What to tell a CEO who wants to migrate off Notes?

There's been a lot of useful stuff published over the last few years about how to best counter the "Move to Microsoft" mantra that sometimes comes down from senior management. I figured it would be a Good Thing (TM) if all of that information was readily accessible from one place.




Filling the application with useful links is the hard part since I won't be writing much of this stuff myself. My emphasis is on providing links to other peoples work (with proper accreditation of course). If you've got some information you think should be available through this application then please send me a LINK (not the original material) via email: gdodge at bcd dot net dot au.


BTW I did consider writing this in XPages but code re-use won out over innovation and the whole box of dice wound up taking only a couple of hours to recode from an existing application. I'll look at making it look pretty further down the track.
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Microsoft to kill off Essential Business Server

CRN mentioned that Microsoft is ending the Essential Business Server product from June 30th this year. EBS hit the streets around the same time as Lotus Foundations was emerging from IBM's acquisition of Nitix. I slammed the product at the time for its hefty hardware requirements while still maintaining a (IIRC) 75 employee user cap for the installation.

I believe there is a great market for a small business server like Lotus Foundations but Microsoft clearly got it wrong with EBS.
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MS and Google struggle for the Hearts and Minds of IT resellers

I've blogged previously about the Conflict of Interest that arises when an IT reseller has an agency with two competing vendors. Here's part of an interview with Paul Cooper, director of emerging solutions,and Gerard Roberts, national cloud manager at SMS Technology that appeared in CRN. The topic of the interview was the decision by SMS - a long time Microsoft reseller - to begin selling Google products.

CRN: Do you ever pitch Google Apps and Microsoft Exchange to the one customer?

Cooper: We won't do that. We would make a decision for the client and go in with one or the other. We wouldn't put ourselves in the position of doing a bakeoff.

Roberts: If we're engaging at a strategic level where we are helping them put their roadmap forward, then we would possibly encounter that situation. But I think if that would be the case we would be above the line and wouldn't be eligible to do the implementation.

It would be seen that we would have a conflict of interest in the decision.

So my questions to these gentlemen - who I'm sure are likable chaps - are:

• What would they say to Microsoft if SMS decided to pitch Google to a client who is currently using MS software which was sold to them by SMS?

• Is Microsoft supposed to walk away from trying to rescue their client?

• Would they be upset if Microsoft introduced another MS Partner to that client?

• How do they justify the statement 'We would make a decision for the client....'. Isn't the client supposed to be the one making the decisions based on information provided by the resellers?

I think that Microsoft (and Google and IBM and Oracle etc.) are entitled to ask for loyalty from their resellers and as far as I can see SMS is falling far short of that mark.
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Why does the Microsoft Pot call the Lotus Kettle 'Black'?

The ZDNet Q&A with Alistair Rennie was good, but an interesting marketing point was buried in the interviewer's summary:

"For many of us, Lotus is viewed as an older brand that was popular in the 1990s. For the foreseeable future, you’ll see enterprises with Microsoft Office as well as various alternatives. IBM’s task is to make sure Lotus is always in the conversation as the Google Apps and Docs and Microsoft scrum intensifies."

I know the Redmond Mafia has done an enormous amount of work over the years to paint Lotus Notes as a 'legacy' product, and a lot of the Microsoft Mud has stuck. But if Notes (first released in 1989) is legacy software then what about...

• Microsoft Word first released in 1983 – six years before Notes
• Microsoft Windows and Excel first released in 1985 – four years before Notes
• Unix was created in 1969 – twenty years before Notes
• Microsoft Exchange 4.0 released in 1996 – fourteen years ago (I well remember the Microsoft verbal gymnastics of that era regarding the 'completely new' Exchange product which somehow was entitled to inherit its version number from the recently superseded Microsoft Mail 3...)
  

I'm not suggesting that IBM/Lotus get into 'tit-for-tat' negative marketing, but surely Microsoft's own product history allows IBM/Lotus an ethical and accurate advertising counterpunch to show that Longevity is not equivalent to Legacy.
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Microsoft takes one on the chin - I bet that hurt!

As of last night the US290 million patent infringement judgment against Microsoft has been reaffirmed and the injunction that bars the company from selling current versions of its MS Word software has been reinstated. This also applies to copies of Microsoft Office because they include Microsoft Word as a component of that software suite.

After the initial adverse judgment in August, Microsoft had persuaded the Federal Appeals Court to stay the injunction while it heard the appeal. Now the appeal has been heard and the Federal Court has affirmed the original judgment.

This is going to provide some interesting gossip over the Christmas break.

There's still time to buy your loved ones a copy of MS Word for Christmas. The injunction doesn't take effect until 11th January 2010.
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Putting the Microsoft Cart before the Lotus Horse

Ed Brill and Thomas Duff have already commented about Microsoft's suggestion of 'discarding' applications that aren't completely supported by Windows 7 or, as Microsoft's Norm Judah puts it...

