Well maybe you don't. After all many readers are Lotus lovers, but the gang from Redmond who read this, do YOU love Mirosoft?
When I was with Lotus we all Loved Lotus. Sure we may not have liked individual people or management some times but we loved Lotus.
I don't see this from the client base. When I ask people about how much they love Microsoft, I never get that feeling. I get, "I/we hate Lotus." I prefer Microsoft", I use it(Outlooki) at home" but never do I get a real love going.
YET, many BPs and Sales people claim their client(soon to be ex-client) LOVE Microsoft.
I love Visio, really, I do. Now do I love Microsoft for buying them out and adding it to the Office suite? Actually, in some ways I do.
Now on a Lotus side, I do like most of the product line, Love Notes & Domino and Sametime and in general do have a fondness for Lotus that is beyond explanation. It's just software.
And so it is with Microsoft, yet somehow instead of creating a ground swell of Love for their product they instead have an audience which feels captured at times.
If customers don't like Microsoft, why do they keep buying from them?
When I dislike a restaurant or car dealer or online shop or credit card company I won't use them again.
Perhaps some of these customers were in this same place 5 or 7 years ago and Lotus had sent them packing...now these same customers need to go packing from Microsoft but to where?
They can not go back to Lotus, even though it might be the right choice, after all they still have Domino applications running their business or operations, because they feel it would be a poor decision because it would lose them face or faith from their employees.
It takes brains and brass to say "We made a mistake", or even to say we are going to move forward with Lotus Notes because it truly does provide the best benefits to our company.
Or will these customers go to Google, The Cloud or some other direction.
Time will tell, but just don't tell your manager the Client Loves Microsoft because they know it's not true and you need to stop hiding behind your own FUD.
Just today I had a meeting with the department supervisor. We have been evaluation Quickr against Sharepoint in regards to some basic initial uses, and potential future uses. To start with we want a product that will allow for document sharing, easy access to calendars, discussions, and integration with current core business products. We are a Domino shop, and that part wont change, but for the money and the ease of training, we chose to use Sharepoint over Quickr. I have to say that for myself, I like Quickr better. I like the UI, the ease of administration, the flexibility that is offered for both the Domino and Websphere loads... but I just couldn't say that the general population of users would be able to navigate through the sites as easily as they can with Sharepoint. I tell this story in response to the point you make about feeling trapped by Micro$oft. On one hand they offer a product that does exactly what we want for the now, and for the future at a better price than Lotus can come up with for Quickr (even with our companies discount AND an additional 10% offer from our sales person it would still be 2-4 thousand higher for the initial purchase, plus the extra discount was only good until 11/30, and our fiscal year starts in April... so no dice there) but besides being less costly *gasp I know* we are trapped a little by the culture that M$ has ingrained into society. It would take me hours to get a room full of people to be able to identify if they were in a subroom or a folder with Quickr, because the don't appear all that different, but with Sharepoint, it's obvious where you are because we all know that the little manilla folder icon is a folder, and the sites are all listed under a nice little heading called "Sites". Now, could I customize the crap out of a default place so that it's more obvious to the user as to where they are? I suppose... If all I had to do was learn XML and Master HTML, and I didn't have to get this pig greased by Christmas. But the fact that for my everyday users to even be able to function on the most basic level with this new product that I'm going to have to be a cheerleader for, I'd have to work my butt off and do some serious customizations is strike 1,2 and 3 all in one, add in the extra cost of Extranet licensing, which is calculated on the terrible premise of PVU's, and you might as well cal that a torn oblique muscle that occurred during the swing. I'll say again... I like Quickr better, but unless IBM makes this product easier for the less than savvy user to browse through, and lowers the price to keep it at least even, if not cheaper than MOSS, specifically when dealing with external access, I can't recommend it as a better option. At least for the purposes in which I plan to use it.
ReplyDeleteSorry for the story-length post!
Scott, Thanks for reading and posting your current issue.
ReplyDeleteQuickr in my mind, does not replace what Domino does by default, namely the integration of calendars, a unified TeamRoom with notifications, integration to your Email server.
It would be nice if the connectors would work for DOmino as well as quickr, and therin lies one of the issues a number of poeple have raised.
I also agree price on PVU is absurd, but whne you compare the pricing of the server at equal core/pvu or whatever you choose to call it, the price is relatively equal. Really.
I did a few different price comparisons using IBM and Microsoft price guides and for what I have valid priceing on is equal.
What is not equal is the extra CALs which Microsoft requires to be paid and I have no pricing on those right now. Some are SQL charges, others are Server access, and most can be combined into Enterprise CAls of various levels.
This last part is what drives me crazy. Why isn't it one price?