Duffbert's Random Musings

1 - I've had a few customers now that have moved or are moving to this offering from Microsoft. Some are moving because it costs less than their Lotus Support renewal. Sure it will probably cost more in the future but right now, these customers who are hurting financially are see it as a cost saving.

This isn't new stuff to Microsoft either. Microsoft has been supporting millions of users with hotmail, MSN, live messenger etc. that's all serious volume experience that IBM doesn't have because they don't play in the consumer space the way the likes of Yahoo, Google and Microsoft do.

Right now, I don't think a customer can actually obtain a turnkey Notes/Sametime/Quickr hosted solution from IBM. It is my understanding Lotuslive is something different, with different email. IBM needs to get millions of users consumer SMB users onto LotusLive to show they can do it.

As you kind of imply, GSK isn't some rinky dink company that rushed into this decision. They spent a long time looking at options, they had Notes for email, they had Notes for apps, they had Sametime apps etc. they are moving to Microsoft that is something we should all worry about.

2 - In addition:
IBM needs to host both Notes and Domino applications to win this space, to enable their companies to continue with "Specialized Applications".

Ability to "plug-in" these applications for a company will be a big win.

3 - I am more worried about the anticipation that an Anti-Microsoft strategy does not have casualties.

4 - Well, in fairness Lotus has also had some large wins in the past 6 months or so. As for MS having large account hosting experience via hotmail, IBM has plenty of experience in the 100k+ seats arena.
It is definitely troubling to see a Notes shop the size of GSK make this move. It will be very interesting to see if any details emerge on this one.

5 - LotusLive is definitely NOT the solution for a GSK. It is geared towards smaller shops; it's more a carrier class offering than enterprise. I can't say much, but I was privy to some of the dealings at GSK on this, and they did their homework. As you can imagine, they are not paying the list price of $15/month/user for Online. IBM's Hosted Services would compete here, but that didn't win out, obviously. Sadly, neither did I. I was too late to the game to offer up any options. Microsoft was in a long time ago at the highest levels pitching this. In the end, the cost benefit (believe it if you want) was too good to pass up.

6 - @1... Yes, that's exactly what I was implying. I just don't carry out my thoughts too well at 5 am in the morning.

@2, @3, @4... I agree

@5... No argument from me, Mike. It's too easy for we in the Yellow Bubble to offer up the "they were stupid, Microsoft lied, etc..." excuses. Bottom line is... a very large Notes customer did analysis, and Microsoft had a more compelling solution for them at *some* level. Could be financial, could be technical, but regardless, they still switched. We may all still believe that the IBM/Lotus offering is the best technical solution, but Sony's Betamax proves that the best technical solution does not always win out in the end...

7 - This scenario sounds all too familiar where I work...80K seats possibly moving to hosted Exchange/Google Mail

8 - @4 on pure numbers, MS consumer hosting is going to have IBM beat by a long shot

But to bicker about numbers is missing the point. Microsoft has mindshare, IBM does not.

9 - @8... "Microsoft has mindshare, IBM does not". Dead on. You can't have your solution considered if they don't even know you exist.

10 - Ok but I doubt that GSK choose Hosted Exchange because they were not aware of IBM's product catalogue or because Microsoft runs Hotmail / Live.
I would love IBM to put more power in the Domino software stack.

11 - @10 That's very true, GSK were aware which makes it even more distressing that they took this decision.

12 - When GSK made their decision, IBM didn't have a pure cloud solution, like Online. They had a solution much like mine, which is dedicated hosting, in a 3rd party data center. While that has appeal, Microsoft sold this deal at the very highest levels of GSK, and it appealed to them in a pure opex model that couldn't be dealt with by competitors. There's a price to starting up a service, and Microsoft knows that. They are more than willing to invest in a few key wins.

13 - Until a office suite is available online from IBM, Microsoft will win these accounts almost every time.
Google may not be able to beat this for larger customers but who knows.
GSK and it's 100K people may very well save a bunch of money but at what costs and at what benefit?
And what about all the Domino apps they have?

14 - OK I'm late to the discussion and don't want to be defensive. @13 no, office suites had nothing to do with this. @12 hits it head-on -- we didn't have LotusLive announced when the decision was made. What is interesting to me is that Exchange Online wasn't really announced, either, and only yesterday did they announce even trial availability outside the US. It's going to be a long time coming before any multinational of the size being described here can fully deploy, much less migrate from anything else on-premise.

Both Forrester and Gartner have published reports in the last two weeks that say that an on-premise deployment of >10K (Ok, Forrester says 15K) is going to be economically advantageous vs. a cloud solution. Do I think that cloud-based services are important and to some degree indicative? Absolutely. But as Ed M says @4, we've had some pretty big wins in the last several months, too...and those have been mostly decisions to deploy/continue on-premise. Remember that because of Exchange 2007's hardware requirements, the cloud-based play is all MS has left in the deck, and they've started to ack that Exchange 14 is not going to be the same architecture as a result.

These are interesting times and I'm certainly not standing still. But I also think it's pretty interesting that the next thing I'm shipping is Alloy, about desktop integration with back-end systems. Think that kind of solution is going to be doable in the cloud anytime soon -- from any vendor?

15 - @14 I'm sure you're thinking I'm responding just because I'm a "whiner" but this quote here:

"it's pretty interesting that the next thing I'm shipping is Alloy, about desktop integration with back-end systems. Think that kind of solution is going to be doable in the cloud anytime soon -- from any vendor?"

