177 days of a Domino Server in Production?

Not likely the longest running server, by far, but I did manage to get a screenshot of a Lotus Domino server I updated recently before it was brought down for maintenance to install and upgrade to Domino r8.

177 days! Almost 6 months since it last came down.

This was the main web server too. I love it but who has a longer time frame? We shouldn't because we should be updating it on quarterly releases but still, solid as a rock.

Any Exchange people out there got one like this?

BES and R8

Still waiting for the updated code from RIM? Never mind that, just go get their updated version, last was posted as 4.1.4MR3. MR is their way of saying FixPack.
I have now installed/upgraded a few servers to Domino R8 and the latest BES versions and aside from the known anomalies posted at RIM and IBM, so far no one is complaining.

I admit, I was put off by it, but when I looked into it further found the issues were something we could live with and we now run, internally, all R8 servers in production areas. We still have a mix for testing, development and clients but we are good to go for R8.

Now I await the Quickr 8.0.1 version, along with Domino 8.0.1 so I can get that fully updated properly.

No more excuses, just do it and start the year off with a bang!

Happy Holidays, Lotus Style

2007 started out so well,
Lotusphere in Orlando was swell.
R8 was brought out and it was good,
Mobile, internet based and free,
and a new spreadsheet for you and me.

So whether or not you used SSL, VPN, POP3, LDAP, IMAP, IPv6 or a (i)phone,
Make sure to finish the year right and use Sametime8 mobile client when away from home.

So onwards Notes, Domino, Sametime, Quickr, Connections, Forms, Symphony and Doc,
We have many more clients to bring good cheer and luck.

See you in 2008, Lotusphere's gonna be great!

Lotus Sametime 8 THE Mobile IM Standard

If you have not done it yet, get Lotus Sametime 8 installed because if ntohign else, the only thing you want is the mobile client.
It's light years faster then the 7.5.1 version(logging in only took a few seconds, a huge advance over what seemed to be an eternity or about a minute on 7.5.1), with some better UI enhancements which make it all the more useful.
I have not set up all of the options yet but so far it just ROCKS!

One caveat, when installing it from your website(sametime.server.com/mobile) is if you have a

Windows Mobile device, be careful which option you choose.
Although I have a Windows smartphone from At&T, the HTC 8125 the proper option would seem logical to me to be Windows Mobile Smartphone/Standard(no idea what Standard refers to here). I tried fruitlessly to get it to work and then decided to try the other option, Windows Mobile PocketPC/Professional (again what does Professional refer?).
This time it worked 123 and in a few seconds I was IMing my office buddies(note to self and Lotus, it owuld be nice if the mobile client could login to ALL of my communities like the full connect client, not just one).
Then once you have it running, setup your location, call back info, auto response if you prefer.

The look of the UI can bemade smaller or larger for the text type.

It woiuld be nice if the location page did not get cut off under the horizon of the phone window, but I managed somehow to getthe right info into the unseen box. You can see the title of the box, phone number, but can not actually touch the box.

This is going to make Lotusphere much easier for people in sessions so they don't have to take calls while listening.
And in my case when I am in the car and clients want me I am now available even when not at my desk. This alone is worth the price of admission.

Bottom line, if you do not have Sametime you are limiting yourself and your company from being more productive and if you have Sametime but did not update to even 7.5.1 yet(you should since otherwise you are not DST compatible 2 times a year for a week at a time) go download ST8 and update your environment.

I updated 8 servers this week to Domino R8 so could you.

Resolved Mailto issue, what a pain in the neck

I use Vista, which is not so simple to fix as Xp was in IE.
In Vista you click on Default Programs from the Start Menu, then Set your default programs and see if Notes is listed, mine is not(but I run R3-R8 so not surprising it can be confused).
Then check Set Program Access and Computer Defaults to see if Notes is listed as an option, click it if it is.
In my case this still did not work..
The answer was/is:
Go to this page and get his tool.
http://www.nirsoft.net/articles/mailto_bug.html

You can follow the steps, but in Vista I had to go into the registry and look for in the
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Outlook.URL.mailto\shell\open\command
and change it to your notes.exe location and add the ending. mine is c:\lotus\notes8\notes.exe -defini %1

There are other entries ie: rss and mail inks and all which you may need to fix as well, but this will get the email working again.

