Ed Brill

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1. 1  Mike Lazar  | 9/1/2008 1:33:22 PM

   Ed -- I don't want to sound like I'm baiting, but what's the value here? IBM is entering a saturated market that is filled with several key vendors that have been doing this for years. The past 3 years have seen nothing but consolidation in this market, since it is so commoditized. What does Protector do cheaper or better than any of the appliances (ProofPoint, IronPort, Barracuda, etc.) or my personal favorites, the services (MEHS/FrontBridge, Postini/Google, & MessageLabs)?

   ISS/IBM are not seen by Gartner as a Leader or Visionary in the Email Security market, so I don't see that as a tipping point. If this is just a "me too" and a precursor to an archiving product, then perhaps it has to be done. But even if that is the plan, archiving is much like spam was 2-3 years ago. The market is very much formed in camps of appliances vs. services vs. software. Consolidation and weeding are happening now; vendor expansion isn't the trend. I don't know if you can effectively break into the EMC, Autonomy/Zantaz, OpenText world, or even the world of Domino based software solutions such as Mail Attender.

   Maybe it's because I don't know the entire plan, but this move doesn't seem rooted in the market reality of 2008-2009. It seems like IBM is trying to justify the purchase of ISS from a few years ago. It's like throwing bad money after bad money to me. I could be wrong, but I've had my pulse on this market for the past 5 years and I think I know it pretty well. I just don't see this being a game changer, or even something many orgs will look at using.

1. 2  Arthur Fontaine  | 9/1/2008 5:52:14 PM

   Hi Mike -- We're in violent agreement on many of your points. If we were creating a "me too" offering -- in any area -- that would indeed be pretty silly. So a couple of things...

   First off, the ISS antispam technology, based on the former Cobion labs in Kassel Germany, is actually very good. If you stack it up against any competitive offering, its efficacy and performance will be equal or, in most cases, superior. The spam stuff is 100% IBM-owned and proprietary (in the good sense) technology, in its sixth full generation. It's got IP reputation filtering and sophisticated signature/content analysis. It has a couple fairly unique differentiators, including access to ISS's massive, continuously updated database of bad URLs, which are very effective against the new breed of "Hello, click here" spams that are designed to not give filters a lot of context or signature content to work with.

   But while that is, as you observe, the "me too" part, you can't get in the game with something that's *not* up to par with alternatives. Your view might be that it's a way to justify the ISS acquisition, but I believe it's just a really good in-house technology that we can deliver as the first Protector offering. So check that "IBM quality" box. I invite you to test for yourself, since we're making this product available to protect partners who are signed up for the Partnerworld for Software "Run Your Business" program.

   Even without anything more than that, Domino customers get the "single supplier" factor, which is why we created consistent licensing, packaging, etc. This can easily be added to an existing Domino contract, right down to synchronizing the renewal dates for both core pieces of e-mail infrastructure. Could even help someone get to a bigger Passport discount, depending upon where they are in the curve.

   But there are two additional parts of the strategy that get more compelling to customers, and of course you can't get too deep into that in a 6 minute Youtube video. The first is the simple fact that we (uniquely) own development of both pieces of the equation, so we get an opportunity to pursue vertical integration between Domino and the Protector layer. Some of the things we're workin on include integrating the "block mail from sender" agent in Notes with antispam system's user block/allow lists, and creating hooks to things like the Bayesian filters, which learn over time what an organization's unique views of spam and ham (non-spam e-mail) are. We're also studying things like extending Domino user/group management, policies, etc., so the administrative activities bridge the barriers of the current multivendor model of e-mail security. So those things aren't in the first (2.1) release of the product, but we're busy with that work in both Westford and Kassel; note that Protector is within the Domino business, and I'm long-term Domino heritage as well. We'll have news here shortly.

   The second part of the strategy is that Protector is a family brand, not just a product brand, so we're taking a holistic view of the types of problems enterprise e-mail customers are facing. We're working on things like comprehensive encryption over Internet links (beyond S/MIME and TLS), data loss prevention, and, as you mention, archiving and ediscovery. We're doing them in ways consistent with how we're approaching antispam (e.g., Internet encryption that's integrated with your Notes<->Notes encryption), and across the platform (e.g., your DLP and archiving doesn't fall over because your encryption gets in the way).

   Look, everyone's trying to crack this problem of too many security piece parts, and the additional complexity of what should logically be local and what belongs in the cloud. Our differentiator is that we limit our field of vision to Domino customers -- and thus can uniquely take their point of view and apply our knowledge of how they want to buy/deploy our stuff -- and are approaching it as a complete solution from day one. Some of the individual components may have "me too" aspects, because we know we have to deliver capabilities that are competitive with best-of-breed vendors in specific areas. (We also will continue to support those vendors for the benefit of our mutual customers -- even to the point of sharing the APIs and integrations we develop.)

