.

For my part, I'm an IBM/Lotus Business Partner and I won't ever wave a Microsoft Exchange/Sharepoint or Google GAPE flag. I tell my customers that fact up front so they know where I stand. Maybe I'm missing an additional revenue stream by not hedging my bets but I probably sleep better at nights.

And IBM knows that whenever they introduce me to a client they don't risk that I'll be upgrading that client to a competitor's products simply because I can make some short-term money selling additional licenses and even more long-term money supporting a consulting-intensive product.

So where do you stand? Are you an IBM/Lotus Partner or just a reseller?
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Foundations: Revisiting a Previous Post

DISCLAIMER: I've never met Bob Baehr nor do I have shares in his company. The only financial relationship we have is a promise to buy each other a beer if I ever get back to Lotussphere (but with a 4 yo son and a daughter due in November that dream is still a few years away)

I blogged about Bob Baehr's Advanced Web Configuration for Foundations! in a previous post but I need to talk about it again. At the risk of stating the obvious, I do a lot of thinking about Lotus Foundations Server and I really think that Bob's product has permanently changed the playing field for that product. I think it's great that Lotus includes Apache Web Server in the Foundations product but I have no desire to learn that product. There's only so many hours in the day for soaking up new technologies and Apache Web Server is way down on my list somewhere between learning ADA and conquering the Zune API.

So although I had previously accepted that I would never fully exploit the Apache web interface of Foundations I now find myself using Domino Designer to quickly and easily code multiple web sites for my Foundations server. If you use Lotus Foundations Server then go visit Bob's web site and have a look at what he has done with making Foundations support Notes databases as web sites.

Here's a second round of applause for a great product.
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OT: The Unfinished Symphony...

Hey IBM,

I went to your web page and clicked on the link to download Symphony 1.3 but only received an error message. Having dutifully filled in the form to report a broken link I figure I'm now entitled to complain in public.

Please fix the link.
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Methodology v. Advertising

Julia White (Director of Exchange Marketing at Microsoft) has been having a bad week. She was smacked down by Ed Brill regarding her overly creative use of statistics and now I'm going to do the same with her attempt to rewrite the laws of economics.


THE BACKGROUND:
Julia suggests...

"With Notes, the skills are dwindling and expensive. With SharePoint, they are booming and in-demand."

Julia's mantra is that companies are deserting Notes in droves so therefore the demand for the Notes skill set must be dropping rapidly. Classic supply and demand theory holds that price drops when there is an oversupply of goods and services - so if Notes skills are no longer in demand then the price paid for that service must drop. But Julia claims that Notes skills are expensive so either:

A) the supply of Notes skills is falling faster than the demand, or
B) she is talking out of her butt.

Since Lotus Notes has been around for around twenty years so there are plenty of people who have Notes skills in their resume. Even if some of them have been seduced by the Dark Side they have the experience to maintain existing Notes infrastructures so those skills are still available to the market. Hmmm... I think I'll go with Option B.

EDIT: There is always option C... the possibility that customers aren't deserting Notes and any decrease in available Notes jobs is caused by mature corporate infrastructures requiring fewer Notes administrators to manage the same environment after they have upgraded to R8.5.


THE QUESTION:
Julia claims that Sharepoint skills "... are booming and in-demand.", so the price of those 'in-demand' Sharepoint skills will be increasing which will drive up the cost of supporting that infrastructure. How can we reconcile that situation with her claim that Notes is more expensive than the comparable Microsoft solution?


THE ANSWER:
Julia acknowledges that Microsoft shops need two separate products (Exchange and Sharepoint) in order to play in the same ballpark as Notes but she relies on a survey about the cost of supporting an email infrastructure to make a cost comparison. So she includes Sharepoint as one of the components in the MS solution stack without adding in the costs of running that Sharepoint infrastructure. D'Oh!!! Who needs a methodology when you have an advertising budget?