“There’s also the question as to whether customers really need an (incompatible) application,”

IMHO any Operating System is only useful insofar as it facilitates a users interactions with their chosen software applications which drive their business. If Windows 7 is incapable of supporting those existing applications for a business then it is Windows 7 that is incompatible and should be discarded. After all, a computer with a shiny new operating system which won't run your chosen applications is like the proverbial chocolate teapot.

I probably wouldn't have blogged on this issue except this example of Microsoft's approach to marketing their shiny new technology bought the phrase 'Big Lie' to mind, and while googling that term I came across the following description of ... well, you can guess who (the underlining is mine):

"His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it".

If Bleeding Yellow meant I had to behave like that then I'd want a blood transfusion ... I guess the standards are different in Redmond.
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No more Mister Nice Guy

We've had an interesting 24 hours with the CMSWatch saga since Carl Tyler first broke the story about the Adriaan Bloem's assertion that IBM was phasing out Notes.

Adriaans response was completely inadequate - he complained that when he wrote 'fact', people thought he meant a 'fact' when actually he didn't. Then his colleague wrote a weasel word retraction claiming that Adriaan 'mis-spoke' when the truth was that Adriaan just didn't bother to check the truth. Now (in comment 13 of Carl's original post) Adriaan is asking if he can borrow a VM Image of Notes to get some experience with the product.

So how can CMSWatch consider themselves competent to write and sell IT industry reports when they have such an enormous chasm in their staff's education. These guys position themselves as vendor-neutral technology experts (I quote from their website: "CMS Watch™ evaluates content-oriented technologies, publishing head-to-head comparative reviews of leading solutions."), yet they seem to have paper-thin technical expertise with regard to Sharepoint's biggest competitor and (apparently) don't have any in-house Notes resources who can help sort out Adriaan's confusion.

So well done Carl for putting CMSWatch on the spot so they could get the caning they so richly deserved. It may not change their product bias but it will make them think twice the next time they want to regurgitate the old Microsoft mantras. I suggest the same 'Boots And All' treatment is applied to any other professional publishers who take the same shortcuts. NOTE: I do not condone abuse or other unprofessional behavior - I am talking about flooding offenders with accurate comments to show where they are wrong and not putting up with weasel word replies.

No more Mister Nice Guy!

OK... OK... the Horse is dead. I'll stop flogging it.


EDIT: The intrepid Michael Sampson has pointed out to me the difference between CMSWire and CMSWatch.

• CMSwatch is the analyst house who penned the Sharepoint Report and also hosted the writings of Adriaan Bloem.

• CMSWire is a totally different organization founded by Brice Dunwoodie.

I have, at times, confused the two - mea culpa. I apologize to CMSWire for my mistake.
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The CMSWatch Emperor has no Clothes

Carl Tyler set the cats among the pigeons when he blogged about CMSWatch's article on 'The Difference between SharePoint and Lotus Notes'. The original CMS post had stated

" ... the fact that IBM is slowly phasing out Domino in favor of newer platforms ... "

and they were quickly smothered by a plethora of Yellowverse comments deriding their lack of knowledge. CMSWatch quickly backpedalled and admitted that they just 'mis-spoke', however it was interesting that it wasn't the original author who issued the retraction and apology (providing you accept that using the weasel word 'mis-spoke' is actually an apology).

So do you think those antics are good enough for a professional advisory service? Most of us get paid nothing for our blogs and that's a fair wage. Now and again one of us generates something of real value (Declan's X-Pages tutorials come to mind as does every second or third post from Nathan Freeman) but the majority of PlanetLotus feeds are just the day-to-day technical soap operas of a bunch of us IT folk - and that's fine by me.

However these CMSWatch people expect you to pay for their opinions. They will sell you an intranet site licence for all of their reports for a cool $16,000 per year or only $950 if you just want to read the Basic Sharepoint Report. But how the heck can their Sharepoint report be of any value when they obviously know so little about the main competitor to Sharepoint?

The list of people featured on their webpage who recommend the Sharepoint report made for interesting reading:

• Barb Mosher, (Senior Editor, CMSWire.com ) ... would she be the person who reviews their work for publication under the CMSxxx brand? If so, then her comments do not constitute an independent review.
• Hugh McKellar, (Editor, KMWorld Magazine ) ... who had just held a joint webinar with CMSWorld about Sharepoint so there is an existing commercial relationship with that reviewer.
• Two quotes each from Michael Sampson ( President, The Michael Sampson Company Ltd) and Paul Culmsee, (IT Consultant, Clever Workaround) ... doubtless they are highly skilled people but their respective websites show that both of them are one-man band consulting outfits who sell Sharepoint consulting services, so once again we don't see evidence of independent review.

