Ed Brill

How can anyone see a great demo of Notes 8 and still think, "gee, we need to switch to Outlook"?

November 14 2007

During my travels in Australia last week, I had the opportunity to meet an existing Lotus customer where there is pressure to consider switching to Microsoft Outlook. Hey, it happens.

In the course of this meeting, one of my colleagues (I won't name by name, as that would likely identify which customer we met) did an integrated demonstration of Notes 8 plus Quickr, Sametime, and Connections.

It's not that his demonstration was particularly unique or advanced (though I did learn a few things, at least one of which I need to blog). What he did is he talked to the customer in their terms -- related it to their work, their organization, and their existing use of Lotus technologies.

I walked out of that meeting and turned to my colleagues, making the simple statement -- "How can anyone have watched that demo and think, 'gee, we really need to switch to Outlook'?" I tried to play devil's advocate and see what the scenario might be, and I found it hard to come up with much. I think the demonstration showed that IBM has been building tight integration within the Notes environment (presence awareness and one-click chat access everywhere, for example) and across the Lotus portfolio. The demonstration clearly showed the usability improvments in Notes 8, simple things like the improvements in the calendar and contact views and more advanced things like the conversations view. It showed the additional value of Notes 8 versus prior versions, through the sidebar notion, the integration of Symphony, and composite applications. We even talked about Traveler, the DWA lite mode, and other updates coming in 8.0.1 to fill in some of the remaining comparative/competitive gaps.

I don't want to be naïve, so I am examining remaining reasons. I've heard that ISV/plug-in support might be one reason that someone would still want Outlook as their desktop tool. I've heard that some individual features are preferred in the Outlook implementation versus the Notes implementation (but, I've now heard more and more that Outlook users looking at Notes 8 are expressing preference for the way we've done it).

Perhaps this is why, in the last couple of weeks, I've seen Microsoft trying to recruit partners to a session on their competitive displacement effort with the panicked notion that if a customer upgrades to Notes 8, Microsoft could lose the "entire platform". It's great to be getting signs from customers, partners, and the market overall that the product transition has turned things from defense to offense. There's more to do (I know, I know, I can hear your comments about marketing) but things are definitely on an exciting trajectory.

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category: Notes and Domino 8 Add/View Comments [85]

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1 Steve Tsuida http://www.kryos.com | 11/14/2007 2:22:54 PM
I know of one particular scenario where a Notes demo, no matter how mind-melting, might fall on deaf ears. I assume this scenario fairly common:

Lots of companies here in Calgary rely on consulting firms to supply IT staff for any number of reasons; the politics of FTE's, supply & demand, whatever. Those consultants bill at $100 an hour. Better technology isn't necessarily better technology from their point of view, especially if it's not technology they can add value to. There's a virtual economy built on installing, sustaining, fixing, and generally "staying" Microsoft, and it's an understandably well-protected economy. Consultants make it well worth the client's time & money to ignore alternatives. Feature lists are all well & good, but how do they compare to say, a senior partnership in a consulting firm?

Think of coal. Bad for the economy. Bad for the environment. Bad for the taxpayers. Even so, the US and Canada draw most of their electrical power from coal-fired power plants and all the cleaner-energy demos in the world—even a Steve Jobs demo of iFusion—won't change that so long as coal has our policy-makers' ears.

So, who are the IT & email policy-makers and how can IBM court them?

2 Ken Barker | 11/14/2007 2:37:46 PM
"Yeah but it's not Microsoft", how many times have I heard that one. Arghh...

3 Gavin Bollard http://dominogavin.blogspot.com/ | 11/14/2007 2:57:26 PM
Most high-up IT decision-makers are "chicken". They will always take the safer bet.

IBM should try tackling the "Nobody ever gets fired for buying Microsoft" statement somewhere in their marketing. Tackle the Safety aspect.

ie: Mention BIG companies are using the product. Talk about Not being Locked in, Talk about extensibility etc...

I don't think the technical layer already on Notes needs a lot more convincing but I do think there's a lot of work to done in the upper levels.

How about some marketing based around "What do you think Notes and Domino are doing at your organisation? It's more than mail..."

Most of all, it's time IBM started taking their presentations to MS customers and saying "can your systems do this?"

4 Ken Barker | 11/14/2007 3:22:54 PM
Maybe bring back Denis Leary and have a campaign around how the new Notes R8 client changes the game again.

Think something along the lines of..."Yeah, sure, you could pay too much for a bunch of products from some giant software monopoly so that you could do email, calendaring, documents, spreadsheets, presentations and instant messaging and stay locked into their endless sphere of software upgrade fees, single platform, botched releases and general disinterest in the well being of your company...or...you could just get this one product that lets you do all those same things without all that extra crap. Notes R8."

5 Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 11/14/2007 3:38:46 PM
@3 - didn't the guy who tried to put Exchange into the New York State Department of Social Security get fired when it all went badly wrong?

@4 - there's the script, now where Denis?

6 Eric Lohry http://www.nfprotein.com/eric | 11/14/2007 4:05:47 PM
I wish there was a Notes client for free that would be like Outlook Express. This would complete the Symphony ensemble and could be a lead-in for upgrade to the full client. Update: Our latest IT hire, a certified Microsoft-something-or-other, just told me after less than a week on the job that he was "impressed" with the Notes 8 client. Before us, he had never seen Notes and Domino. Score on for Yellow.

7 Eric Lohry http://www.nfprotein.com/eric | 11/14/2007 4:06:57 PM
supposed to be "Score one for yellow."

8 Henry Ferlauto http://www.geniusinside.com | 11/14/2007 4:44:13 PM
@2 - I wish to paraphrase Tom Cruise in "Mission Impossible." "Relax Ken, it much worse than you think."

@6 - I completely agree. A few tweaks would be needed. For example, to let the client define the "Display name."

Now, a few thoughts from the ISV point of view as to why IBM looses migration battles to Microsoft.

(1) Financial Compensation of Sales Force

Most of the financial incentives are for bringing in new business. There is not much incentive or penalty if loss of maintenance occurs.

(2) Too many "weak" Notes customers

By this I mean the customer only uses Notes for e-mail, calendar, etc. Maybe they have a couple of in-house simple applications as well, but nothing mission critical. Nothing in the "C-Suite."

The more applications on a given platform, the harder it is to switch from the platform. Obviously the opposite is true as well.

(2a) An application comes along that requires lots of Microsoft software. For us at Genius Inside, we see what is commonly called "Project Server" creep into organizations and if they're a "weak" Lotus shop, the migration to Exchange is just a matter of time.

Here are the system requirements for what is officially known as, "Microsoft Office Enterprise Project Management Solution;" which includes: Microsoft Office Project 2007, Microsoft Office Project Server 2007, Microsoft Office Project Portfolio Server 2007:

{ Link }

The requirements include IIS, SQL, .NET Framework, ASP .NET, SharePoint, and much more. Next year I hear they're somehow adding Flight Simulator and an XBox 360 running Halo 3. :)

(3) Sales reps spread too thin

All too often I find customers who do not know their IBM rep(s) and if the do, the opinion is often not one of great enthusiasm. This is especially true with the SMB space (which remember can be up to 1,000 employees. When you're north of say 400 seats, there's a lot of potential; but is has to be cultivated. Consultative selling is a must. The reps need to get in there and ask questions. The "outside" reps in my opinion need a membership to the gym so they can constantly get their clients out to lunch and pick their brains. Then go back to the office and do some homework.

Putting #'s 1, 2 & 3 in perspective with a real story: We have a potential customer that is as I classify, a "weak" Lotus Notes shop. They migrated to Notes a few years ago, but have not grown beyond the base e-mail. They are fairly up to date, running 7.0.x;

They want to upgrade to Notes 8, but there apparently is some conflict with McAfee Anti-Virus 8.5 Enterprise and Notes 8. When they start the Notes 8 client it takes a cool 5 minutes, no exaggeration. (Remember this fact for later in the story.)

The I.T. Dept is pro Notes. The PMO (project management office) has a few people that are pro Microsoft, all have used Microsoft Project and are comfortable with it. They want Project Server because there are no other collaborative project management solutions out there. (That's a little joke.)

I.T. Department reads the aforementioned system requirements project server. They don't have a cow, they have two.

They said to the PMO, detail your project management requirements and we'll see if there are any solutions that would integrate a little easier with our environment. (Read: Work with Notes.) With open mind, they did.

Hence, we get a call. We do a demo for I.T. Dept. When asked how did we do? They said so nice, so do it twice. But this time for the PMO. No problem. We wowed everyone again.

Had a few follow-up demos to simulate a few very specific scenarios. Aced everything. And by my estimates, still unconfirmed, we 10's of thousands less than the solution from the great northwest.

But... They still love Uncle Bill and will give them every opportunity to succeed.

Why? Well not to many people like Notes. But have they seen Notes 8 yet? Nope. Why? Remember the story above?

So I take it upon myself to find out who is the client rep and see if he'll pick up a sword and fight for his client. And I put it in no uncertain terms that if we loose, IBM looses.

What happens? A little bit of phone and e-mail tag. Does the rep take it upon himself to get some support or S.E. engaged? Nope. The result of the back and forth was him telling the client to call technical support and open an incident.

So he picked up the sword, and just pointed to the door.

Needless to say, I was not happy. I called his manager, and we had a nice chat. Still waiting to hear back from him.

So there's some real world dirt from the trenches.

Do ya want more stories Ed? There are plenty.

(4) What the heck is an ISV?