I'll bet Julia used Excel to add up the numbers. I don't expect her to respond to this post. After all, the USA does have a constitutional provision against self-incrimination :)
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Lotus Foundations Server and IBM Partnerworld

Do any other IBM/Lotus Business Partners run their business on Lotus Foundations Server? If so, could you send me an email at gdodge at bcd dot net dot au. I've got a question about how Foundations is administered through IBM Partnerworld.

For everyone else, "Nothing to see here... move along... move along..."
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The missing piece of the Lotus Foundations puzzle

I suck at coding in HTML.

Sure I can do it, but with about the same efficiency as I have when typing on a Dvorak keyboard. It's not that I don't understand what HTML does but it uses this weird language that bears no resemblance to my native tongue of Forms, Fields and @functions.

So when I set up Lotus Foundations Server to run my office I left the Home Page alone for a couple of months until I finally forced myself to change it from the default and add some blurb about why I was better than all of the other Lotus Business Partners in Sydney. It took me about a day to code everything I wanted and I decided that I wasn't going to revisit that Page unless I moved offices and needed to update my company details.

Then a couple of weeks ago Bob Baehr pinged me with news about his new baby - Advanced Web Configuration for Foundations - and told me that he could make my Foundations Server work like a proper Domino Web server.

If you've worked with Foundations you'd know that by default your domain name points at your Apache Web server and shows a default Login page. It's a functional but somewhat uninspiring screen and it has no interface with your Domino environment. You can create a URL to a Notes database on your server eg: http://www.abc.com.au/data/myhomepage.nsf?Opendatabase , but that's rather ugly and I don't think many customers could be bothered to do that much typing. They'd much rather just type in http://www.abc.com.au and rely on your server to send them to your Notes-based Home Page.

Advanced Web Configuration for Foundations promises to let them do just that.

The product comes as a zipped 800k .pkg file that drops into your server's autoinstall folder. Although the software manual is fifteen pages long the installation process is so simple that I think Bob could have listed the instructions on a single page. Sure enough, the software installation process was over before I knew it. Click here, tick there, reboot the server and five minutes later my domain name was reading from a Notes database.

A regular native true-blue ODS-rated Form-View-and-Agent-enabled Notes database.

That's more than exciting - it's a whole d@rned revolution in the Lotus Foundations server space because now I don't need to dick around with text-based HTML. I can dust off my old NotesPortal.nsf and provide links for my visitors to get through to all of my other public access web-enabled databases. Lotus Foundations Server is now a viable upgrade path from a traditional Domino server for any SMB customer with a home-grown Domino web site.

You can check out Advanced Web Configuration for Foundations at http://www.bobbaehr.com

The downside is that I can't run my Apache server any more but on reflection I don't really see that as a downside. The standard Foundations Webconfig access screen still runs and that's all I need.

Now excuse me while I go and add another link to my Home Page using a Notes interface - the way nature intended it.
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The Microsoft Ministry of Truth

When Albert Einstein was confronted by a publication entitled "100 Scientists against Einstein" he replied quite succinctly, "If I had been wrong one scientist would have been enough."

When I am confronted with adjective-laden articles written in the style of Julia White's publication I think to myself, "If she was right, then the facts alone would have been enough"

"... costs and antiquated architecture of Lotus Notes and Domino."
"... complicated, proprietary Notes applications."

Puh-lease!!! Someone find me a bucket to laugh into. Alright, it's from last September and this type of marketing is nothing new from Microsoft but I had to comment on the sheer chutzpah of this comment:

"IBM may even respond with a press release announcing ‘new’ customers, who are, in most cases, simply deciding to keep Notes a bit longer."

I suppose I shouldn't laugh. After all, marketing your product by making kindergarten-logic unsupported statements like this is what got Hitler elected and it's all the rage in Iran where the current dictatorship is currently having a great time demonizing ( + imprisoning + torturing + killing) their opposition.

How can you reason with these people?
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