EDITED UPDATED 3/20/2008
Jospeh thanks for this information for Thunderbird people too!

Also, my key for Lookout was
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Microsoft.Outlook.URL.mailto\shell\open\command
Not
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Outlook.URL.mailto\shell\open\command

And the full entries from that lovely program you pointed me to were:

Microsoft Outlook.Url.Mailto Enabled URL:MailTo Protocol C:\PROGRA~1\MI1933~1\OFFICE11\OUTLOOK.EXE -c IPM.Note /m "%1" Microsoft Office Outlook Microsoft Corporation

Notes Enabled URL:Notes Protocol C:\Program Files\lotus\notes\notes.exe -defini %1 IBM Lotus Notes/Domino IBM Corp

Thunderbird.Url.mailto Enabled Thunderbird URL "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\thunderbird.exe" -osint -compose "%1" Thunderbird Mozilla Corporation

Microsoft is not playing nice with Lotus again

Vista pc, perfectly fine. Microsoft forces down some updates, my laptop reboots on its own!
I told it to download, never told it to reboot by itself!

Fine, I can live with it.

BUT WAIT! Now every mailto URL goes to Outlook! What happenned to all my Lotus pointers.
Poof! Gone!

And to make it worse, YOU CAN NOT browse to add a extension or reference if it's a Microsoft piece of software. So although Notes is registered into my PC, the Office 2007 SP1 evidently wiped it out of the registry.
And will not even admit Lotus it is loaded on my pc(I also have R3,4,5,6,7 as well as standard 8) so any of them would be fine.
But no way to select MY preference of an email program.
Just because Outlook is installed, does not mean I want to use it for real.

So I have to go dig out the utility I found, I posted about it previously, to correct this.
Someone out there tell me this is normal?
How can they blatantly prevent me from using my preferred mail client software?

How far does this go, if I used Thunderbird does it block me out as well?
This is just wrong!

Symantec Support for Domino R8

As a BP, and previous manager of alliance partners, I have some understanding for Lotus partners.
But, sometimes in our madness for efficiency, we neglect the simple premise:
The customer deserves to be helped first and foremost.

All I need to know is does Symantec support R8 yet in their Anti-virus program and backup-exec agent program. Simple right? NOT!

Having loved Norton Utilities and products since before Peter sold them, I tend to give Symantec the benfit of the doubt and still use their products in various forms.

One of my clients uses backup exec(I used to use this 4 mergers back before Veritas had it). And while planning for the migration to 8.0.1 we were checking if the backup agents, and server AV work with it.
Normally simple enough but as I could not find the informationm on the Syamntec website, I tried their online chat.

Ok so I was #11 or something in queue, took about 20 minutes to a half hour to chat with someone.

As they could not help me or had no idea what Lotus Domino was or if they support it(Thanks Samson of Symantec Chat) he sent me to their SMB sales line.

Called the 800# and spoke to somoene who I could barely understand and I have worked with many people around the world, evidently not all of them.

She told me she could not help me, on the sales line, I should call tech support, gave me the number.

Called tech support 800 #. No product no support. Huh? Without a licence code or some other method they are unable to log a call for me, even though all I want is to know the R8 support.
Tried to send me back to sales. I reminded him they sent me to him.
He apologized but could not help me.

I suggested I would have to seek a new vendor. After that statement I was sent to some one named Shann who was very helpful, but alas, could only confirm what was on the site, namely 6.x and 7.x.

And told me to check when it would be available at their site with a URL of http://www.symantec.com/business/support/

Thanked her and hung up.

Now, maybe if I was a Symantec BP I could get more insight, but to be honest R8 has been out a for a few months now and their site should let people know it supports it or it will in Q1? Hopefully?

See you in Orlando and you can bet who I am going to see in the product showcase.

IdeaJam open for all

It's great, it's new, it's just for you!
While I have mentioned it before, now anyone can get in and you should!
Ideajam is live! Thanks Bruce and co!
Let Lotus see what's on your mind.

