Lotus Software - The View Of An Optimist Who Thinks Like A Pragmatist
Gabriella Davis June 15 2010 11:52:40 AM
Like everyone else, I read John's beautifully written post yesterday and I'm sure like many others I felt his pain / sense of loss coming through. I don't really know John but I do have friends who are going through similar situations and I know they are similarly struggling with decisions about where they go next in their career and what technology they choose.I didn't, however, post a comment on John's blog because, much as I don't doubt the veracity of what he's saying or the reality of what a lot of Notes developers are dealing with, it's simply not my reality. So that got me thinking, why am I so positive about my career and the work Turtle is doing and Turtle's prospects? Is it because I'm relentlessly optimistic to the point of being naiive? Well possibly, but then I've talked about it with my fellow Directors at Turtle and they feel similarly.
Is it John's argument that when you're in the eye of the storm, all looks peaceful and you simply don't notice what's swirling around you (paraphrasing him badly) - that's possible too, but I'm not stupid and in the 15 years of running Turtle I've often found myself in this position and my instincts have so far (touch wood) led me in the right direction.
So why am I posting this? Well the number one reason is the 3 emails I received from customers this morning asking what was going on and if IBM were dropping Notes after reading the comments and the postings from yesterday. That's not John's responsibility and nor is it the responsibility of those who commented, but I wanted to state my view here for them and for anyone else who hasn't emailed me but is thinking the same thing.
Now there's a big difference between my viewpoint and that of an independent or employed developer. For a start I'm not a developer I'm an admin. Secondly my focus is not on my personal career but on the business of Turtle as a whole - of which only about 25% is development. About 50% of our business is outside the UK, mostly in the US.
So some key points that come from my reality:
- Do I see the Notes / Domino / Lotus market going away?
From our perspective that's not happening this year any more than it has in previous years. The business continually evolves - some years we do more development than infrastructure or strategy projects, some years more support contracts, some more integration projects. We're having a good year, certainly not the kind of year that would make us want to go elsewhere.
I feel very uncomfortable typing that knowing that some people aren't but there is another side to the coin, I can't tell you why we are doing well and others aren't and I wish I knew so I could assure myself it will continue. It may be the breadth of services support, admin, strategy, BB dev, iphone dev, Notes dev, Web dev that has protected us.
- How about those MS technologies?
Well, we do Exchange work and have done for years but it focuses on coexistence not migration, we also support Exchange and Exchange BES but only in mixed environments. We've done some Sharepoint integration too but we have no interest in providing that as a primary service for MS only companies.
Why? Well, #1 is that the technology and its potential for customers doesn't engage us and while we monitor what companies are doing with MS technologies , we don't believe in them the way we believe in Lotus technologies. I wanted to like Sharepoint until I saw the underlying infrastructure and realised its limitations in terms of flexibility and security compared to Quickr. Sharepoint 2010 is better but it still leaves me pretty cold. I have the luxury of choosing to work with technologies I love and right now Sharepoint and Exchange aren't them.
For those of you who complain at Sametime 8.5, try an install of OCS sometime and you'll realise how little you have to complain about. Of course the other reason I'm not interested in becoming a MS partner is that the world is neck deep in terrible, barely competent MS business partners (I know because I get to go in and clean up their mess all the time, or try and work with them). In that enormous pool of the patchily skilled, how do I differentiate myself as "expert" and is that even a commodity in that market?
- As for Google:
I believe companies aren't ready for the Cloud and those that are moving are going to find, like the holy grail of outsourcing, that the TCO of managing that environment and handling the data restrictions and limited / loss of service will come back to bite them.
Of course they won't admit it because may companies, once committed, have no choice but to keep pushing on the course they have budgetted for. IBM meanwhile will keep pushing LotusLive (which as a Cloud replacement for on premise Domino servers is also way ahead of its market) because it makes them lots of money.
My opinion is that if Cloud replaces on premise at all (and I'm giving that 25% chance but what do I know) it won't be for several years yet.
- Aren't we frustrated with Lotus products?
Not really no. The work being done on the Domino server is phenomenal. You need only look at things like the managed replica model on 8.5.2 (a point release with a major feature enhancement for goodness sakes) to realise how much Lotus is investing in that. I also think Connections and Sametime and the upcoming Quickr 8.5 all have huge potential if we just accept that they are re-inventions of themselves and that they may be over-reaching in terms of features and we may wish they were a bit better baked before coming out of the oven but rather that than a bunch of stagnating products.
If your company is using Lotus technologies there's a ton of exciting developments right now and coming up you are probably missing out on. I blogged last week on LotusLive meetings and it's a fast, feature rich, slick service which all Lotus BPs should use (you have free access if you're a BP).
We talk to customers every day who understand the benefits upgrading brings them and are keen to move to 8.5.1 / 8.5.2 Sametime 8.5 etc. I've done seven 8.5.1 corporate upgrades, 4 BES upgrades and 3 Sametime installs this year so far - those customers aren't planning to move away tomorrow. Maybe they are thinking about it in a year's time or 3 year's time but that takes me to my next point
- There is no technology you can hitch your wagon to today that will take you into retirement. None.
Lotus has changed a lot since 2000 but so has Exchange and Sharepoint and Novell. That's the nature of IT and the business we're in and you can't defend against it. All you can do it be the best you can be at the technology you choose to work in. Sometimes you might bet on the wrong horse but we're smart people in this community and we can learn new technologies in a flash - let's not let life pass us by worrying about what could happen someday.
- Many of the public complaints regarding IBM or Lotus are about missed opportunities and I understand that, but I'm not sure Lotus would have been better off if I had been given a free rein to run it for the past 10 years so I have little to say on that matter.
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