I can also say with a reasonable amount of confidence that the ISVs (at least the Lotus ones) are not in the forefront of the client reps. We're not sexy enough. (BTW: Websphere = sexy)

As a general statement, many reps, even some of the Lotus reps don't know enough of the solutions out there.

A good rep who really knows their client should easily be able to make referrals to ISVs, but here again, no real financial incentive.

No incentive for the referral itself. Not too much to gain if another Domino application is added to the mix.

Think about it: Every application ISV offers the IBM sales rep (whom is payed on commission) the same two things, which can boiled down to a sports metaphor: offense & defense.

Offense: Every ISV will add that incremental value. Probably no new Notes seats, but if situation warrants, possibly another Domino server or two. And it helps solidify the platform. Turns the "weak" Lotus customer into a "strong one."

Defense: Keeps away other solutions. Our case is a little unique in that the Microsoft equivalent requires a lot of Microsoft back-end systems. But on a smaller scale for example, let's take an accounting system. If our solution used Websphere and DB2, we would potentially keep out IIS and SQL, both of which are required for Microsoft Dynamics (formerly Great Plains).

Conclusion:

(1) There needs to be greater financial incentives for the reps on a few levels.

(2) Outside reps need the opportunity to "bond" with customers and build that high trust relationship.

(3) There need to be opportunities for the reps to meet with ISVs so they can learn about the solutions.

Worthy of note: At "Roadshow" events like the Collaboration Summit, Lotusphere Comes To You, etc. the reps don't walk around the exhibit hall and meet the ISVs. What they could be doing is taking their clients around by the hand and say to the effect, "Hey let's see what's here today."

Two cents from the loyal peanut gallery.

9 Ian Randall | 11/14/2007 5:05:39 PM
Ed, you are a world traveller and meet lots of people from around the world and see some of the great things that people are doing with Lotus Notes. So you get it.

However, many people don't get exposed to that, particularly those users that only ever use Lotus Notes for email (and are probably still using an old mail template). Still more people who have never seen Lotus Notes or have not seen it for many years.

Perhaps IBM/Lotus might consider putting together a document that exposes some of the great things that organisations are currently using Notes for.

This document should give specific examples of how Lotus Notes has given these organisations around the world a sustainable competitive advantage. This material should also express the genuine excitement that these organisations share about the future of the entire Lotus software platform.

Personally, I sometimes get a little tired of competitive arguments between the IBM & Microsoft camps, and I would like to see IBM focus a little more on a positive promotion of the Lotus software platform. There is a lot of really great stuff happening out, you just need to promote it a little more.

10 Henry Ferlauto http://www.geniusinside.com | 11/14/2007 5:09:02 PM
Quick addenda...

Worthy of note, when I was a customer who migrated the company I was with from Exchange 5.5 to Notes & Domino 6 I had an AWESOME Lotus rep by the name of Gilbert Lyons (still with IBM), and a great client rep, who is no longer with IBM.

But then one year in January I got the "reorg" phone call. Gilbert got assigned to another territory. My next rep couldn't spell Notes.

So there's no stereotype. But there's definitely room for improvement.

11 Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 11/14/2007 5:11:46 PM
@Ian, but we have done that.

"Why did these 10 companies switch to Lotus Notes and Domino? Find out here.": ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/software/lotus/lotusweb/product/domino/Migration_Success_Stories.pdf

How did I find that paper? lotus.com/getnd8now , callout box on the right side "New to Lotus software?" Then top of the subsequent page.

That page also has a ton of reference stories. We've done reference videos: { Link } (also on IBM TV) and lotus.com/success has all the stories.

I'm always looking for more stories, but in no way will I accept that we're not focused on positive promotion.

12 Chris Blatnick http://interfacematters.com | 11/14/2007 6:27:23 PM
But somehow we need to be able to get people to actually *want* to take the time to go and look for this information. I don't know how, but we need to make it more "in your face". There are still so many people that look at me with a "huh?" face when I mention that I work with Lotus Notes.

I think IBM and Lotus have been doing a great job raising the Notes profile, but all of us need to be preaching to everyone we know. I am certainly telling everyone about Lotus Symphony...suggesting they download it, let their kids use it, etc. We need to do the same with our colleagues and associates in the business community about Notes and what it can do. There are many resources available, so let's take it upon ourselves to use them! :-)

13 Keith Brooks http://lotustech.blogspot.com | 11/14/2007 8:39:42 PM
Ed, not to kill your thunder but Daimler was a long time ago, HSBC was too(although I don't know about the Mexico side).

And aside from Daimler, the others are what IBM would call SMB.

In today's "what have you done for me today" attitude this isn't it in my view.

Although, yes it is all positive, which is for the good.

Then again, I don't care who is migrating where because I am busier than I have been in years.

Also, name an executive on the planet that goes to youtube.

I don't go to youtube, maybe I am a bad Business Partner for it.

But I show people LIVE what can be done from my laptop(now I got Greenhouse to leverage too, TY Lotus!)

Sometimes it's mocked up, other times I snag a template here, rebrand something for the client, but that is what sales people should be doing inside the company. Well at least their SE should be.

We used to have canned demo/templates and adjust logos et al to be the client.

Simple, usually.

Cheesy, sometimes.

Interests the client, almost all the time. Especially if you know anything about their needs, issues or business.

So maybe its sales/tech enablements fault the sales force is not sellng?

Relying on online training will not get these points across.

The best sessions at Sumtech were always the on stage "mock sales" encounters and how to deal with issues.

14 Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 11/14/2007 8:44:28 PM
Keith, I have no idea what you mean about Daimler and HSBC etc. That opening doesn't seem tied into this posting.

We just had an internal "virtual competitive summit" including live demos and Q&A, it just wasn't in a physical room. Thousands of IBMers attended. I think we're perfectly capable of making online training an appropriate vehicle for sales enablement.

The demos exist -- we've just published some new ones for composite applications, for example -- and in this case, like I said, this ITS (formerly titled SE) was using mostly a standard demonstration outline. He did a great job of tying it to the customer, though, and that was a big help.

15 Peter Wilson | 11/14/2007 8:45:56 PM
Hi Ed,

My 2 cents.. Maybe go and see a bunch of Exchange/Outlook shops (small/medium and large companies). Customers that are unlikely to switch but you could just hear from their side why they would never consider Notes/Domino. It's probably a mixture of..

- We love Outlook

- Why change, why go through all that pain?

- Is it a hell of a lot cheaper to switch over?

- We're Microsoft only

- We never hear from IBM

Get your other team to do the same. If you're only speaking to lovers of Notes/Domino, then you're only hearing half the story.

Pete

16 Keith Brooks http://lotustech.blogspot.com | 11/14/2007 9:33:21 PM
Ed it's great to hear the training is happenning and paying off. Just from the recent postings of the last week or 2 it seems a bit off and some local discussions implied also that out of site is out of mind.

The daimler info was in the doc you refer to @11, just asking why this is deemed to be a strong positive.

Perhaps I am too old for online training at 38, I lose interest in staring at my monitor or listening to conf calls that go on for an hour or more. I prefer live training or totally on my own, hands on or read the docs.

The argument we always had was who really is watching online events, i.e. how many people not just the ones logged in to it or parking their browser to it.

I am not saying IBM doesn't do training, I know they do, I am just saying that perhaps the methods do not get across equally to everyone(foreign or domestic).

17 Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 11/14/2007 9:49:28 PM
@16 I am pretty sure your opinion of online training doesn't mesh with what we're seeing for many online deliveries internally. My salestalks have been consistently getting hundreds of attendees. I don't think anyone just logs in anymore -- nobody has the time for that (nor is there any reason to, it's not like we take attendance).

The Daimler story may be "old" (heck, it was in the Denis Leary commercials) but it represents a very significant use of Notes in the market. That never gets old.

@15 that would be fascinating. I do talk to Outlook/Exchange customers, but not ones who are certain to be staying on that platform. I'd welcome some opportunities, though I suspect anyone opening their door to "Ed Brill" would be skeptical that I'd listen with an open mind. I'd be willing to do so in the name of understanding the overall market. Offers to ed_brill@us.ibm.com

18 Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 11/14/2007 10:25:13 PM
Ed, seriously... some IBM senior VP and division leaders need to buy a couple of pro sports teams. Get an IBM yacht. Get boxes at the major concert arenas. Figure out how to pass a CIO a briefcase full of cash under a table.

Start playing the same game that the other guys are playing.

19 Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 11/14/2007 10:30:09 PM
Oh yeah, and start buying stock in major customers who are making noises about mail migration. And when they burn $10 million in stock holder funds on an effort with zero ROI, file a lawsuit. And initiate a proxy vote.

Heck, hedge those purchases. Once they're using the microsoft stack for a year, they're productivity will be in the toiler anyway. All you need to do is wait for the next virus storm.

20 Stuart McIntyre http://collaborationmatters.com | 11/15/2007 2:16:55 AM
A few comments from my neck of the woods:

1) As an enforced Outlook user in my organisation, I echo your sentiment completely - there is no one reason to use Outlook on the desktop any more. Some features are done better in Outlook, many others in Notes. Notes8 has created a balanced playing field for Email/Calendaring clients, and obviously if we can start talking Collaboration, then that tips the balance.

2) IBM *must* develop proper support for IMAP/iCal etc, or even better, Exchange, in Notes8.0x such that evangelists or knowledge workers can be using Notes8 even if their corporate strategy is to use MSExchange.