Microsoft Lies, Lotus Laughs, Support Rules

Ed Brill quotes from an email he received:
"I was just in a Microsoft presentation where our company's decision makers were told that the Microsoft share in email has grown from 52% to 86% here in the [sub-region of the USA], and that while companies are constantly converting "from Notes to Exchange" there has never been a conversion in the other direction."

Now I am not privy to the sales of either company let alone sales to a region or state.
But it's an interesting usage of statistics.

I am however interested in which region it is. Surely MS would like everyone to think they own the messaging world, and maybe they do, but why do so many companies admit to not liking Exchange but not liking Domino either?

Is there a better soluton out there? Yes and no.

Simple answer is yes there are always other possibilities. And depending on your size business some may make sense for you.

But the reality is NO for most companies. Why? Because of one word, Support.
Love 'em or hate 'em, Microsoft and IBM have robust and excellent support for their products, until they end of life them, and then us business partners come into play.

But let's talk about the other support. Personnel resources support.
Doing a simple search on Dice.com for Lotus Notes Administrator gets 26, Domino gets 15, Exchange gets 73, Outlook gets 2. Total for their database just now.
So a total of 41 vs 75. Or in statistics terms(stats lie?!) 35% for Lotus and 65% for Exchange.

Some discussions have centered around the lack of jr admin available for Domino. And others argue in a similar light that the senior people move on and leave an organization without a proper evangelist or just move on for greener pastures.
Some argue long time professionals ask for too much money for work that could be done cheaper, IF you can get someone.

So what is happenning is eerily similar to the Mainframes. Now you can't find younger staff to code to it, so IBM made it accessible to Linux and other OS's. Brilliant by IBM, really it was. Saved a whole business line and gave younger coders an opportunity to possibly do more.

What can Lotus do for software? R8 is the answer, today. Based on the Eclipse platform and clients which can/will run on Mac and Linux, browsers and phones makes a push to the younger generation. BUT the younger generation still does not care about Lotus. Or do they? I look to Lotusphere 2008 for some insight.

Where's the love? What's in it for them? Do they like learning new languages every 2-3 years or prefer a stable platform? I would guess they prefer a stable platform as they get older but only time will tell.

They do want a fully customizable experiencee, note to car manufacturers, get with the program if they want black seats and black paint with a yellow lightning painted on the hood, you better be offerring it to them, price is what it is, they don't seem to care.

So, for instance, why is it so difficult to change the grey workspace background?
Why do I only have a choice of which pieces to look at it from my start page instead of SIMPLY setting them up?
No one wants to code their email client, well most of us don't.

So help the jr admins grow, find them and train them and ge them interested.

But the bottom line is if you are in a company that has Notes and you hear the MS guys are coming, call IBM or your Business Partner now. Why roll over for them? It will only hurt productivity, waste money AND put you out of a job(possibly).

Sametime Mobile Client is Awesome!

OK, so I don't use it daily, but just knowing I can is cool.
You may not understand it but it's like texting in realtime.
Smartphone, Blackberry and you go. Of course some setup is required on the backend for it to work but once you do its great.
Do not use while driving of course.
But in 2 months when Lotusphere arrives, it will be the best thing to connect to and see everyone/anyone.
Maybe I am late to this party, I last used it on a Palm in 2000, mostly because I was not interested in it, but now my clients pulled me back in.
Clients have much more enthusiasm for the products that help them and while we can try to be the same way, unless we hit the nail on the head it is always, well we will try it and see.
So now I let them test it, with my help or assistance and let them sell themselves on setting it up for everyone.
I love it, so will you. I promise.

Registered for Lotusphere yet?

I did, just now. Slight delay, have to clear the family, work, et al.
But let's go, BP day and then 4 days of Yellow(and Blue and Black too).

Where else can you talk to people about replication and they not correct you by saying synchronization?

See you all there!

Nov. 2 the price goes up, don't give your money to IBM because you are lazy.

Stop complaining and be a part of the answer

A friend of mine, Bruce Elgort, has a new site coming out soon. Very cool idea, a public site dedicated to providing feedback from normal everyday people, not just Business partners and "in the know people" on Lotus products.
While similar forums, sites and other methods exist, they are usually internal and private.
But now the people's voice will be heard, well at least seen.
If you hate Lotus or Love it, go check it out at ideajam.net.
Offically opening Nov 20 but coming to a browser near you right now!