There were two other endorsements that I didn't check beyond the ten second scrutiny I gave to the people listed above, but when you combine their demonstrated lack of knowledge about Notes/Domino with the thinness of the Sharepoint Report reviewer's credentials then IMHO CMSWatch have a looooooooooong way to go before they can be taken seriously as 'impartial reviewers' in the collaboration space. These guys seem like Sharepoint Fellow-Travellers who just jumped aboard the 'Let's-bash-Notes' wagon before checking their facts. The problem is, people are probably buying and reading and believing their stuff these guys write.

'mis-spoke' ... what a great word!
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Is Symphony losing the 'hearts and minds' battle?

I use either Notes or Symphony for all of my business doc needs and I'm a firm believer that Symphony is a good investment for IBM and for users. The big problem I see for the product is that it seems to be marginalized by the reviewers. Look at this review by Infoworld which looks at the ongoing battle between Microsoft Office and Google Apps - not a mention of Symphony anywhere in the article.

I know that the current Google/Microsoft war for Apps and OS is sexier than the (yawn) ongoing IBM/Microsoft 100 Years War over email but use awareness is the name of today's game and IBM marketing needs to work harder and smarter to stay in the battle. Maybe if IBM followed Google's lead and provided a competitor to Windows and then put some marketing dollars behind it...
COUGHLotusFoundationsServerCOUGH...

No, I'm just dreaming...

Yes... I know about the 'Lotus Knows' campaign. That's a different type of marketing investment compared to getting the Symphony name into these product-specific reviews done by industry analysts.
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Will Domino R8.51 run on Windows Server 2008 R2?

A customer wants to run Domino R8.51 on Windows Server 2008 R2 but that version of Windows Server isn't listed as a supported OS. I'm sure the answer is that it runs OK, but can someone point out an IBM document that approves of that configuration?

A customer wants to know...
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There's just one catch ...

I normally stay away from Infoworld. Their technique of splitting a short article across multiple pages to force you into viewing 3-4 times as many ads as other web sites is a pain in the butt and I am also mildly disgusted when IT publications use pop-up ads. Sure they get some money for it but it puts them in the same classification as websites for Acai berry weight-loss treatments. So these days when I choose to read an article in Infoworld I just select the print button and read through the straight text without the ads. But I digress ...

I was reading Infoworld's review of Microsoft's new web-based application suite which they will be throwing into the ring against Google Docs and IBM Symphony, and this line caught my eye:

But there must be a catch, right? Sure, and it's a doozy: Microsoft's applications don't really work. During the Technical Preview, documents imported into the online versions of Word and PowerPoint are read-only.

I think that line sums up the entire Microsoft marketing strategy since they moved away from their core Windows and Office strategy: "Sure we have products that we position against Notes / Java / Mozilla / Internet Search / Google Docs / any other new market, but they don't really work (unless you let Microsoft provide the definition of 'Work')",

Microsoft software: Just say No.

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All your viruses belong Microsoft... and your personal information also.

It sounds too good to be true. The Evil Empire has repented of its ways and is actually giving something for FREE to the IT community from which it has drained so many billions of dollars over the last few decades. Step right up folks and download your free virus scanner guaranteed to totally screw up Norton's and Symantec's cash flow for the next few years until they go out of business.


Oh... and the fine print gives Microsoft the right to harvest and review all of the virus related information on your computer or, with Advanced Membership, possibly even your personal information. Ummm... it looks like they left off the option to choose to send NO information back to Microsoft.


>

Well, at least they gave it a suitable name - "Microsoft Spynet".

Whoever said there is no truth in advertising?
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London Stock Exchange rejects Microsoft

Whenever I see a foreign language story like Albert Buendia's post on the Microsoft:FAIL at the London Stock Exchange, I reach for the handy Google Translate button to read the English Language version.

Give it a try and see what the rest of the world is thinking.
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Microsoft wins the right to keep selling MS Word

The US Court of Appeals has granted Microsoft's request to put off an injunction that could have forced it to stop selling Office Word as of October 10.

While I have no particular love for Microsoft I do think this is the right decision because if Microsoft win the final appeal then their business will not have been harmed by the court delay while if i4i win the case then they can just collect another few hundred million dollars in damages.

