Burton Group's Peter O'Kelly shares some initial thoughts about Lotusphere. It was great to see how active the Burton team (O'Kelly Gotta, and Hobert) were throughout the conference -- they seemed to be everywhere, though I never had more than a few minutes to chat with them. Now I get to find out what they thought -- and Peter's part 1 article seems quite positive:
The first chapter of collaboration competition between IBM and Microsoft was dominated by Lotus Notes/Domino. While enterprise messaging competition was much more intense, Microsoft wasn't able to effectively respond to Notes/Domino for collaboration until it delivered recent releases of SharePoint. IBM Lotus also benefitted Microsoft by confusing the market about its strategy for Notes, Domino, Sametime, and Workplace during the first half of this decade, leading many to wonder if Microsoft would leapfrog IBM for enterprise collaboration as well as enterprise messaging. With the success of Lotusphere 2007, however, IBM Lotus has started the second chapter, with a product strategy and family that successfully exploit historical strengths such as Notes/Domino and WebSphere Portal while also introducing new offerings that are likely to make IBM Lotus a leader in emerging as well as traditional enterprise collaboration contexts.Peter is on a very important point here. While some other analysts seem to be focused on creating attention-getting firestorms around the old messaging "seats wars", that's so last decade. The "second chapter" is where the business value lies -- collaborative capabilities at an enterprise and extended enterprise level. I've been saying for months that an e-mail for e-mail's sake switch isn't going to generate any value to an organization, and it seems the market concurs. Lotusphere was about evolving or introducing several new capabilities to take collaboration on a fast forward ride -- powered through open architectures, componentized capabilities, and significant innovation.
Link: Collaboration Loop/Peter O'Kelly: Lotusphere 2007 Impressions: IBM Versus Microsoft >
Update: Also see Mike Gotta's comments as they pertain to Peter's write-up.
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Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 1/27/2007 7:40:06 AM
There are lots of reasons why IBM is uniquely positioned --
The biggest is openness. Notes 8 includes productivity tools that support an ISO standard document format out of the box. And the Notes client runs identically on multiple platforms. And it now incorporate composite applications at the desktop -- uniquely. Then there's openness at the server. And openness at the data store (Quickr will even support sharepoint data in a later release).
Another would be integration. I talk to customers who are using or looking at Notes Access for SAP Solutions and they are stunned that Microsoft and SAP want hundreds of dollars per user for Duet. I think about the implementation of Activities, which provides the integrated capabilities right in the Notes 8 client (though they're 100% available in a browser for those not using Notes).
There are no "newborns" in this week's announcements. Quickr is a new version of a product in market for seven-ish years. Connections is based on applications in use in IBM or the general market for years. Sametime 7.5.1 (you know, the one about Office integration) is a point release. Notes 8, well that's the granddaddy. Even WebSphere Portal 6 is derived from Workplace Services Express.
No argument that accurate market share data is important. More important is momentum, which is clearly demonstrable in Lotus's growth...not just revenue, but also an increase in customers at Lotusphere, in analysts at Lotusphere, in press coverage, and more.
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Rock http://www.LotusGeek.com | 1/28/2007 11:39:24 PM
Everything discussed in the Opening General Session and at Lotusphere this week is either currently released or will be *within the next six months*. No five year plans, no "here's what's coming way way down the road (maybe)" - this stuff is all real, can all be seen now (even the not-shipping stuff was demoed), and is tangible.
It is refreshing to see a clear message with real products to back it up.
And while I am an IBMer now, I do still tend to think like a business partner - and view much of the content of Lotusphere, especially the OGS, as such. And the message this year coming out of Lotus execs is the best in a long, long time (pre-IBM days?).
The pendulum has swung back Lotus' way - and so far they (ok, "we" ;) ) are making the most of it :)
--Rock
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Peter Wilson | 1/29/2007 4:45:11 AM
I agree with Rock. It is hard to compete with Microsoft's marketing $ and machine, but I hope that IBM can extend their marketing of these new products in the wider (and Microsoft fanboy) press. Go IBM/Lotus!
Pete
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John Turnbow http://www.navasota-unified.com | 1/29/2007 7:20:48 AM
IBM/Lotus does give better value in my opinion. But, since, Lotusphere is not posting all of their sessions (AS PROMISED) I don't know if I'll remember what is what, be able to report to my boss on anything at all (oh, i do have some 40 pages of notes i took, but not complete)...
Since I am not getting any response from anyone at Lotusphere or on developerworks I have to post with someone that will make a difference....
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Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 1/29/2007 7:38:59 AM
@5 John, what are you talking about? It's true a few of the presentations aren't yet on Lotusphere Online, but the content team is working on it.
I think we all are as responsive as we can be -- but we also just ran a show for more than 7000 people. A couple of us took the weekend off.
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Rock http://www.lotusgeek.com | 1/29/2007 7:44:57 AM
What Ed said - if I hadn't taken the weekend off, my wife and kids would have drawn and quartered me (We have a horse. She knows how to do it - and it scares me). ;)
--Rock
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Kevin Mort | 1/29/2007 9:16:03 AM
@6 - Oh come on Ed, where's your dedication!? lol
Seriously though, what a great week. Excellent job done by all to make it happen. The additional headcount was obvious and all told the staff did a great job dealing with it.
K.
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Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 1/29/2007 9:41:07 AM
For me the value provided by Lotus is in the Expeditor framework. Microsoft has no generic rich client framework, they're hanging everything off IE. That is not an approach I find the least bit appealing. The marketing tactic of "it's accessible everywhere" is a red herring the size of a whale shark.
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Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 1/29/2007 4:26:18 PM
"Microsoft has no generic rich client framework"
Sure they do. It's called "Windows." Or it's called "Office."
Just how good these frameworks are is an exercise left to the reader.
Ed,
Fully agree with your and Peter's comments. Give me one reason why IBM is so uniquely positioned and what breakthrough enterprise collaboration solutions / vision provinding 'enterprise business value'have been introduced ...
I do see Lotus doing the right thing and personally I think this is great, becasue all solution providers in the enterprise collaboration space need the vision, capability but most of all competitive presure to innovate.
The discussion is platforms (with or without the moving parts ;-)providing all of these enterprise collaborative capabilities.
Again congretulation on the many 'new borns' in your platform and let's get on with the business : Platforms providing business value to on an (extended) enterprise level.
O and I *do* think marketshare in any given component of your platform matters by the way.