And don't forget, Lotusphere fees go up Nov 2. So register early.

Groups were meant for forming

Linkedin is now accepting invitations for groups. I have requested one for Lotus Professionals.
Figured might as well try to expand our horizon right?

I like it, created a Yahoo! group for it. Why not a Quickplace?
well there are some issues on my side(hosting, equipment, space, resources) and Yahoo! just makes it easy as pie. I would like to move it and other groups to Quickr and am working on building a box with it on it.

But this item is about evangelising other ways to communicate. So I am branching out to other spaces. Will I do a facebook entry(a bunch already exist so no). Myspace? Not likely either.
Second Life? Only if I get more than 25 people asking for it. I have yet to find 25 people who use it.
I have an avatar in world and it is stuck at the Lotus compound :-)
Got the shirt too, in world.

So please let me know where/what else can i do to promote/grow Lotus Evangelism from your perpsective.

Sharepoint or how a rolling stone gathers MOSS 3.0

So I attended a microsoft Connections event this morning because one of my clients wants to review sharepoint and CRM 3.0.

Let's stick to Sharpeoint as it is much more interesting.
First of all, how many people know what is involved to install this application?

The presenter, Jeffrey Lin did an excellent job. Even answered some hard questions. Did a great demo. Now the part he didn't mention, although I asked one piece of it.

You need Exchange, SQL and (I love this one) Windows Sharepoint Server 2.0!
WHAT!? Some upgrade.

Now those of you in Lotus la la land who have let Sharepoint in to your organization now have a huge fight. Exchange is now available to anyone who wants it and you can see where that leads.

All because you did not want to push the Domino products? Quickplace was/is a great product, Quickr is even better. No limitations, no giant message store.

Now I can see Sharepoint looks smoother and more professional than Quickplace but functionality, out of the box, is what is important. Anyone can pay a development house to make your site prettier.
Microsoft goes out of their way to integrate it to Outlook/Exchange and use SQL as its repository. And then there is Live messenger added to if you want presence/IM.

So again you have to add all five pieces(Exchange/SQL/WSS 2.0/MOSS 3.0/Live) and services to get what comes in 1 Domino servers with a Sametime added on one and a Quickr server.

Now here is something from a report dated March 2006 done by the great state of North Dakota. Page 5

"In addition, the cost of providing access to SharePoint sites outside of State government is
prohibitive, so it is recommended that SharePoint be available only from within the
State’s firewall, thus VPN access would be required for external users, who would also
need an AD account and the associated AD CAL.

SharePoint’s history of upgrades has not been smooth. Each new version of the product
has been a wholesale redesign without an automated migration path, and each site would
be manually duplicated after a version update."

I could not have said it better. While this is from a year and half ago, some of this has not changed. There still is not path to upgrade well. But they got the repository in SQL so that is at least better news.
WSS 2.0 was like an odd file server the way it worked.

And hey, try attaching a few 100+MB files into your MOSS and see if it stays healthy.

I'm Back in the Saddle Again!

Recovering from sleepless nights and the baby, but the day job keeps me going.
Stay on top of it all and don't let them drag you down.
So on with some new stuff.

Microsoft is Clueless and their COO admits it!

If you read Ed Brill's blog, and you should, you will have seen by now or within a day 2 postings.

First is the article from Michael Vizard which you can read here:
http://www.esp.e'http://www.esp.eweek.com/article/Exchange+Equals+Profits/214670_1.aspx

"Within the land of IT, nothing is a bigger pain to own, manage and run than Microsoft Exchange. Everywhere you go customers have horror stories about the installation, maintenance and, above all, uptime of their Microsoft Exchange implementations. "

The 2nd article is an interview with Kevin Turner COO at MS he says:
"If at times Microsoft has seemed vague in describing its software plus services initiative and the Live application strategy, it's because the company simply hasn't completely figured them out yet. "
OUCH!
Read more of the 3 part interview here:
http://www.eweek.com/search_results/0%2C1208%2C%2C00.asp?qry=interview+kevin+turner§ion=&site=7

So how do your clients feel when you walk into the room and show them these articles? Or email them to them?
If they don't know about this madness they will still love MS!
Save the world one client at a time.