Neither result will affect the amount I pay on my mortgage so my interest is academic at most.
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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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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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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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OT: Microsoft 's uncertainty about its financial future

For my last post I dipped into Microsoft.com to check on their earnings report for Q2 and on the way out I noticed that Microsoft had put some caveats on their earnings forecast. Now there's nothing wrong with doing that - it makes perfect sense to tell readers what challenges the company faces - but I was intrigued by the tone of those caveats. Here's the actual text:

Actual results could differ materially because of factors such as:

• challenges to Microsoft’s business model;
• intense competition in all of Microsoft’s markets;
• Microsoft’s continued ability to protect its intellectual property rights;
• claims that Microsoft has infringed the intellectual property rights of others;
• the possibility of unauthorized disclosure of significant portions of Microsoft’s source code;
• actual or perceived security vulnerabilities in Microsoft products that could reduce revenue or lead to liability;
• government litigation and regulation affecting how Microsoft designs and markets its products;
• Microsoft’s ability to attract and retain talented employees;
• delays in product development and related product release schedules;
• significant business investments that may not gain customer acceptance and produce offsetting increases in revenue;
• unfavorable changes in general economic conditions, disruption of our partner networks or sales channels, or the availability of credit that affect the value of our investment portfolio or demand for Microsoft’s products and services;
• adverse results in legal disputes;
• unanticipated tax liabilities;
• quality or supply problems in Microsoft’s consumer hardware or other vertically integrated hardware and software products;
• impairment of goodwill or amortizable intangible assets causing a charge to earnings;
• exposure to increased economic and regulatory uncertainties from operating a global business;
• geopolitical conditions, natural disaster, cyberattack or other catastrophic events disrupting Microsoft’s business;
• acquisitions and joint ventures that adversely affect the business;
• improper disclosure of personal data could result in liability and harm to Microsoft’s reputation; and
• outages and disruptions of online services if Microsoft fails to maintain an adequate operations infrastructure.

Most of these seem reasonable but there were some points that seemed just a little... well... paranoid:

• Microsoft’s continued ability to protect its intellectual property rights;
• claims that Microsoft has infringed the intellectual property rights of others;
• government litigation and regulation affecting how Microsoft designs and markets its products;
• adverse results in legal disputes;
• unanticipated tax liabilities;

Why would there be a problem here if Microsoft was behaving as a good corporate citizen? Each of these points seems to operate on the unspoken principle that Microsoft might be charged and convicted of unlawful behavior. So pick a theory:

1. Microsoft has no faith in the legal system and is concerned they will pay a large financial penalty as part of an Unjust and Unfair decision.
2. Microsoft has a lot of faith in the legal system and is concerned they will pay a large financial penalty as part of a Just and Fair decision.
3. Microsoft is just hedging its bets and avoiding all responsibility for predicting their own revenue.

I don't know the answer for sure, but I'm leaning towards Number 2.
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OT: Micro revenues in a Softening Market.

I see that Microsoft revenue for Q2 dropped 17% year on year and net income dropped 29%. I think it's great that Microsoft will need to pull in its financial horns for a while but my reasoning may differ from the more extreme pockets of the Yellowverse.

What I'm hoping for is that Microsoft will now refocus on creating products that generate revenue rather than just running spoiler campaigns to screw up the rest of the market such as Notes Compete and MS Foundation (without an 's') Server.

I believe all parts of the IT market are well served by having two leaders fighting it out for market share. Any time that a company (IBM or Microsoft or anyone else) comes near to achieving total domination in one segment then innovation and price competitiveness take a back seat to monopolistic behavior.

IBM/Lotus and Microsoft will both be around in the messaging and collaboration market for many years to come and I hope they both enjoy a healthy market share during that time. The competition should help keep both of them honest - although I admit that strategy hasn't been working too well on the Microsoft side of the fence.

The only problem with this scenario is that it condemns c. 40% of system admins to working with MS Exchange and I'm not sure that's something I should wish for. Bad Karma and all that.

Oh well, better them than me :)
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OT: Has Bing lost its Bling?

When Microsoft Bing was released I decided that I would set aside my instinctive avoidance of all things Evil and so I reset my home page from Google to Bing. After all, my major dislike for Microsoft is based on their abuse of their monopoly power (...and their marketing lies and their bad operating system and their Rip-and-Replace contempt for the customer etc. etc. but lets stick with abuse of monopoly power at the moment). Therefore it's a natural progression for me to now turn against the Google near-monopoly on Search and support the underdog.

Before you ask, I've just never felt good with Yahoo so they never got a chance in my choice of Search providers.

I'm now struggling with the temptation to reverse my decision. The problem is that Bing just doesn't have the reach of Google and when you're looking for esoteric technical information sometimes you're lucky to get half a dozen hits. Over the last few weeks I've found myself searching on Bing and then checking the results on Google... and Google invariably delivers more hits. I know that my personal strategy isn't going to count for zip in determining search market share and it's certainly costing me billable time to double check my results.

Maybe Bing has a search filter that is set to randomly ignore sites that talk about Lotus software. Maybe they just need to send out more bots. Either way, I think I'll be heading back to Google for a couple of months and give Bing a chance to build some bigger indexes.

Does anyone else use Bing to search for technical info? How do you find it compares to Google?
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