3) Start shipping free Domino/Notes licences again with IBM Server systems - particularly higher-end System x and System p/i. Ship them pre-built with Linux partitions featuring sample Domino (and Webphere, Tivoli etc.) environmnets that allow them to trial the products without the investment in time/effort to install/configure. IBM has a hugely loyal hardware customer base out there, many of whom buy servers to run MS solutions. Lotus and the other SWG brands must be able to leverage this better.

4) Give DWA licences away to the large ISVs/email providers out there in return for IBM advertising. Get the consumers seeing Lotus based email as a viable solution for them, such that they start telling their organisations that they use Lotus email at home, and it is great!

5) Get some of the technology podcasts and TV shows out there talking about Lotus, even if it is just Symphony (by the way, this could be just about the best thing Lotus has done in years - not from a technology perspective but in terms of winning hearts and minds). Get the BuzzOutLouds, TWiTs and TechTVs discussing Lotus again and I am sure that sales will eventually follow...

21 Jim Casale | 11/15/2007 5:25:36 AM
How can anyone see a great demo of Notes 8 and still think, "gee, we need to switch to Outlook"?

@Ed, It's funny you posted this question. Just yesterday I had an impromptu meeting with that guy that works here. We started talking about Exchange, Outlook, Domino, and Notes like we normally do. I was highlighting the fact that 8.0.1 will have Notes traveler, etc,. The response I got back was the same old tired line that "the Notes client was not as good as the Outlook client" (He is still using the Notes 8 client and template but on a 7 server). For whatever reason even after seeing a great demo of the Notes 8 client and actually using the Notes 8 client since beta 2, he still insists that Outlook is better (and therefore a reason to switch to Outlook and Exchange). When I asked him why he still thought that he said the following.

1. No one is using Notes

2. No one is supporting Notes (eg better support for Exchange from Blackberry than for Domino, there are no addins for Notes, etc)

3. He gave statistics in which he said showed Exchange had a bigger percentage of the market.

4. Outlook is a better client (Yeah I know, he doesn't know he beat that horse to death a while ago)

In response I said

1. I told him that NO, not everyone is using Notes. As a matter of fact, two companies we do business with on a daily basis actually use Notes. One of them even went from Notes to Exchange only to come back to Notes.

2. I have never called Blackberry and had a recorded message state if I installed some MS hotfix KB number please refer to knowledge article number blah blah blah if your Exchange users could send messages from the Blackberry device. I said that in general Lotus support has no equal and that Blackberry support, although not the worst, depends on who you speak to.

3. I mentioned (thanks to Ed's blog) that Exchange actually lost market share and Lotus gained market share. He attributed that to companies going to hosted Exchange. But wouldn't that still count as an Exchange seat?

4. For Outlook being a better client, I said that is a matter of opinion but that I did agree there is still some work to be done in the Notes 8 client. I told him that IBM delivered what they promised in the Notes 8 client and delivered it on time. There seems to be an issue for some people when Lotus says it is planned for a future release, as if they work like MS and promise the world and either don't deliver it, deliver it late, or deliver it and it doesn't work.

I did ask him about a scenario I would like to try here. Have a Domino server and Exchange server with real mailfiles on them. The four top people in importance (which would come out around 40GB total) would be split equally on the two servers. OK, now on the count of 3.....3....2....1...pull the plug and see who recovers faster and with no data loss. I wish I could have recorded it when he admitted that Domino was hands down better on the backend. So we should give up reliability, performance, and a rock solid email and development platform for (what some people consider) a better client?

22 Jim Casale | 11/15/2007 5:27:20 AM
@Ed Forgot to mention I will be installing Domino 8 and Exchange 2007 in his test lab for possible reviews.

23 Stuart McIntyre http://collaborationmatters.com | 11/15/2007 5:36:58 AM
@21 in which case, maybe DAMO is an option to get the bakend ondo Domino first, then fight the client battle at a later date?

24 Anonymous | 11/15/2007 6:08:38 AM
Deleted - no anonymous comments allowed. And that's too bad, because it sounded like this person, behind some sharp words, might have had something useful to add.

25 Kevin Mort | 11/15/2007 8:06:46 AM
@21 - Jim sounds like you had a great discussion there. It really is interesting that the perception of the client seems to be what pulls the entire operation over to Outlook/Exchange. Boggles the mind really.

What I happen to notice is that the decision is made on Outlook being better without some opportunity to actually demo them side by side. For example, mail addressing in the O/E environment is horrid compared to N/D. I now know why everyone depends so much on the address cache feature, because lookup is painful. Do the users really have the chance to see what functions are lost/gained/different? I don't believe this is generally well presented.

To the general point on consultants...clearly there are good ones and bad ones out there, as with anything. However, we've certainly seen SAP folks who intentionally steer the conversation away from System i specifically because they know if the customer runs it on Windows the consultant gets more revenue. So much for doing what is right by the customer. I could make a lot of money in that scenario, and I think that's what is happening with the O/E vs N/D deal.

I don't know if MSFT has this problem or not, but to me it seems that IBM's internal issues between brands is a large part of the issue. No focus. One brand just isn't allowed to shine - unless you're System x and Intel pays for most of your ads. : ) Some years ago, the WebSphere brand actually threatened to pull it from i5/OS completely because they were annoyed that System i was bundling it and thus not selling specific licenses. Good cooperation there.

With the increased consumerization of IT, I would tend to think that more spots which mention IBM software would be a good thing. Target them if you wish. IBM is a major partner with the PGA Tour and Lotus Software has engineered some nice solutions for them, heck they're even a case study! Show that during a tour event, on air. Get the message in front of the C-level folks that Lotus is out there.

I had this thought the other night while listening to The Beatles...the lyric "you say you want a revolution..." seemed like a really cool idea for a commercial... the tag line of Lotus Software and "change the world" just seems right.

Overall I am pleased to see this thread because this has been one of my prime issues for some time. I want to know the reasons WHY these things happen. I believe that is the only way we'll continue to grow the marketshare for the platform.

26 Ken Barker | 11/15/2007 9:18:45 AM
Maybe some better templates for key applications out of the box would be a way to win over more clients. The existing ones are a bit dated design wise.

Not sure how that would go over with the ISV's though.

27 Eric Lohry http://www.nfprotein.com/eric | 11/15/2007 9:53:42 AM
@26 Amen to the templates! We are a SMB running Domino 8. There are NO Domino/Notes consultants within 100 miles from here. But we don't need them if we have templates. We were shocked when we discovered the Blog template that came with ND7 out of the box. It is fantastic! we are using it like crazy, first internally, then externally. (click on my blog above, its "Domino Powered"). We are deploying discussion groups and a Wiki from Open NTF. We also are using third-party systems like Genius Project4Domino.

The bottom line? Almost no IT support (as long as web designers without Domino knowledge don't count as IT). Try doing all of that with Exchange. Its the applications that are driving our strategy. (and the reliability)

Does anyone outside of Domino devotees know all about the applications that can run on Domino? I doubt it.

Also, the inclusion of free templates with Quickr was a brilliant move, and helped us to decide on Quickr. Do more of the same with Domino.

Our small company will have a hard time justifying custom apps that are now possible with the ND8 platform, but that doesn't matter because I am expecting a lot of third party (and IBM) applications to become available for us in the future.

28 Eric Lohry http://www.nfprotein.com/eric | 11/15/2007 10:00:24 AM
@26 Free templates will drive customers to consultants. A company deploys a simple application out-of-the-box and gets used to it. Then, the customer sees the need for customization; then the consultant comes in.

It happens all of the time. Everyone will be busier if there are more out-of-the-box solutions. It may seem counter-intuitive, but it works.

29 Stuart McIntyre http://collaborationmatters.com | 11/15/2007 10:07:15 AM
@27 What a fantastically positive response... Great to hear.

30 Ken Barker | 11/15/2007 11:34:35 AM
Great, so we need to get Lotus to hire a couple of kick-ass web 2.0 type developers and a sharp visual designer to come up with templates out of the box for bot Notes/Web that don't look like they are from 1995 - but from 2010.

A real super-genius move would be to include a template or two that integrate with the productivity tools and maybe even one simple composite type application.

Now that would be a whole new set of reasons to with Notes.

31 Ken Barker | 11/15/2007 11:41:40 AM
That last line should be "Now that would be a whole new set of reasons to GO with Notes"

Sorry, I get so excited about this stuff my brain overflows the finger buffer and I leave out some words.

32 GarryL | 11/15/2007 11:46:17 AM
@8 (Project Server) - It has been mentioned before that the former 'Workplace Rich Client', in addition to the productivity tools that Notes now has, contained a simple project / gantt chart application.

We really liked that an I am sure there must be a stack of people who need just this level of functionality without needing full blown MS Project. I belive that there was some talk of seeing if this could be brough into Notes at some point?

@26 (Templates) - Yep. Some crisp, fancy dancy new ones would be nice. Hows about an ITIL one?

33 Henry Ferlauto http://www.geniusinside.com | 11/15/2007 1:58:27 PM
@26, 27, 28, & 32 - Templates would actually help ISVs and Lotus itself.

I think Apple is the model here and to some extent Microsoft too.

Look at what Apple now provides in the way of e-mail templates with Apple Mail. (And we still just have "Mood Stamps.") Ditto for the photo albums and such with iPhoto.

People get more more use of the base product because someone who really knows what they're doing took the time to give the beginner a good baseline and feel good about the work they produced.

Microsoft has a very extensive download library. I think it's main flaw is there is not an easy "download manager" to get them installed on a workstation.

Here's why templates could actually help ISVs:

The free templates serve a few purposes:

As mentioned above they get one started, and the price is right. A very low cost proof of concept.

