Duffbert's Random Musings

1 - From where I'm sitting / standing, MS are a reinvigorated company, with a real hunger. Stack them up with salesforce, Google, Amazon and Apple, and they're players.

And IBM? Well… No. IBM just don't seem to want to play. Weird.

2 - Here in Florida, a lot of state agencies have moved off of Notes. When I ask what will happen to their Notes apps, the reply is usually "What's a Notes app?"

3 - In addition to Ben's comments, very little has been reported/posted by IBM on this migration or to help clarify their situation.

With roll-outs of this magnitude, all the players know what the potential risk is, so there should be few if any surprises in the end--particularly as the decision and bid process can be quite lengthy. Thus, IBM should have some press in the works and be ready to contain any negative spin from the decision.

Now, I am not telling IBM how to run their business, for clarity... Since the big announcement landed today, and any company would of course want to get some traction on their press releases, I'd say that within 72 to 96 hours, if they haven't clarified their position on FISMA and the cloud, they aren't a serious player in that vertical any longer and that would be tragic. Those who have worked with Lotus for a long time know well the influence the Federal Government had with the Lotus Notes security model over the years; leaving that space could really put into question the Notes strategy long-term. I really like the Lotus brand and respect the design and ingenuity of it. Seeing it potentially separate from the Feds is difficult. I hope this is just a one-off and things will improve. Well, that is my opinion, for what it is worth...

Let's hope this is a one 'loss' wonder.

4 - One loss wonder? Hardly.

I don't know anything about state agencies but on the fed side they've been purging Notes since the early 2000s. Pretty much every place that I've heard of that has run Domino (keep in mind where I live) has either purged or is purging Domino email. Domino apps get recategorized as "Legacy" and the next x.0 version is built in parallel on another technology. Look through the Wayback Machine for .gov sites that used to be Domino but aren't anymore.

IBM and Lotus have been getting killed in the federal sector for many years now. It's only news at the moment because "cloud" is hot now and MS and Google are putting up viable cloudy products and getting some press-release worthy wins.

5 - I think the real issue we have here is not concern over the success of IBM. IBM will continue to be successful with or without Lotus software.

The thing that is so irritating is that the Lotus professionals who have effectively bet their careers on the success of Lotus Notes are the only ones to lose.

6 - Government agencies would be stupid to use hosted mail. The Wikileaks issue should convince governments of this. I can't believe a major branch of the US government has made such an idiotic decision!

In-house is safe. Off-site is a potential big disgrace.

7 - @6 I agree. But Obama doesn't. Nor does his idiot CIO. "The cloud is cheaper" maybe true (or not) but so is giving soldiers water pistols. Neither are a very compelling idea nor as "secure" as the alternative they replace.

I wonder how one becomes a Google partner....

8 - @timtothy, where are you in Florida? Maybe we can hire you.

As to the government, I am still fielding RDp/RFQ from governments on Domino so it's not gone everywhere but yesterday I was speaking with someone who also reiterated the move to the cloud by the gov agencies and it's not the IBM cloud.
Wonder what is going on inside the government sales IBMers minds.

9 - @7 - Totally agree! For any organization (government or otherwise) that controls highly secure data it only makes sense to keep this information in-house. People have become too trusting of the web over the last 10 years. It wasn't that long ago that nobody wanted to use their credit card over the internet to make purchases. Now the government is ready to farm out all its mail data to Microsoft.

Good luck with that one!

10 - From all appearances, Lotus (not always Notes) is still relevant in the government space despite the recent public losses. Military applications, Department of Interior, Federal Reserve all have posted IBM/Domino RFQs on fbo.gov in recent months. Outside that, a 12.225 Billion contract called ENCORE II, in which IBM participates, runs from 2008-2018. As for Lotus, as part of IBM, let's say in my opinion it simply takes a while to turn the aircraft carrier around.

11 - Rob @10, check out the FBO again for the Domino stuff at DoI. The only one I see is on a desktop support/management contract.