We interrupt this Blog with a personal Nature

Shalhevet Rona was born Friday Aug. 3rd, 6.6 pounds and 19 1/4 long she looks like a carbon copy of my daughter Noffiya.
All are well and tired.

Yep, them guys are at it again

Always comes down to Microsoft and Lotus. In a discussion today about Blackberry's BES, again comes the "it's just email right" lines. Yeah, it's just email and really that hyundai tiburon is just like a Hummer.(apologies to both owners)
What makes Exchange unique? Well, it just does email, period. And well, some would say.

But it doesn't play nice with others OF ITS OWN KIND. Mix and match version? Fogedaboudit!
AD will make life better (well, sort of, BUT we did have to update all our servers at one time to the new version of 2003).
Go to Exchange 2003, it will fix your problems, ahem, well we meant 2007.
What and change my harwdare and my software and right I now need to also update my AD and then the backups and you still can't cluster multiple types of hardware?
ARRGGHHH!

Domino, aside from some peculiarities in lotyuscripts and code pieces talks nicely across the board, the same app you wrote for R3 runs in R8, but it looks like crap probably too, if it doesn't call Lotus now and ask for Mary Beth Raven!

Sure there are issues with Lotus versions, some were not as cooked as we would like, but nothing ever made us change our hardware, directory structure, cluster or backup solutions.

I know, you heard this a million times, but I just can't figure out how I keep running into these discussions so often.

Evangelists United

More poeple have begun to blog about evangelism and that is good, Lotus always needs it.
I prefer not to follow them on marketing, everyone can read about IBM's sales targets and revenues (Lotus was up 12%) in many places, I like to discuss competitive situations and hard sells.
Today I was on a conference call and there was a person who either does not want to do any work or is a MS lover. I say that because whenever someone picks on Lotus software for being slow or using bandwith too much I just like to laugh, its the odlest MS trick in the world.

It's not Lotus really, check it, sniff it, do whatever you want, Lotus uses whatever you have or as little as you want if you maintian thresholds/ratios for ports.

Why do the MS people keep harping on what has been proven wrong? Because they have ruin out of other routes to defense.

Remember in selling, if a person provides any defense at all, they are interested, just not ready, if you can drop their defense, (may not be exact)85% of the people do not have a 2nd reason and 98% do not have a 3rd.
So nip it in the bud, get it out there and then walk them through it all.
A good counter is perhaps showing how slow a Windows box is no matter how much memroy it has compared to a linux box or phones mobile to symbian.
There are always possibilities.....choose wisely!

So far so Good

Not finished but the 1st competitive crisis of my new partner went well.
Money is always the issue, right?
Licenses would cost $20K to upgrade to R7/8 but MS wants to give them way for $1,000.
Great deal, save big money for the non-profit, right? Wrong!

Licenses, in the Lotus case is all it requires, yes some admin time, but since they have the staff it is not an issue.
Hardware, in the Microosft case is seriously required. 64-bit servers are not cheap, $8,000 for the one I looked up to configure andthat was without support contracts!
So if thy wanted an Exchange 2007 server they have to buy 2 servers of the exact same specifications, one for production, one for backup/drp. Cost so far $17,000.
But wait, they also need to update their AD infrastructure to 2007. More software licenses.
Plus they would want OWA which would mean more servers too!
Not going to continue this you get the idea...

Circles of Hell indeed

Today's post comes from a company which boasts to move your Domino apps to a Microsoft environment.

Souds great when you read the website(I will NOT tell you where to find it) but if you ask or figure it out....

However, at the bottom of the page is this graphic(sorry if it does not appear very clearly).

Note the following:

1 Domino Server or 1,000's of mail and applications server makes no difference since in theory you would need at least as many Exchange boxes, right?

Now let's say there is 1 Domino Server and it handles 200 people's email and 6 applications.

According to this MS business partner, in order to migrate your apps and email, you need the following based on their graphic:

1 Exchange server (note they use 2007 which requires a 64 bit architecture, thus a VERY NEW and expensive server to buy)

1 Active Directory (of course this comes with Server 2003/7 but you need a new box, again)

1 Visual Studio client, server maybe?

1 Sharepoint server 2007(again a new server)

1 .Net server

1 ASP .NET server(not sure if these can be combined)

1 SQL server (another server)

and Web Services

So now you want to go from 1 server doing everything to 6+ servers or one giant monster server with VM partitions.