They will rarely compete with a full blown solution.

In fact, they help justify it. If you're looking for a product that does "x" function and the commercial products are of significant cost, getting the free template running can serve as a proving grounds of sorts and then help justify the big purchase.

Taking Garry's example of simple Gantt charting. Gantt charts are the ubiquitous symbol of managing projects, but when one gets really serious about project management there's a lot more to it.

In Project4Domino for example, we can create charts with our own Java based tool, Genius Planner or seamlessly integrate with Microsoft Project. (In very simplistic terms, we can make Project behave like a Notes client.) We can also convert from MSP to our own format an eliminate the need for Microsoft Project in the first place.

But some real examples of "depth" where a free-bee tool would probably not go:

+ Having a role based user interface.

+ Support for multiple currencies and multiple languages (at the same time no less)

+ Being able to create sophisticated document workflow w/o any programming

+ Extensive document level security

+ Extensive role based notifications

The old saying you get what you pay for partially applies here.

But the appendix to that saying in this case is that good free templates can push someone in the direction of a more sophisticated solution because they learned how to walk before they tried to run.

34 Bill Malchisky http://www.EffectiveSoftware.com | 11/15/2007 2:47:57 PM
The perception that if you are an SMB, you won't hear from IBM is quite real. Before becoming a BP I knew my first rep well, then the re-org came...never heard from the next few reps, after their initial welcome e-mail--or ever replied to my e-mails to them.

My smaller customers (25-100 users) do not even know who their reps are or if they have one. If IBM is serious about playing in the SMB space, they need to re-think this strategy.

On the partner-side, it's also a similar issue...my rep has changed several times and the one I have now never replies to any e-mail requests. Heck I don't even know if he is still my rep. If you are an Premier Partner, things are different, but for the Advanced and Member partners, a different story.

Having stated this...I just completed a R5 Win to D8 on Linux upgrade that went very smoothly and the end-users love the N8 client.

35 Henry Ferlauto http://www.geniusinside.com | 11/15/2007 4:15:24 PM
@34 Bill, if you ever need to find out if a particular customer has a dedicated rep, and if so, whom that person is, call IBM's main number: (800) IBM-4YOU. They will give you their name, phone # and e-mail address.

Also, once you know an IBMer's name, you can look them up at:

{ Link }

36 Ian Randall | 11/15/2007 7:42:54 PM
@9 Ed, I read the PDF brochure that you referred to, and I agree that it's tone was very positive and upbeat.

However, I felt the content was dissapointingly light on specific details about Lotus Notes, and some of the case studies appeared to be very very old.

Also the focus in some examples seemed to be centred on Exchange to Notes mirgations, a focus that just reinforces the market misconception that Notes is only an email platform.

I understand that these documents need to be simple and easy to read given the target audience, but a one line comment about improved workflow is hardly going to change the world.

The type of stories that I was talking about should have a sharper emotive resonance and be a little more edgy.

For example several years ago while I attended a meeting of some senior Australian Defence Force staff in Canberra, an SAS Commander mentioned SAS commandos storming the beaches in East Timor as UN Peace Keeping Forces. These Commandos carried laptop computers with Lotus Notes installed. Why? Because Lotus Notes proved to be highly reliable, seriously secure and managed to maintain communications lines under extremely difficult battle field conditions. Sometimes your team members are not in the next office cubicle but in the next foxhole.

Another example is a Norweigan Oil and Gas Exploration company that deploys Lotus Notes on their fleet of Exploration vessels throughout the world. These deep sea exploration vessels attempt to avoid the worst weather conditions , but sometimes find themselves cought in some of the wildest storms on the planet and are forced to navigate through huge waves the size of multi-story buildings with gale force winds of snow and ice . Why do they use Lotus Notes on these deep sea vessels? Because even with the great advances in satellite technology, they need to have a systems that will tolerate intermittent disconnections at times and will continue to work reliable under extremely harsh conditions at sea. Lotus Notes proves to be the perfect technology for the perfect storm.

I am sure that many other business partners and Lotus Notes customers could quote many similar stories to the ones above. Why not ask them?

37 Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 11/15/2007 8:21:47 PM
@36, Ian, I do. I don't get permission very often.

Today I had the stunning experience of watching a Lotus business partner present a case study about a great success with a customer implementing Lotus Quickr and Lotus Connections to a public forum. That same customer has been unwilling to grant IBM Lotus permission to reference their recent decision to standardize a huge environment on Notes/Domino for messaging (yes, it's messaging, but it's a big one). I talked to the partner after the session, and he said that the indicated customer has actually spoken to industry trade press about their use of Quickr and Connections, thus, his reference to them. So, for whatever reason, they were happy to talk to a reporter but not quite ready to talk about another use of Lotus technology on behalf of Lotus ourselves. I can't explain this one.

38 David Price | 11/15/2007 9:16:36 PM
One of the reasons companies use Exchange is that support from anti-virus and third parties is timely. RIM just announced that ND8 support won't occur until February next year. Trend SMD for iSeries is also not until next year. Lotus cannot control partner's delivery but it doesn't help the perception. The ND8 plans for my customers are now delayed.

39 John Burt | 11/15/2007 10:39:14 PM
@ED. The reason that others are moving to Exchange is for many reasons. Our Company just received a mandate that we are moving to Exchange from Domino. It is a shame, since I have worked with Domino for many years, but the problem remains that Dominio/Notes 8 just wasn't ready for primetime and was released to early. Notes 8 could of been IBM's great victory in the market, yet now IBM is losing 10,000+ seats to exchange.

IBM conferences, seminars, are funny because its all rah-rah lotus notes, while seats are being lost every day to exchange. 10,000+ seats may not seem like alot to IBM, but multiply that by many more each day moving to exchange, and you have to face the reality that IBM Lotus Notes is dying a slow and painful death.

Certainly I am not a traitor, because I love notes, but Exchange seems more and more interesting, especially the way outlook web access is so much better than inotes.

IBM needs to listen to its users and what features it wants, instead of having its head up in the clouds snubing exchange, otherwise notes will end up with the same fate as OS/2 (another great product), and we'll all be Microsoft Email adminsistrators.

the future is certainly going to be an interesting ride.

40 Peter Wilson | 11/16/2007 1:11:17 AM
If only IBM understood the importance of the UI way back when { Link }

Pete

41 Stuart McIntyre http://collaborationmatters.com | 11/16/2007 2:34:34 AM
@39 Could you clarify on what you mean by "Domino/Notes 8 just wasn't ready for primetime and was released to early"??

I am yet to hear anyone have issues with Domino8 - the changes there are a matter of evolution rather than revolution.

As for the new Notes8 client, you always have the option of running the Basic version (or Notes7+ as I tend to describe it) and just keep the Standard version for certain groups of users.

Either way, I cannot see why releasing a product early (and I'm assuming you feel there are quality issues involved) would have any impact on a decision to migrate elsewhere. Late delivery or underdelivery I could understand (mmm Vista, SQL Server anyone?), but not early delivery...

42 Jim Casale | 11/16/2007 5:34:52 AM
@39 Exchange seems more and more interesting how? In that it does not even come close Domino as far as reliability, scalability, and performance? Maybe you are referring to Outlook (which is really a matter of opinion, not fact)?

"Lotus Notes is dying a slow and painful death." Hmmm...have you been talking to my CIO? I don't know what industry conferences he attends but he seems to think no one is using Notes too. That's too bad because he is sadly mistaken. I know for a fact that two companies we do business with are Notes shops and one even went to Exchange only to hate it and come back to Notes. Many other companies we deal with are Notes shops but no one seems to want to recognize that fact.

IBM is listening to it's users. If there are 100 million users of email in the world they are certainly not going to be able to listen to all 100 million and make everyone happy, but they have certainly been listening. There will be support for Windows mobile and a new lite web access client. Would you consider that listening? Not only is IBM listening they are giving you choices you don't have with Exchange. And lets not forget that projected dates and features are usually met.

I have no idea why the decision was made for your company to move to Exchange, but I bet it was not a technical decsion. I should know since that is how it appears it is going to happen here. No one here says we will get better performance by moving to Exchange. They never say our disaster recovery plans would be better by moving to Exchange. They usually just give the same old tired reason of "everyone is using Exchange" and "users want Outlook" be it true or not. (I can't wait to break the news to some important people that there is no such thing as "All documents" in Outlook.)

They are sending me to Exchange training in two weeks. The information I get from that will probably reinforce my belief that moving to Exchange in this company is NOT a good decision. We are an SMB with enterprise level data storage needs. I don't see how Exchange is going to make those data needs easier to deal with. I do not look forward to being paged that an information store is down and 50 people have no email, that the "cluster server" does not have all the current data, that Outlook won't start, and that my calendar entries are off by an hour when DST changed. I will let you know how much of that 5 day class is devoted to upgrading from a previous version of Exchange to Exchange 2007. I am betting at least 50% of the class time being devoted to showing how to do a "rip and replace" upgrade. I guess I will have a lot of free time in that class to surf on Dice.com :-)

@23 We already have a Domino backend. I would recommend DAMO for my users but I don't think all the functionality is there. I don't believe you can do a freetime lookup on another persons calendar (but I may be mistaken). Also, a local PST would be problematic over 2 Gb and my average users is 1.5 GB. I wish it was an option since my main concern is the backend (performance and reliability). Hell, I wouldn't care if they used Eudora for the front end if it worked. :-)

@41 Vista and SQL server? What a joke. I wouldn't touch Vista with a 10 foot pole. That wasn't late delivery, it wasn't underdelivery, it should not have been delivered period. { Link }

Geeeze I need a vacation. Hey Ed, can they move up the dates for Lotusphere? :-)

43 John Burt | 11/16/2007 5:44:27 AM
@41 when I say domino/notes 8 wasn't ready for primetime I mean this. I went to this seminar (given by the view) and they talked about features that didn't work correctly in the notes 8 release (ie: policies showing up in the admin client, and not in the notes client, the lack of composite applications, the move to eclipse (still buggy), and I got out of that seminar WAIT TILL 8.01). Management had already decided that they wanted to move to exchange, and just let us know last week, so that's beyond my control.

