Domino.Doc Updated and not Forgotten

First, there is a session at Lotusphere, it conflicts with Ed Brill's session. Decisions, decisions...my client wins over my friend this time. The information is posted in the comments of the previous post.

I received an email in reply from the IBM Offering Manager, Lotus Team Collaboration and Document, she said:

"We are working on a roadmap for Dom Doc to be presented at Lotusphere. As
you know, it is a mature product. We have many customers who are pretty
happy with it and want to be assured of its longevity. Of course there is
also interest in integration with Lotus Quickr, which also figures into our
roadmap.
I'm hoping that you can hang in there for a couple weeks (or until
Lotusphere) and things will be a bit clearer."

I applaud the move to Quickr but respect that some clients will not be happy with this as it trivializes Doc or possibly infringes on their security models.
Either way, Lotus is still working on it, thank heaven and we will get some answers soon.

This means the decision is a game time one(meaning Tuesday or wendsday of that week) so if you are playing Fantasy Software "Delivery Date" edition (compared to EOL Edition or Microsoft Timing edition), I would bet more on Atlas than Doc coming out before July 1, 2008.

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).

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!