And you need to buy all the software and licenses for 200 clients.

Now, what kind of ROI or TCO is this I ask you?

Anyone with pricing that wants to help me nail down the monetary side please advise.

Evangelism requires little work when you look at this graphic and review the steps, pieces.

Domino Server for sale, price $500K

Ed Brill has a discussion about Microsoft which has derailed into SAP and other issues.
Now SAP is huge and means everything to corporations IMHO.
Why doesn't Domino?
Well, Domino was never meant to be an ERP system, sure you can code one, but really there are better ways. BI yes, ERP no.
Someone rasied a point that SAP implementations were so expensive that there was no other way to use it but for everything and anything.
The everything looks like a nail to your hammer theory.

I proposed that perhaps Lotus should increase the cost of Domino to half a million dollars and no client license fees.
Naturally this will never happen, of course, perhaps if it had been this way early on we might still be holding authority over corprate messaging.

Now when a company debates changing systems it sounds better to say we like this one, it does a lot more than just email, hooks into our ERP and requires less administration.
And the price is only 1/2 million per server. A reverse price war, which would be insane now, but could have worked years ago.

The reponse is one of 2 ways, obvious is what are you crazy we get exchange for free! The CTO should retort yes but it's costing us $1million a week in downtime alone! If you do not believe me, I am available for this review of your company and I guarantee I will find at least $1million a week lost or you don't pay my fees.

The other response could be, interesting, we get real value, it hooks into SAP and can handle applications as well and works with the portal? Why don't we do this?

Now good readers, I have been around for a long time and I have seen crazy things, but nothing is crazier than an IT manager/director who tries to shuffle a Domino app to the CIO/CTO for 50K or even 250K and see it blown to pieces while a totally useless project(well technology speaking) claims to need $5million and gets it. The reason is executive speak. If a project costs above a certain amount, executives fear it and agree to it because it must be mission critical.

When the same exec gets a request for a small amount of money they look at it as nickel and diming them and it must be unimportant because if it was important they would ask for a few million!

La La La La ...Lemon

From my Partner connections blog since not everyone can read it there.

Yes, it's Berts favorite song from Sesame Street! Why? I think out of the box sometimes.
A bit off evangelism, although not entirely (see my public blog for the latest on that one by clicking the logo) today.
I have a theory, which I espoused with Ian White who was blogging here for a while.
Why is it all great smartphones so to speak, come from companies that are named after or for a fruit? Apple, Blackberry(RIM) and probably many more.
Then there is Motorola that just names phones like a bad personallzed license plate!
So the next phone to bring joy to the world should be called strawberry (although RIM probably bought the rights to it) or maybe a Melon (if you ever saw the Back to School movie you might get the reference.
But I think the world is ready for the Lemon phone. Smells good thanks to the citrus bark used to line the inner casing. Can always be found in the dark thanks to a yellow hue that glows(it is NOT radiation), a pebble grain casing(like the skin of a lemon) to give it good gripping power on your dashboard or hand.
Inside it would only work with Lotus, well because you can do these things, just ask RIM or PALM about exclusive clients. And it would run all your notes apps without havng to rewrite them since it actually runs an eclipse version of R8.
So why a Lemon, because no one would ever expect it to work and think of all the fun the press would have with it.
BUT THE THING WOULD WORK! Just not for Exchange.
So why not do it? IBM surely can get someone (Nokia preferably because they grok UI) to work it out.
Stranger things have occurred in life and maybe, just maybe, the mass commercial world, not just business, would also want it. Get Connectria or Prominic and all the other Domino hosters to help set up the network for it.
Would it be so bad to obtain a few million Lotus clients.
After all it's a fruit and everyone likes to turn lemons into lemonade.

Politics and IT don't mix

YEs, it's true, fire and water don't mix. IT and politics are almost as close.
Many company IT groups are run to just fix the problem, rarely creating the solution.
This has changed in the last few years, yet we still hear and read about companies that make a decision, then justify it on the public side.