I just felt if it was more solid of a release, it could of tipped the balance. not to mention the lack of a mac client, horrid linux installation, etc.

Companies want something that just works. 7.0.x series has been a unstable platform for us, with many issues, and managment just got tired of hearing the excuses of how great notes is, and when you coun't server down-time, and inflexiblity to do certain things, it just swayed them.

hey i don't control company policies, so . We didn't like the option of having basic and standard it was just too confusing to the end-user.

44 John Burt | 11/16/2007 5:57:28 AM
@42 Some great points, and I agree with you on "It was not a technical decision", but the realities are people are moving to exchange.

i know personally three companies, including ours that got the mandate to move to exchange this year, and combined that's approximately 100,000-150,000 notes licenses lost. You can't tell me, that doesn't hurt IBM/Lotus (Ouch!)

Certainly Lotus Notes is more advanced platform, I have worked with Domino for over 12 years. I'm tired of defending it, and have the battlescars to prove it, but at this point, I'm just going with the flow. Its the way I see the industry moving.

If you asked me 5-10 years ago, I would of put up a fight, but not now.

Have you seen Unified Messenging for Exchange? It's just great. I still love domino though. I do notes, no loyalty's to exchange, but like the famous quote goes "It's not my problem" --or maybe it is :(

45 Jim Casale | 11/16/2007 6:26:04 AM
@44 Any seats lost hurts. But what seats have they gained? I do recall Ed saying Lotus's market share is up while Exchange is down. Yes, Lotus lost 100-150K seats but they may have gained more than that elsewhere.

Part of me is tired of the battle. It's been going on here for a year now. I could capitulate but what does that get me? Sorry I am being selfish but I do value my time away from the office and I only see that time getting less and less when Exchange is here. I don't want to miss a school play because the company decided to go to Exchange and now I am stuck trying to get email working again.

j

So although realistically I think I am just spinning my wheels and getting nowhere fast, if I don't fight until the last battle is lost I will be stuck wondering what if I had fought a little harder.

@ Ed doesn't Sametime have unified messaging capabilities?

46 Flemming Riis | 11/16/2007 6:40:39 AM
-I don't want to miss a school play because the company decided to go to Exchange and now I am stuck trying to get email working again.

dont worry its just email it will work :)

47 Tim Toron | 11/16/2007 6:56:29 AM
Microsoft went the market from bottom up. They started with a client designed for end users, went on to SOHOs and then grew into the Fortune 500s.

So they know how to earn money the hard way, package by package and how to use dealers and developers for penetrating a market.

When looking at IBM it seems to me that it suffers from coming right from the other end. IBM is accustomed to the big business and does not find it's way down to serve the "long tail".

IBM as an organisation (not talking about specific persons here) is just not motivated for going the extra mile required for penetrating the broad market. Why hassle around for 10,000 $ if you can run a 1,000,000 $ project with BigBoy Inc.? I think IBM is not to blame for this, we'd all show the same behaviour in this situation but this is just what it is.

You can check the broad market penetration very easily. Go to rentacoder.com or elance.com and look up the number of jobs for Exchange and N/D. And then look up the service providers who apply for those jobs and compare their number and their prices. There will be about 20 times less N/D service providers and their prices will be double at least.

MS has a huge base of dealers, developers, admins, trainers, tech writers etc. IBM doesn't. All other issues follow from that.

48 Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 11/16/2007 8:14:25 AM
@43/44 So, let me get this straight. You went to a seminar and, based on what they said, made the decision to not upgrade to ND8. Did you test any of the issues in your own environment? Did you determine their impact to your upgrade plan? Did you contact Lotus support to try to work through any of these issues? This sounds like a total cop-out, especially with 8.0.1 already in beta and planned for release in 10-ish weeks. Nobody should be making IT decisions that will cost millions without some due diligence.

And if you saw this coming, and it wasn't a technical decision, what kind of fight did my organization put up? Did you e-mail me? Jim Casale here has at least had the conviction to engage IBM (not always successfully, but we're putting up a fight against a completely irrational discussion in his organization).

Last, you know that Exchange unified messaging stuff is only in their enterprise CAL, meaning you've got a pretty expensive software cost alone to make such a change, not to mention the migration costs, the applications that will continue to run on Notes (some companies that have migrated mail are still running 5 -year-old apps on Notes, funny how the UI isn't an issue for those apps), and the rip-and-replace future.

All in all, I still assert the title of this blog post. Some of the points made here are valid in terms of work IBM needs to do to continue to defend and grow in this market. We're listening and executing as many as possible.

@38 re: RIM -- ouch, I had only heard that on Wednesday myself. Trying to figure out if there is a way to bring that date in earlier. They indicate that there are workarounds today but I'm not sure of the details.

49 Flemming Riis | 11/16/2007 9:00:58 AM
@48 , i dont know if you seen this

But its a start until 4.1.5

{ Link }

50 John Burt | 11/16/2007 9:31:57 AM
Ed, I definitely respect your comments, but I'm not the decision maker, if I was we wouldn't be moving from lotus notes.

My boss attended the seminar on lotus notes, but ultimately the decision was by the CIO.

Some good news at the light of the tunnel is that my PERSONAL company uses lotus notes, and will continue to support lotus notes for the near future. But we have less than 10 users, so that's nothing compared to 10,000 + at the company i work for.

I adopted notes 8.0 early on, and it crashed my server, but was able to recover okay. I truly want to stick with the notes platform and will for my personal company, but for the enterprise company i work for the decision has been made. Microsoft offered some things, which i'm not at liberty to say, and they made the decision.

So I could either fight for lotus notes and be out of a job or go with the flow? now ed which one do you think is fessible?

IBM didn't offer anything to the company i work for, so the writings were on the wall. People I have talked to, who used to be notes administrators now are exchange administrators. I certainly think IBM has some converts but i'm not convinced its as many as you think.

51 Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 11/16/2007 9:42:09 AM
"Microsoft offered some things, which i'm not at liberty to say, and they made the decision."

yes, that explains the sound business logic behind the decision. Guess we don't need to discuss further.

52 Ben Poole http://benpoole.com | 11/16/2007 10:56:12 AM
"Microsoft offered some things, which i'm not at liberty to say, and they made the decision."

I think that's pretty much how it always goes with those MS vs. IBM decisions, isn't it?

53 Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 11/16/2007 11:33:44 AM
@53 - the only Exchange to Domino arguments that I've seen make any sense (even if I don't agree with them) are merger & acquisition situations, where you could argue that, yes, it does make sense to standardise on one platform. And if it's 10,000 Exchange users versus 2,000 Domino users you sorta have to take that one on the chin (even though the Domino company have a good business case for keeping the applications).

The rest of the decisions seem to be down to what one analyst described as 'Microsoft lust' - the inexplicable desire to spend lots of money without any good reason. "All our users like Outlook and use it at home" isn't a good business reason even if it was true. That one we've tackled before - when a CIO of a company with 25,000 told me that I asked for proof and guess what, they didn't really know that 25,000 people used Outlook at home. Anyone surprised? They also told me the migration from Domino to Exchange would be cheaper than upgrading Domino. How did they work that out? Microsoft gave them some figures. And the COI believed them. Scary.

"Microsoft licenses are cheaper" is a common one... and it amazes me that some senior IT people don't get the fact that license acquisition is a tiny part of cost of ownership. A few days of downtime affecting their business could wipe out that cost saving, and then some. If it's true that Exchange Next will be based on SQL Server (c'mon Microsoft, roadmap please) then it will be a migration... and again, that'll outweigh the cost of licenses.

Final point... that company refused to see any Lotus execs after the initial discussion. Probably worried that someone would point out what was true and obvious.

54 Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 11/16/2007 11:39:34 AM
And one other thing. Outlook 2007 might be polished and have some new features, but really it's just more of the same. A lot of organisations are looking at how they can do things more effectively than with e-mail. Activities and some of the things we're doing with Sametime 8 Advanced really turn the lights on behind their eyes. Imagine a world where slowly those things on the sidebar of Notes 8 are pushed centre-stage and e-mail is pushed to the periphery. Where will that leave Microsoft and their e-mail client once people work out there is a better path?

When I get tired of the battle I remind myself of the fact that IBM Lotus have other things to pull out of the hat, and there's enough people who get it to ensure we survive and maybe even thrive.

55 Stuart McIntyre http://collaborationmatters.com | 11/16/2007 11:43:17 AM
@53 I bet I know the 25,000 user company too...

Whilst client vs. client comparisons are always going to be subjective, it sounds as though we need to somehow find some objectivity from somewhere - and I guess that this points to Analysts, plenty of 3rd party reviews or even user behaviour/productivity research.

I'd love to know what IBM is doing in the background on each of these fronts - I would assume that you are pushing analysts and consumer/business publications to be doing Outlook/Exchange2007 vs. N/D8 comparisons. Once there is a fair number of accurate comparison decisions then that would help in some of the conversations discussed above.