   So to respond to your specific concerns, the value of Protector security is as a comprehensive, high-quality, single-vendor solution for Domino customers. We're confident that we'll enjoy strong consideration from those customers, and that our field organization, partners and products will win their fair share of the opportunities. Protector for Mail Security is really just the first beat of that tune, but that's where it makes most sense to start.

1. 3  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 9/1/2008 7:17:25 PM

   Guess I don't need to say anything further. Nice one Arthur :)

1. 4  Jess Stratton http://www.lotususergroup.org/blogsphe.nsf | 9/1/2008 7:52:34 PM

   I'm actually running into problems where I'm having memory leaks on Domino servers caused by improperly tuned anti-virus engines that run on the server's OS. Not only that, but it's almost impossible to find a "tuning guide" of any sort for AV that's created to run with specific apps, such as Domino.

   In terms of value, I was hoping Lotus Protector is created with the intention to run on systems running Lotus products, to run concurrently and so it will play nice with minimal tuning knowledge required. Aurthur's great response sounds like I will get what I wanted. :-)

1. 5  Pierre Baudet  | 9/1/2008 8:13:06 PM

   Our current solution has gone through dozens of patches before some semblance of stability was obtained, but centralized policy administration was a requirement so we've kept it.

   Looking forward to evaluating this one as a replacement.

1. 6  Mike Lazar  | 9/1/2008 8:44:21 PM

   Arthur -- Thanks for taking the time to answer this so thoroughly. I have a few more questions, though. Just to clarify, is that violently agree or disagree? I generally use violently only with disagree...

   That being said, I'm sure the ISS technology is good, but I can't imagine it's really measurably better than the ones I mentioned before. They all have the capabilities you list, and they have well established customers. In the end, they are all within statistical insignificance of each other when it comes to what they can and can't do.

   My main question is, how will you sell this and to whom?

   First, what is the go to market strategy here? Is this going to be item number 10,542 in an IBM rep's bag, or is this to be partner driven? Who is taking this to the customers with the compelling story that will make them dump what they already have? What is that compelling story? The capabilities, administration, etc., are all offered by the others, and they aren't worse at it than you will be. Single vendor strategy is a small part of it. There has to be more.

   I like the thought of focusing on the Domino market, as it has been traditionally underserved from a focus perspective. Most services and appliances have an AD sync capability, but if you don't use AD, you have to either go flat file or a cumbersome LDAP query for Domino. What I am getting at there is you need the box to be able to look at a Domino directory and reject or accept messages based on valid email addresses. That is something that no one else does well today. That could be a differetiator.

   For the who/whom part, what is the target market? Perhaps it's because I am focused on the large enterprises that I have my viewpoint. No large enterprises that I know would view this as a competitor to the existing services. They are all well entrenched with their existing appliance or service, and they live off of Gartner. Unless Gartner is coming out with a new study soon where IBM/ISS looks better, that hurts your cause tremendously compared to Microsoft, Postini, Symantec, et al. So, if the large enterprise is out, what is the target? Is your market the 500 and under companies? If so, what's the message that you are taking to them, and who is delivering it? Ed's been beat up enough here to know that IBM have traditionally not had the focus that their customers and partners would like to see on the SMB/SME market. Is this going to change that perception? If so, how is it driven?

   Thanks,

   Mike

1. 7  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 9/1/2008 9:09:53 PM

   Mike, I'm going to pre-empt Arthur from answering some of those questions due to the public nature of the discussion....you'll forgive me for being sensitive to wanting our whole go-to-market strategy discussed in public where the competition can just jump right onto it.

   Having said that, we've *already* seen some of the large enterprise customers express interest in this for a variety of reasons. Still, we expect about half our revenue this year to be through partners versus direct IBM-lead sales. So we plan to start working with partners -- some of whom already worked with ISS -- to extend the reach of the Protector family.

   We can do both, and I'm pretty confident there's opportunity in both based just on the feedback we've had in the seven months since announcement. Things will get even more interesting in about two hours, when we go live with the pricing/packaging details.

1. 8  Mike Lazar  | 9/1/2008 9:50:32 PM

   All righty, my friend. I'll be waiting to see the strategy. You know I'm just asking the questions that my customers will ask me.

1. 9  Samuel deHuszar Allen http://www.essentialforms.com | 9/2/2008 1:59:26 AM

   I know you can't really talk prices in any explicit way just yet, but are you able to say whether there will be Express licensing prices that are in line (or in range) with the per-head prices of Quickr, Sametime, or even other consumer AV suites?