Why do they do this? Why can't they just come out and say, hey Apple said they would personalize one in gold for me so we are buying 10,000 iPhones for the company.
Who cares if there is no great integration to our email and calendar I only cared about the personalized gold phone!

Now this may be reality for some people(I hope not) but for most ofus the truth is someplace in between.
So how can we play fair or cunningly at least so IT can trounce politics?
Well you could start by shutting the executive BES server down for 5 minutes to get their attention. :-) (just kidding, but you know the next time you need to work on a weekend..)
Now who holds the upper hand?
Should IT hold a company up because of a bad political decision? I don't know, but I would be willing to try it, perhaps in a different way.

In one client I recently finished a project their BES went down, HARD and so did a server of execs email. Bummer for them they were running Exchange and had NO way for the 100's of them at a major corporate event in Las Vegas to connect and they were very upset.

Being the Lotus evangelist that I am, aside from trying to help, I suggested in my report and to a few people that had they kept Domino as their mail server not only could I have rerouted all of them to their backup server (passthru options, cluster backup, many routes would have done it and even load http so they could webmail) in minutes, they might not have ever known there was a problem.
True story, ending was 5 hours later they got back on line. Estimated loss of business functional time in salary alone($45,000+) and lost revenue from the deals going on estimated because it was a 5,000 suppliers meeting to be anout $850,000.
That my friends is lost revenue, accounts, business, time you can add more to this cost.
And a cost which I would not want to be told by my CEO. Does Domino crash? I will not deny it can, but the built in and properly configured redundancy even if you only have 2 servers is excellent.
Did this change their perspectives, yes and no, some IT managers asked me more questions and we discussed possible scenarios, all of which I had covered already because they are BUILT IN TO DOMINO. Few of which had been done on the Exchange side, if at all possible because it required more pieces of the MS puzzle.
The SVPs were not impressed but then why would they, they either never sat in front of a admin screen or if they did it was too long ago to care.
Sadly sometimes it does take an emergency to make people sit up and think about their "corporate solution", politics have no where to go if your IT kills you for 5 hours.

R8 and Advertising for the Launch

Whoa! Stop the Presses!
Let's step away for a moment from pure Evangelism and look at possible advertising.
Warning, the likelihood of Lotus using these ideas are nominal, but you can't blame a guy from tryng to help.

R8 the next version of Lotus Notes & Domino could have some great tie ins, since it sounds like RATE (or if you want R8 is GR8) for example for print ads of course the name and tags are in Yellow:

FPL for instance could be shown with a FPL renewed energy R8
or Moody's could show the IBM R8 (clear this with legal first)
Any Lawyers professional R8
Top consulting firms guaranteed R8
Mortage companies provide best possible R8

Goofy, maybe. But although I laughed at the habitrail ads in IT magazines for Lotus, they just don't get much across to the average joe on the street, or myself because who wants to read text in an AD? Just stick on the logo and whatever this years IBM name/tag for Lotus is and leave it.

If the graphic doesn't say it all, you are wating your time, like showing a full slide of text in powerpoint presentations, no one reads it all.

Coke is it! But Lotus Notes is GR8!

How Lotus Notes & Domino R8 could be launched

KABOOM!! Yep it's that time of year when everyone imitates Walt Disney World at 10pm. Just kidding, but for all you Lotusphere attendees you know what I mean.

Now I don't know about you, but where I live there are a plethora of firework stores and tent sales. Why? So people can go to the ER without fingers or eyebrows? No, because you would not know where to buy them if you did not see them, or in my case remember July 4th was around the corner.

What does this have to do with Lotus? Or R8 of Lotus Notes & Domino being launched? Because I would love to see a tent pop up on every corner with the big Lotus logo we all know and love on the day R8 comes out. But that will never happen (by the way anybody at Goodyear, can we borrow a blimp ).

However, if you are a BP out there reading this or an IBM Sales rep/SE/IGS consultant, get moving on figuring out how to have a Lotus R8 bash at every client, give out stuff left and right, show clients we support them and Lotus. Bring in doughnuts, coffee, cookies, anything yellow.

Just get out there and show your clients how much they mean to you and Lotus and IBM.

I would love to see responses to this as I plan some ideas myself. Yes I know we don't know yet what day it will be, but that is not important right now.

Lotus marketing, where are you, help us to help you!