It wasn't newsworthy then (I didn't think anything said "cloud" anywhere) but last year, they started contracting out for moving to Microsoft's BPOS including contracts to help with user training and transition services for the Notes shops.

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For the required "cloud" services stuff, DoI let out another RFQ recently which required any "cloud" proposal work within the MS BPOS solution. Google and Onix are suing over that requirement since it pretty much blocks them out.

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As for the security/privacy issue, MS is running in datacenters specifically set up for Federal systems hosting. Not sure if Google's doing something similar, but I'd expect so.

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12 - @11 - Microsoft is a private company. Private companies should never maintain government data. That's the bottom line!

13 - @12....erm....

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14 - Public/private corporations aside, most US gov data's managed by contractors. It's easier to do certain things with contractors than to hire and maintain govvies.

Really the biggest difference in the "cloud" push is that the data's not in gov data centers anymore. Could be a bad thing. Could be a good thing. I bet MS and Google run their datacenters more consistently than a lot of gov agencies.

15 - @14 - When you recall the fiasco over deleted White House emails "blamed" on the migration from Notes, I suspect you're right. :)

16 - I think the best thing about Domino is the apps and web development. I think perhaps heavily marketing the "Domino Web Server" might save the product.

17 - Argh. I wonder if the USDA thing and the GSA thing weren't rather in parallel. IBM was largely a nonfactor in GSA's bid process, though my understanding is that they DID put in a proposal.

Hosted mail is an invitation to problems, but the "just pay them money and all your difficulties will end" song is one that is enormously tempting to federal CIOs. The tech people have a completely different view. No effin' way is it as easy as they think, and the users will find that out. That's the one population that has been 100% ignored in all this rush to the cloud: cloud computing sucks ass if you're anything more than a casual user. You run into a lot of things, very fast, that you are absolutely stuck with.

I mean, it's even worse than the essentially-uncustomizable Outlook client. You literally can't change a damn thing. You have special needs and requirements? Go pound salt. One size fits all, which means it doesn't fit anybody.

18 - @17 "Hosted mail is an invitation to problems, but the "just pay them money and all your difficulties will end" song is one that is enormously tempting"

Two thoughts come to mind.

First, it doesn't matter if there are problems. As long as CIOs can show on paper that they are saving money it is a win for them (and we all know how numbers can be massaged)

Second, when you have so much chatter about the cloud being the best thing since sliced bread what would we expect them to think? Do we honestly think CIOs would look at it from a technical or user perspective? Some might but the majority wouldn't give those aspects a second thought.

I've witnessed the start of a Gmail migration at a major international bank for some of its users and all your points were valid then and still are.

19 - @Scott #11 Yes that's correct about the FBO listing, my "recent months" was more like the nine I've been watching. They get archived pretty fast. DOI Forestry Service has had a few earlier in the year. While FBO is the intended single source for all RFPs and RFQs, the DISA ENCORE II IDIQ contract I mentioned is an in-place vehicle available to all US Government agencies...in other words the contract's already there - USG purchasing folks can use it to award task orders without issuing RFPs through FBO. So quite possibly, not as many search hits on Domino or Lotus.

A thought -- FISMA compliance is a massive undertaking, perhaps the spokesperson's comments if taken in the context of time (e.g. "not interested...during this short bidding process") then it would make more sense to me than just "not interested." Of course IBM is interested in security overall, and they do have a federal sales force selling into DOD and the intelligence community and other agencies, so the spokesperson's comments don't seem representative of IBM's overall government industry strategy.

Government contracting in IT is a mess, and there are few "win win" situations out there. Clearly Microsoft's USDA win is a big deal for them, and I suspect they have protected themselves contractually, but it's also going to be a giant headache for them. Not to say any vendor should walk away from a multimillion dollar, multiyear deal, but I have seen some of the "winners" lose on both sides of these transactions...

20 - A follow-up on this ... Duffbert perhaps worth another look?

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