The third option is a bit of a left field suggestion, but could IBM use academic research to quantify the user experience on Notes8 vs Outlook and prove one way or the other whether true productivity gains can be demonstrated in either direction?

56 Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 11/16/2007 11:49:08 AM
"I'd love to know what IBM is doing in the background on each of these fronts"

C'mon, Stu, one of the top 20 IP addresses hitting this website is the block from microsoft.com. I can't talk about "background" publicly! There is a lot of analyst work going on, but I don't see the analysts as willing -- or, more realistically, able -- to try to analyze what really boil down to emotional preferences. Ovum, for example, published a great paper earlier this year that said, basically, there's no valid business reason to migrate from Notes. I give that to almost every customer where we have this discussion. That apparently is insufficient to sway. So how would more analyst papers help?

Academia is an interesting suggestion, but we'll never get anyone to do it without having it "commissioned", and thus, biased.

57 Jim Casale | 11/16/2007 12:21:20 PM
@55 One would think that 3rd party reviewers would be able to help the case for IBM, but I know from experience that it is not always the case. In the case I am referring to, the reviewer did not use a Domino 8 server, was biased for Outlook and Exchange from the start, and based most of his passion for Outlook on the fact that he could use Word as his email editor (among other irrational points)

I am trying to get this reviewer to do a comparison of Domino and Exchange from a server perspective. I do not, however, believe that it will help keep Notes/Domino in this shop.

58 Flemming Riis | 11/16/2007 1:23:04 PM
@57

Reviews are never neutral and never will , if there is disclosure on who is paying for it it can help judge.

the only way you can do anything that resembles neutral is to setup side-side as you mention yourself with a consultant from each side of the camp.

59 Jim Casale | 11/16/2007 1:34:17 PM
@58 I know for a fact the reviewer was not paid by anyone to do the review.

60 Flemming Riis | 11/16/2007 1:43:22 PM
@58 I know for a fact the reviewer was not paid by anyone to do the review.

aye

i would still get two people in if possible so each know their "part" and have them to "argue" or prove their points.

61 Stuart McIntyre http://collaborationmatters.com | 11/16/2007 3:30:00 PM
@56, That wasn't a request for you to divulge info here on the blog - I'm not that naive. More just that I find this kind of competitive stuff fascinating, and I truly would love to know (privately) what IBM is doing to win this battle...

62 Peter Wilson | 11/16/2007 4:50:58 PM
> the only Exchange to Domino arguments that I've seen make any sense (even if I don't agree with them) are merger & acquisition situations, where you could argue that, yes, it does make sense to standardise on one platform. And if it's 10,000 Exchange users versus 2,000 Domino users you sorta have to take that one on the chin

Unfortunately, I've seen a client where they are merging and the Outlook lovers are intently trying to drive the larger user base to migrate to Exchange/Outlook.

> And one other thing. Outlook 2007 might be polished and have some new features, but really it's just more of the same

Agreed. A friend told me that OCS requires the install of 3 separate client packages (with different installers) vs Notes 8 which has it all included. There you go IBM...some real world information you can use to market against Outlook + OCS (3 parts). Also, Microsoft is working against Cisco and their call manager stuff, where as IBM has a more of an open policy. Again IBM, market this fact and get Cisco onboard to market your OPEN solution.

Pete

63 John Burt | 11/17/2007 6:57:05 AM
@51 I don't think the decision was as clear cut as you said, I think there was other factors. I agree there certainly isn't a compelling reason to switch to exchange from domino, but company's are doing this everyday. IBM can either wake up or wake up when notes is dead much like Novell, OS/2, and other products that were IBM failures (look at symphony HA!)

I think it's best summed up by a friend that says "IBM the place where good software goes to die". RIP Lotus Notes :(

64 Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 11/17/2007 9:26:05 AM
@63 people have been calling Notes dead for ten years (Forbes, 1998, was the most prominent one from that timeframe), yet somehow we gained market share in 2006 and shipped the best release ever this year. Companies are buying Notes for their first time ever still in 2007. It's pretty easy to make assertive statements with some bogus name/alias and a generic e-mail address. You can say RIP all you want, but I'm not here to put this product to bed.

65 Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 11/17/2007 2:41:14 PM
I'm trying to understand Mr. Burt's efforts here...

"when I say domino/notes 8 wasn't ready for primetime I mean this. I went to this seminar (given by the view) and they talked about features that didn't work correctly in the notes 8 release"

All .0 releases have bugs. Did they talk about features that DID work correctly?

Incidentally, which The View seminar? I'm curious who the presenter was.

"ie: policies showing up in the admin client, and not in the notes client"

I use policies extensively. Do you have specifics? The only one I can think of off the top of my head is the browser control.

"the lack of composite applications"

I have issues with composite apps, but 4 of them ship with the product, and IBM has since released something like 25 further demos & tutorials.

"the move to eclipse (still buggy)"

For a .0 release?

"and I got out of that seminar WAIT TILL 8.01"

Was that your interpretation, or the speaker's? There are certainly good things that are coming in 8.0.1. What's your struggle with deployment that you can't pilot 8.0.0? Sounds like you could use a hand with rollout & testing strategies.

"Management had already decided that they wanted to move to exchange, and just let us know last week, so that's beyond my control."

Then they weren't at this conference? So said conference made so difference, whether anyone said "wait til 8.0.1" or "rollout 8.0.0 immediately."

"I just felt if it was more solid of a release, it could of tipped the balance."

I thought you said it was beyond your control? Who's control was it under then? Someone who went to the conference with you? Did THAT person take away a "wait 'til 8.0.1" attitude?

"not to mention the lack of a mac client"

Do you actually have Mac clients?

"horrid linux installation"

I'm sure that switching to Outlook will solve all your Linux install problems. I hear Microsoft has a splendid installation routine for Outlook on Redhat.

(Incidentally, I don't buy your claims about installer problems on linux for a heartbeat. I installed every version of the Notes 8.0 beta on both SLED 10 and RH 5 beta. I never once had a problem with the Notes installs.)

"Companies want something that just works."

I'm sure they'll get it with Exchange.

"7.0.x series has been a unstable platform for us, with many issues,"

Ah, so you don't actually know how to run a Domino infrastructure, then? That explains SO MUCH about this conversation.

"and managment just got tired of hearing the excuses of how great notes is"

Hearing from whom? How is it an excuse if Notes is actually great? If it's not actually great, who was claiming it was?

"and when you coun't server down-time, and inflexiblity to do certain things, it just swayed them."

ROFLMAO!! Wait wait wait... they're leaving DOMINO to go to EXCHANGE because of downtime and flexibility!??!?!?!

Thank you wescravn@gmail.com, you made my weekened with that!

"We didn't like the option of having basic and standard it was just too confusing to the end-user."

Yeah, choices suck. I bet you have the toughest time shopping for toilet paper or toothpaste. It must be a nightmare (on elm street) for you.

"I adopted notes 8.0 early on, and it crashed my server"

NOTES 8.0 crashed your SERVER!? That's interesting. I ran every beta release available to the design partner program in my production environment, and never once had something cause a SERVER to crash. Heck, I even put a Domino 8.0 beta server in my production domain, without a hiccup.

Then again, I know how to run Domino 7 infrastructures without downtime problems, so maybe the difference isn't in the software itself, but in the competence level of the person running it.

"but for the enterprise company i work for the decision has been made."

So did your personal issues with 8.0 have anything to do with that, since you have specifically said it's not your company and you had no control.

"Microsoft offered some things, which i'm not at liberty to say, and they made the decision."

Let's sum up.

You stated a bunch of gripes about Notes 8. Fair enough. But your management never even looked at it, according to you.

Then you stated that management has issues with ND7 stability and flexibility. I can only conclude form that that you lack expertise in the Domino platform, since Domino is FAMOUSLY more stable and flexible than the Microsoft offerings.

Then you stated that you had no control whatsoever over the decision process. So therefore your opinions about Notes/Domino make no difference at all, whether you love it or hate it.

And lastly, you say that Microsoft offered something that you're not at liberty to disclose.

I think that pretty well describes a scenario where an incompetent staff has frustrated an isolated management team who then made an uninformed choice based on what you imply is a bribe. Is that about right?

"So I could either fight for lotus notes and be out of a job or go with the flow? now ed which one do you think is fessible?"

If you're supporting the Domino environment, it sounds like you might be out of a job anyway. And if you're not, it sounds like maybe you should have been, if you have stability problems with Notes 7.x.

"People I have talked to, who used to be notes administrators now are exchange administrators. I certainly think IBM has some converts but i'm not convinced its as many as you think."

The plural of anecdote is not "data."

66 John Burt | 11/17/2007 6:52:34 PM
@65 Wow that was insulting. I personally have been maintaining and running domino enviornments for over 11 years, and know how to roll-out domino, support, and maintain it. I don't have to defend myself and won't. My record stands for itself.

You never asked what version of domino we were running, did u? we are running domino on linux, and it has been a nightmare, and its not that I don't know how to support it, its that the software has been subpar.

I indicated two companies - Company A (ENTERPRISE I WORK FOR) and Company B my private company. Company A is going with Exchange, and I HAVE NO INFLUENCE WHATSOEVER (I could stand on my head till I turn blue, and I'd be on the unemployment line). Company B (My company) will continue with domino. Yes I think domino is a great product. Yes I do love notes, but now I will have to support an exchange environment for a living.