Isn't that exactly what IBM claims to do with Mashups and portal etc? Integration across different vendors in the browser? Connected on the back end by RESTful and web service APIs?

By the way I really like Alloy and am even more pleased that it runs on the Domino infrastructure.

16 - Carl, I tried really hard to convey a tone of openness and listening in my comment... you're self-applying a label here that I would not have done.

I thought about the portal/mashup story when I wrote that sentence. There is more than one way to skin a cat. And clearly, some of the same business process automation can take place through a portal (this is how I personally access SAP at IBM). But IBM is still running the server back-end there...it's not a cloud application on someone else's server. Web services and XML/REST certainly are other ways of bringing that data and process together, but the integration is much deeper at the front-end in Alloy than can be done at the back-end. Maybe that changes over time.

17 - @16 I did not take your tone as anything other than open, but there is a feeling in the yellow bubble that if you question certain IBMers, agree with Volkker then you are seen as a whiner, un-loyal etc. I am not under any illusions that I am viewed differently to this seen this way.

Going back to the subject at hand, IBM and SAP announced a couple of days ago some success in moving their apps across the cloud.

The good news for you and IBM shareholders like myself is that IBM is working with SAP on this very technology
{ Link }

18 - Just turf-marking my position in this discussion

GSK and IBM went back a long long way, but relations (IMHO) had been strained for along time. i was under the (possibly misguided) impression that the Lotus rep wasnt even allowed on-site at one point.

GSK is IBM's home turf. IBM traditionally solves large computing problems for its largest customers.

For them to lose GSK to Microsoft, and wrench the messaging away from an incumbent Lotus Notes architecture is incredible. And for GSK to consider even moving off Sametime - which they practically lived on even back in the early noughties - stresses the enormity of this decision.

Don't for a second pretend that senior IBM'mers her in the UK or the US were unaware of the severe difficulties in this account.

Guess what. No-one stepped in to grasp that nettle, IMHO the customer (unsurprisingly) were unconvinced of IBM's commitment to Lotus notes (and unimpressed with their lack of support of it) and this is where we're at. Another huge Lotus Notes loss right in IBM's heartland.

And I wish that IBM could learn from this, and it wouldn't happen again. But the faint whiff of Elephant Poo tells me otherwise.

---* Bill

19 - Bill, thanks for coming out of retirement to share these thoughts.

Your comments highlight one challenge that "IBM" has in engaging in these conversations....IBMers simply can't comment on individual sales situations. What I know is, as is common, at odds with the insinuation of your comment.

One thing I do know -- both Forrester and Gartner have issued reports in the last 45 days that say that companies with >15,000 employees will find running on-premises e-mail more economical than SaaS. So something more to the story here for sure, no?

20 - Tom - I agree this is bad for Lotus. They need to get in and figure out what actually happened in a post mortem if they can. Can be difficult if the relationship is strained.

That being said, this could have come down to Microsoft doing the wine & dine dance with the CIO and the other executives at GSK. I see that here in the states all the time - and is the main reason behind many migrations. It could also be a CIO who needed to make his mark and this was the place to do it. Very common.

What is important to me is that the decision be reviewed and IBM learn from it. And the community learn from it as well - every customer if up for possible migration given the right environment and situation and people.

21 - Memories are short on this one.
When Kline married Glaxo many years back, they converted a big Exchange shop and unified to Notes. Since then, there have always been extremely strong internal political struggles there, as most of the assimilated population hated Notes because it took them from Outlook/Exchange. They looked for any reason to bring it down. They were on a mission fueled by Kool-Aide.
I only know this from people I know who worked there.
The move to Exchange had less to do with abilities of any software and more to do with internal politics.
Another company I know that was Notes based ended up moving to Exchange for email (not for apps) because their CIO hated IBM because they dropped support for OS2. Deal with that! And the move to Exchange happened in 2007. Can that guy hold a grudge?
Some people discount the fact that Enterprise decision makers are as irrational as bankers selling ARMs to people who can't afford them.
Lotus never had a chance on this one. It doesn't matter what they did from a marketing/selling standpoint.
Don't blame the players. Blame the game.

22 - > Warning flag one happened two years ago, the pro IBM CIO retires and is replace by a Microsoft leaning pro outsourcing CIO.... One year later "a project to look at the "workplace of the future" is launched by and lead by an anti Domino/IBM VP
> While GSK went to Redmond multiple times they never heard an executive pitch from IBM
> This decision was made two years ago

23 - @21, @22: you aren't the only one who knows people at GSK. You're leaving out the other requirements that were included in the study-- the ones that IBM's solutions cannot, and could not, meet. I won't disclose them here, but anyone on the GSK account at MS or IBM will know the ones I'm talking about.

24 - Dear All

An interesting discussion. I was at Philips when the same decision was made and I left as I didnt want to work managing a services company and ironically joined one. The decisions is based on cost and politics. The sad thing is that I suspect the cost to move is far greater than the savings! Philips are still moving years later and i dont hear lots of great service coming from that marriage.

25 - Dear Paul,
I confirm your story wrt Philips, where I'm still workin' for some months now. They are still movin' and pushin' every country to dismantle their local Notes applications. Solutions will be provided either with standard Sharepoint, where applicable (that is, TeamRooms or docs repositories), or with external solutions already available (that is, extremely expensive solutions and most often not tailor-made in contrast to the local devs made in these few years).
But this is the decision made, and they'll carry on. Whatever will happen, just like the Connect Mail problems they're still havin' one week or the other one...

26 - I heard from someone who worked at GSK that they had 509 Domino servers. That's a lot of migrating!