So everyone *doesn't* intuitively understand Outlook...
Category IBM/Lotus Microsoft
From NetworkWorld: New CIO cleans up outsourced IT at Clorox
Interesting article about how Ralph Loura came in as the new CIO at Clorox last April and came face-to-face with an extremely aged and out-of-date IT department. They were still running Windows 2000 on the desktop, and their Notes environment was several versions behind. In order to get a quick win, he went after some technologies that he felt could be quickly replaced, and one of them was moving from Notes to the hosted Microsoft Exchange offering:
R: With the advent of more cloud-based offerings in the marketplace, we were also able to quickly migrate e-mail to a Microsoft hosted Exchange environment. Instead of doing a 12 to 18 month internal migration project, building exchange servers and migrating the user base and so on, we were able to do several months of testing followed by literally four weeks of cut-over to move the entire company to the hosted Exchange environment, what Microsoft is now calling Office 365.
Part of their problem is that they had outsourced much of their IT to HP, and the general attitude was "if it isn't broke, don't fix it." Hence, it doesn't sound like there was anyone to advise them on what they might have been able to do much more quickly by upgrading Notes rather than migrating off entirely. But such is life these days...
One part I found amusing was this:
NW: How many desktops are you talking about anyway?
R: We've got about 4,800 inside the company.
NW: Speaking of cloud, what did you learn about migrating e-mail to that hosted Exchange offering?
R: The most surprising thing was we presumed we would have to do minimal training on Outlook because it is the most popular e-mail client on the planet. What we found was a surprising number of people needed some basic Outlook training because they had either been at Clorox for a decade or more or hadn't worked at other companies that used it and certainly weren't using Outlook at home. We actually had to delay our original deployment plan by about three weeks while we went and developed a richer set of training materials.
NW: How are you liking the hosted version?
R: So far we have been quite pleased with the service, the performance. Users rave about some of the features and functions we unlocked, like being able to sync from pretty much any smartphone.
So it comes back to what most of us probably already know... Rarely is anything completely intuitive because it's "the most popular" or "everyone uses it at home." With decent training, you can get much more mileage out of what you already have, instead of switching to something else that still has a training component built in.
From NetworkWorld: New CIO cleans up outsourced IT at Clorox
Interesting article about how Ralph Loura came in as the new CIO at Clorox last April and came face-to-face with an extremely aged and out-of-date IT department. They were still running Windows 2000 on the desktop, and their Notes environment was several versions behind. In order to get a quick win, he went after some technologies that he felt could be quickly replaced, and one of them was moving from Notes to the hosted Microsoft Exchange offering:
R: With the advent of more cloud-based offerings in the marketplace, we were also able to quickly migrate e-mail to a Microsoft hosted Exchange environment. Instead of doing a 12 to 18 month internal migration project, building exchange servers and migrating the user base and so on, we were able to do several months of testing followed by literally four weeks of cut-over to move the entire company to the hosted Exchange environment, what Microsoft is now calling Office 365.
Part of their problem is that they had outsourced much of their IT to HP, and the general attitude was "if it isn't broke, don't fix it." Hence, it doesn't sound like there was anyone to advise them on what they might have been able to do much more quickly by upgrading Notes rather than migrating off entirely. But such is life these days...
One part I found amusing was this:
NW: How many desktops are you talking about anyway?
R: We've got about 4,800 inside the company.
NW: Speaking of cloud, what did you learn about migrating e-mail to that hosted Exchange offering?
R: The most surprising thing was we presumed we would have to do minimal training on Outlook because it is the most popular e-mail client on the planet. What we found was a surprising number of people needed some basic Outlook training because they had either been at Clorox for a decade or more or hadn't worked at other companies that used it and certainly weren't using Outlook at home. We actually had to delay our original deployment plan by about three weeks while we went and developed a richer set of training materials.
NW: How are you liking the hosted version?
R: So far we have been quite pleased with the service, the performance. Users rave about some of the features and functions we unlocked, like being able to sync from pretty much any smartphone.
So it comes back to what most of us probably already know... Rarely is anything completely intuitive because it's "the most popular" or "everyone uses it at home." With decent training, you can get much more mileage out of what you already have, instead of switching to something else that still has a training component built in.
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Comments
Posted by Gregg Eldred At 17:08:23 On 24/01/2011 | - Website - |
Posted by Duffbert At 17:24:33 On 24/01/2011 | - Website - |
I once responded to a customer who made this statement by saying "I don't use Outlook". His reply was "of course you don't, you work for a company that uses Notes". To which I replied "so do you". There was a pause, and then he replied "okay, but we believe that people will be familiar with it". "Why?"... "Because they may have used it at other companies". "But they may have used Notes at other companies, and anyway, they're using Notes now, so surely they're familiar with Notes, albeit an old version?".
Anyway, we lost that one, because the CIO wanted Outlook. He wasn't even prepared to look at Notes 8. However, they just paid their maintenance again in December because they're still using Notes for applications. Money well spent, but clearly they could afford to throw it away.
Posted by Darren At 03:00:10 On 25/01/2011 | - Website - |
This is failed logic - to believe that Outlook would be used at home. It certainly isn't the case in my house, where everyone uses GMail. I would imagine that this is not uncommon. Justifying a move to another platform because "everyone uses it" is a poor argument. It hides a real reason, or problem, that isn't being communicated or addressed.
Posted by Gregg Eldred At 05:17:33 On 25/01/2011 | - Website - |
In the UK the local (to me) police force talk about "getting Outlooks" not "getting e-mails".
Disclaimer - My daughter told me this so it is hearsay not necessarily the actual truth. She may have just be winding her Notes-centric Dad up.
Posted by John Lindsay At 05:38:39 On 25/01/2011 | - Website - |
Posted by Duffbert At 05:57:50 On 25/01/2011 | - Website - |