The management of Company A doesn't care if I think notes is the best thing since sliced bread, they made their decision. Yes it is, what it is. You can say theyr'e bad, they made the wrong choice, they didn't evaluate it, and guess what, I WOULD AGREE WITH YOU, but the fact remains that many company's are moving to exchange for whatever reason. You and i can't stop that no matter how much we love notes.

I agree with a lot you said, except the insults, and the sly remarks but please dont' think i'm saying i don't like notes. I still do, that hasn't changed.

FYI: My manager saw Notes 8. I used the betas, I still use the notes 8 client.

67 Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 11/17/2007 9:16:24 PM
"John", you need to decide what side you are on. Your own personal company will continue to use Domino, yet you declared it dead in your previous comment. Why would you do that?

I have no idea why Domino on Linux has been a nightmare for you -- we have whole enterprises running their business on it, and it's been in the market for seven years. We simply don't have the kinds of issues your post implies.

And ultimately, if the management of company "A" is switching to Exchange, you work for them, and you abdicate your responsibility as an employee to get involved in a decision like that, it hardly seems professional to come over here and tell me and my readers why the product sucks and you've had issues.

Oh, and it really seems odd that that employer would have spent the money to attend one of the View's upgrade seminars. Why bother?

I think Nathan had every right to call you out, especially as you continue to hide behind an alias.

68 Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 11/18/2007 6:19:07 AM
@66 - "My record stands for itself."

What record? Who are you? What is your company? What is your background?

Are you an English professor at Brandies University? An anti-abortion protestor in the Army of God? A Michigan realtor? Are you an ex-Air Force pilot in the Pacific Northwest?

The only thing I know about you is that I definitely don't remember you from such films as "Scream" and "The Serpent and the Rainbow."

69 Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 11/18/2007 8:33:32 AM
@62 - good thoughts. I think we have to be balanced and say that Notes 8 offers a lot in one client install but Domino, Sametime, Quickr and Activities (along with the rest of Connections) aren't just one server install. But I don't think we make any secret of that.

As regards Unified Communications, telephony, etc - important thing is that IBM aren't trying to own the telephony market, they're partnering with the experts and market leaders. How could we pretend to know more about that subject than Cisco, Avaya, Nortel, Siemens and the like? True enough that IBM's GTS have some deep expertise on the subject, but it's the other guys who supply the kit and telephony solutions which integrate with Sametime and Notes 8. Meanwhile, would you really like to trust your company's telephony service to Microsoft? Answers on a postcard please...

70 Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 11/18/2007 8:40:43 AM
@63 - staying out of the mini-war that seems to have erupted... "IBM can either wake up [now] or wake up when Notes is dead".

John, I think IBM announced that it woke up when Hannover was revealed to the world. Hannover acknowledged that despite the best efforts to focus on enterprise-necessary features (security, release-to-release compatibility, mobile working, collaborative applications, straightforward upgrades, etc) what people really wanted was something they could point at and say "ooh, that looks nice". We have Notes 8, it looks great, it has all of the above, there's improvements to come in 8.0.1 and Next. So I'm interested, what else do you think IBM can do during this extended wake-up period?

71 Wayne Sobers | 11/18/2007 9:46:45 AM
@47 has a **very** good point about the Microsoft approach to getting customer buy in. MS aims for the broadest base of users and generally gets things right by version 3. With e-mail being as mature as it is, enhancing the *mail* portion of notes will give diminishing returns, everybody has *their* opinion of what should be in the client and neither MS not IBM/Lotus will please everybody.

Lotus should assemble a team *devoted* to small and very small businesses.Get Nathan Freeman to consult on it and let them loose. There should be different criteria for what is considered *successful* so they get a chance to develop another line of business.

They can set up a new look template for mail (openntf?) which is targeted at the receptionist or the HR assistant or the trainee sales engineer. Fix the data UI components to be more flexible and give a better presentation experience. Leave the Java to the corporate development teams and remember that there are thousands of VB apps out there which could easily be ported to Notes/Domino if the appropriate data widgets where in the notes client.

As to your main question... I demoed the client to several staff members. Everyone thought the *look* was great, but the standard client performance was poor. (No, these are not the latest machines and we don't have a "toss it out after three years" policy in place). Even on dual core laptops the startup performance led me to replace standard with basic.

There are some great features in the standard client but users have learned to do without and/or found alternate ways of getting what they wanted.

Finally, third party pressure to use Outlook/Exchange is very strong. One of our main business partners uses Outlook PST files for communicating remote events (I have argued that there are better, mail agnostic ways for doing this but they feel so smart that they pulled it off). Another of our partners that supply us with key software are doing the Outlook integration thing. I've had to push for them to provide alternate interfaces and at least *consider* that a company may net use MS office.

72 Wayne Sobers | 11/18/2007 10:13:55 AM
@70 - It's more than just pointing at a fancy user interface and saying "ooh, that looks nice".

Well thought out software empowers a user to think about the *task* and get the job done. Operating the software at best should be a joy to use, at worst is should be transparent. To many end users see using the client as a chore.

At the administrative end, well there are issues there but I've managed to argue on several occasions that our *company* would suffer overall if we decided to use exchange (plus we'd still have to continue using the Domino Apps!).

73 Lucas Williamson http://www.advancedclp.com | 11/18/2007 4:45:39 PM
@8 - I agree. Project server creep is a real problem. Most organizations have a need for server based roll up of project plans if they want to run a good project office. Project server seems to be the killer app of the Sharepoint suite. Once it enters an organization, the inevitable questions about integration with Exchange and other MS apps start getting asked. In many cases, the start of the end for Notes.

Has IBM got any plans to provide a similar competitive offering? Would be fantastic to see this as part of Symphony.

74 Dave Harris http://www.wavysworld.com | 11/19/2007 4:39:27 AM
@ 73 "Has IBM got any plans to provide a similar competitive offering?"

Have you seen Activities in action? Trust me, I am certain that, with the much lamented project management app in the RCP not far off being ported to Symphony (Ed, tell me I'm not just wishing), and with Activities able to use an NSF data-store, Lotus aren't far away from being able to blow MS out of the water on this one, especially when you take into account the power of C&S in ND.

75 Chris Miller http://www.IdoNotes.com | 11/19/2007 9:40:43 AM
@43/44 - Interesting you are taking that approach from the comments we made at the seminar. As one of the speakers there, I know exactly what topics you are talking about. However, Andy documented the issue with the menus not showing correctly quite well in a couple blog postings starting with this one { Link }

Then the lack of composite applications is due to outside developers not making them fast enough to cover the Domino 8 adoption rate. I do not see 8.0.1 changing that part yet. we strongly make the point that each company should invest in making their own to solve some business needs. Not one vendor will offer a magic bullet solution.

The move to the Eclipse client is not buggy at all, it has to do with the fact you must move using the Smart Upgrade (or network push type you choose). From there you start using the Eclipse update sites which are amazing and work great.

We are actually telling people NOT to wait till 8.0.1 and start pilot and upgrades now!! Andy, Rob and myself would love to hear from you if you have any concerns. If your boss had any questions on this he heard all of us say numerous times that 8.0 is more than stable and ready to install, so why are you waiting.

Saying all that, @Nathan - you know I was one of the presenters and reading someone that twists what we say showing them what is a bit 'off" (yes there is a policy issue in the upgrade that we have confirmed over 4 times now and sent on to Lotus)is someone trying to start an issue in that area.

76 Ivor McNamara | 11/19/2007 10:18:17 AM
Ed,

I am a Domino Admin involved in the end of a very large migration (over 25,000) from Domino 6.5.3 to Exchange 2007. While my heart will always be Domino, I see 3 great advantages Exchange/Outlook still has over Domino.

1) The biggest problem the average end user (including myself) just simply prefers the OutLook client over the Domino client. Before you ask, I have seen and played with the Domino 8 client.But I still prefer the Outlook 2007 client, even though my background up until last year was strictly Domino. Its just easier to use and more user friendly. The feedback we have gotten since we moved to Outlook is "why haven't we moved sooner".

2) Exchange simply works FAR better with Blackberry/mobile messaging then Domino and this is becoming more and more a big issue -> Mobile messaging. I am (have been) a Blackberry admin for both platforms. I am Domino 7 PCLP and have just got my first Exchange 2007 exam. Trust me. Blackberry is a superior beast on Exchange 2007. Superb Third party monitoring Blackberry products like Zenprise just have not been developed with Domino in mind. Therefore Exchange has a massive advantage with regarding BES monitoring. Also, Speed of message delivery is quicker (I have tested this extensively), administration is easier and Office communicator works far better then Sametime on a Blackberry device.

3) Cost Savings. Not sure what deals were struck but my company is saving thousands on licensing costs, Staff costs etc by moving to Exchange..

Having played with Domino 8, I am most impressed and I will always choose Domino over Exchange. The HUGE advantage I notice Domino has is scalability and robustness. Domino is a far easier to administrate as a whole, especially when there are major server issues.

My point Ed is that until IBM figures out a way to make its client as user friendly as Outlooks is, you will always find people that say "gee, we need to switch to Outlook"

Over the past while I have gotten to work with Microsoft people closely and I think the passion and loyalty both sets of employees (Microsoft & IBM) have to their product is very admirable.

After experiencing both, I see 2 great products to which the people involved should be very proud..

77 Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 11/19/2007 10:50:07 AM
"My point Ed is that until IBM figures out a way to make its client as user friendly as Outlooks is, you will always find people that say "gee, we need to switch to Outlook""

As much as I am an enormous advocate of good user experience design, do you think that functionality and reliability play ZERO part?