   I personally have tremendous interest, and many of my clients have been dying for something like this (and even moreso what it promises to be) but as you know... most of my work is for companies with 10 users or less, so the price has to scale down reasonably.

1. 10  Henry Ferlauto http://www.geniusinside.com | 9/2/2008 9:32:31 AM

   Branding question: Why is this a Lotus branded product vs. a Tivoli branded product, since the Tivoli brand is all about security, reducing risk, etc.

1. 11  John C. Cummins http://www.adobe.com/consulting | 9/2/2008 10:35:00 AM

   Hi Mike,

   I worked at IBM for 5 years, including 3 at Lotus. I am now at Adobe and have no ties to any security providers or IBM. I'm independent :) and this posting has nothing to do with my employer (should be covered legally now:)).

   The last 6 months of 2007 I was a Client IT Architect, which is basically pre-sales for everything IBM sells (HW, SW and services); covering 2 Fortune 500 companies. This was right after the ISS purchase and the although I have no info on the current go to market strategy, I will mention the way we were trying to position it back then.

   Security is huge business and email security is only a small part of that. Why? Well, companies are looking to reduce costs by outsourcing everything that is not a core business. There is a huge learning curve for security and it costs a lot to stay up to date on new threats. Companies, even large ones, don't really have the resources or the desire to focus on it. That includes large Fortune 500 firms as well as SMB.

   IT service providers see this as excellent way to expand their outsourcing businesses and they offer different models such as everything hosted by the outsourcer or the HW stays with the customer but is managed remotely (there is a term for this but I have forgotten it :)).

   Secondly, as you stated, there isn't a big difference between most of the email security providers. Some of the features Arthur mentioned sounds to me like they are unique, but I am not a security expert. In the anti-SPAM, AV and desktop firewall areas, this is basically a commodity, so companies will look into switching if they can get either a significantly better price or a more integrated solution. If there is a security breach, they don't want different vendors pointing fingers at each other, they want a solution.

   Lotus has always been focused on an integrated, do everything product suite, with security being one of its core strengths. There was clearly a hole for SPAM/AV there and it had to be filled.

   This is also an upsell opportunity for IBM to introduce other ISS products and the security outsourcing services (offered by GTS) to all Lotus customers and vice versa.

   For IBM, I think it is about filling a need in the market and synergies they can offer customers through complementary offerings. It seems like a logical step to me.

1. 12  Paul Robichaux http://www.robichaux.net/blog | 9/2/2008 10:35:10 AM

   @6: I'll add that in the Exchange world, MS faces the same challenge in trying to displace existing message hygiene solutions. Exchange Hosted Filtering is an easy sale because it's a hosted service, and Forefront is relatively easy because it has some advantages that its competitors don't. However, in general it's hard to replace existing perimeter systems unless you have some compelling advantage(s) and I don't see what those are for Protector for Mail Security.

1. 13  tonyo  | 9/2/2008 11:34:21 AM

   Art,

   is that the IBM holodeck you are standing on? :)

1. 14  Mike Lazar  | 9/2/2008 12:16:06 PM

   Paul -- In case you didn't know, I work for Orange Business Services. We've sold MEHS since it's days as FrontBridge. You're absolutely right in that it's an easy sell, but very hard to displace existing solutions. That's why I asked about the market strategy. I sell to the largest Domino and Exchange shops in the world. I have a very hard time displacing Postini or MessageLabs with MEHS at Exchange shops, and equally as hard a time displacing appliances. I don't see how this is going to be any different for Domino shops. I guess I'll wait to get the briefing from my product and partner folks.

1. 15  Kevin Mort http://www.theglobalmind.com | 9/2/2008 2:04:48 PM

   I'll say from our standpoint as a partner that we've had a HUGE amount of interest in the ISS product. The ISS plays we have are right up there with Storage and Virtualization in terms of popularity.

   The Protector side of things just gives us another avenue to go after that market, and that's a good thing indeed.

1. 16  Arthur Fontaine  | 9/2/2008 10:14:12 PM

   @9, yes this is per-user pricing and the VMWare mode will map nicely with the smallest accounts. SMB will get full benefit from Protector products like this one.

   @12 and @14, points taken about displacing edge and cloud solutions. Especially on the cloud point, it always amazes me that something with such low switching costs -- literally changing an MX entry -- seems so sticky. You can debate whether that's because people are uber-happy or differentiation is just so difficult when software is designed for generic usage.

   @13 -- That's galactic headquarters in Armonk, what, you don't recognize it? ;->