"Yes" is certainly a legitimate answer, but I think that might be a decision that said users regret.

Personally, I often find that, even prior to Notes 8, shops where users complain a lot about wanting Outlook are shops where users can't leverage the differential features of the Notes client (Sametime, full-text searching, digital signatures & encryption,) whether through policy, education, or simply an atrophy of the ND environment. Could that have happened in your case?

78 Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 11/19/2007 10:54:32 AM
@76, thanks for the feedback.

Ultimately, I guess the question is -- OK, Outlook 2007 is very good. Is it THAT MUCH BETTER that you are getting more business value out of moving to it versus upgrading to Notes 8 [perhaps from as far back as Notes 6.0]? Would your organization have been better off moving to Notes 8 and thus not incurring the cost of migration? What other tradeoffs had to be made in the migration? Are you still running Notes applications, leaving a second infrastructure in place, and for how long will that be?

I also totally don't get the comment around Blackberry support being that much better. Again, against a current Domino infrastructure, I've been lead to believe that the BES in Domino is equal to BES in Exchange (and more scalable).

Last, on the cost savings point -- I've seen no data that says that you can administer Exchange for less than Domino. I've seen plenty of data the other direction. All the "single seat administration" BS that Microsoft used to throw around for Exchange 2000 and 2003 is gone in Exchange 2007. There have been so many TCO strides in Domino 7 and 8, that at this point, for mail only, Domino has a great operational cost footprint. I find it incredibly difficult to believe anyone could cost-justify a migration based on that. License cost -- yes, you probably got one of "those deals", but it would be interesting to look at it in the lens of the total spend of your organization with Microsoft and how that has tracked over the last five years...and what it will be for the next five.

79 Jim Casale | 11/19/2007 11:12:17 AM
@77 Reliability should be number one priority for an organization. What good is an Outlook client when the server is down and there is no server to connect to?

We had a sister company (about 15 users) have a hardware failure on Exchange. The hardware was easy to replace. It took them a week to get Exchange up and running after the fact. But the users didn't care since they had Outlook as their email client to look at all week ;-)

80 Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 11/19/2007 11:44:51 AM
@76 - I've said it before, license acquisition is only a small part of cost of ownership. Also, I've seen many an occasion where a Microsoft agreement looks good value but if you break it down it's not. Microsoft are one of the most cash-rich organisations in the world and they didn't get this way by acting like a charity. They're using revenue to fund business units that are in the red (Xbox, Zune). Believe me, someone is coughing up to make them rich. Sure, it's everyone else and not you ;o)

Cost of ownership is complex and very personal to each organisation. Studies are rarely like-for-like. I remember one case of a company for whom the Microsoft licenses were around £30k cheaper, but we proved that that could save £300k a year on electricity because Domino requires fewer servers (lack of active / active clustering and Wintel only hits Exchange).

And then there's the ol' return-on-investment argument. I'm STILL trying to get a reference out of a company here in the UK who silenced a cost of ownership round-table conversation with a Domino application they said would save them something like £20 million over three years. Kinda knocks arguments over thousands of pounds / dollars aside.

81 Flemming Riis | 11/19/2007 3:02:19 PM
- It took them a week to get Exchange up and running after the fact.

and they still have a job ?.

Sure Exchange is slower to restore from bare metal than domino is without DR software , but for it to take a week they must have restored the data from tape printet it out and typed it in again manually.

82 John Burt | 11/19/2007 5:40:27 PM
@75 Let me clarify, I loved the seminar it was informative and I was only pointing out a few caveats you mentioned. Certainly, not trying to twist the presentation, which was excellent.

To all, I believe the exchange migration was secretly planned beforehand, just not sure why we were sent to a seminar on the upgrade to 8, and we were moving to exchange, but its neither here or there.

I certainly didn't want to contribute to a mini-war Exchange Vs. Lotus Notes, because I HAVE NO LOYALTIES TO EXCHANGE.

@76, I'd like to see some raw data on Exchange working better with Blackberry than domino. Domino works perfectly for us with no issues, so I'm not sure why you say Blackberry with Exchange is better.

Cost Savings (DONT THINK SO) the enterprise cal's are ridiculous so the money you save on a Domino Admin, your already spending on exchange licenses, and the add-ons, your well over dominos pricing.

The only thing I'll agree is probably outlook 2007 is better than notes 8 client. The client trips me up sometimes, but it is certainly 10x better than notes 7 client, so each has its advantages/disadvantages.

I think domino is better than exchange for the following reasons:

1) Better Console Interface (Trying to figure out mail routing issues is challenging with exchange)

2) Easier Setup/Install and moving the server. You don't have a million ties to active directory, and schemas, etc, its simple and intuitive.

3) Easier commands (have you looked at windows powershell (not for the faint of heart)

4) More platform support (linux, solaris, etc)

5) Stable (Microsoft says Exchange 2007 needs x64 architecture to run stable, and excahange 2003 runs on 32bit platform) Domino gives you different flavors like IBM ZOS to run on, which is rock solid or AS/400.

6) Groupware features ( Try that with exchange you need live communications server, and another server for this, and that in exchange).

Overall I love domino's simplicity, sure it has problems, and sure it doesn't always run smoothly, but Exchange isn't necessarily the best option. Spending some time and fine-tuning your domino environment is a more wise investment than Installing exchange.

Some people said choose sides, I don't need to choose a side, I think domino is great, has a few problems, but I'd much rather use it then exchange anyday. If your company is going toward exchange, you'll either migrate or find another job. I don't mind learning something new to add to my skillset, sure thats why we got in the IT field isn't it.

I can tell you this though. I have the option on what to run at home for my email server, and I'll stick with notes. Much for the reasons indicated above. It works, and I love software that just works.

83 John Rowland | 11/21/2007 10:21:57 AM
This has been a fascinating discussion. Discussions like this always are (to me). I have never been an Exchange admin and don't care to become one unless forced to. That means I have to be evangelizing within my environment.

Since I don't have experience with Exchange, I rely on second hand information to gain understanding about the product.

As the primary mail admin in our corporation, most of the secondary admins (mostly working at other sites in the corporation) are coming in with Exchange experience and no

Domino experience. Part of my evangelization effort has to be with them. Only a few of them have MS religion. Most are just pragmatists.

One project I have in the back of my mind is to create a "Domino Administration for Exchange Admins" FAQ. Basically, I would like to show how parallel functions are done and highlight functions which Domino has that are either not do-able or are hard to do with Exchange. One example would be the comments about the console, etc in @82.

Perhaps other readers would like to contribute to that FAQ. Please email me if so.

When I first got interested in Notes back in the 'late 80s or early 90s (memory is foggy) only large corporations could afford it. If it was even on the radar screen in SMB shops like the one I worked in then, we could only dream about it. That is not so anymore -- but like some of these comments have said, IBM and partners have to work to provide *slam-dunk* solution from the large corporate shops all the way down to the SMB shops.

In the meantime, we need to have brutally frank discussions like this and try to get better.

84 Henry Bestritsky | 11/21/2007 10:35:59 AM
Ed,

Let me quote your blog entry on January 2nd, 2007...

"OK, so another issue, and a harder one for me to overcome, is that (as most of you know) I'm a passionate competitor, and have a strong sense of competing fairly. This comes across at times as self-righteous or defensive at times. I get flamed for criticizing Microsoft but then I get e-mails and comments saying that my competitive postings have been useful in day-to-day situations. Other postings are seen as whiny. To try to change the way this reads, I've started to take some things offline rather than "blog first, ask questions later". I'll still blog about competitive topics, but try to do so with a little bit less emotion and just stick to the facts. Remember that provable lying is still a fact... "

Let me quote you from this thread..

@65 - "Oh, and it really seems odd that that employer would have spent the money to attend one of the View's upgrade seminars. Why bother?

I think Nathan had every right to call you out, especially as you continue to hide behind an alias.

Nathan T. Freeman on 11/18/2007 6:19:07 AM - email { Link }

@66 - "My record stands for itself."

What record? Who are you? What is your company? What is your background?

Are you an English professor at Brandies University? An anti-abortion protestor in the Army of God? A Michigan realtor? Are you an ex-Air Force pilot in the Pacific Northwest?

The only thing I know about you is that I definitely don't remember you from such films as "Scream" and "The Serpent and the Rainbow." "

After speaking to a few folks that read this thread, we are of the opinion that you let Nathan eviscerate this "John Burt" as you clearly supported him. It does not matter if he is an M$ stooge or not. You came across as petulant and petty and I know that this is something you are trying to avoid. IMHO this alienates the Lotus community and does not help at all.

Nathan, this has nothing to do with you. You have every right to post whatever you wish.

Ed, I hope you can take this post as constructive and not derogatory.

85 Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 11/21/2007 4:04:27 PM
@84 Henry, I allowed Jon to comment for a while without me saying anything. My tolerance disappeared when I cross-referenced the IP address and found other comments from one of the IPs with different names associated. I also e-mailed "wescravn@gmail.com" and really got no engagement through that route. I have always maintained that on this blog, discourse is open as long as those who participate fairly and accurately represent themselves. This is not such a case, and as such, "Jon" needed to know that he/she has crossed that line. That Nathan got to that comment before I did simply meant that I needed to either endorse Nathan's post or disagree with it. I also had several people note my comments in this thread -- and many more than "a few folks" think it was positive that I highlighted "Jon's" inconsistencies and the behind-the-scenes for those taking him/her at face value.

Discussion for this entry is now closed.