What was my session about at Engage? Money and your Job

It was a cathartic, contrarian approach to our current situation, in which we, the admins, developers, and business partners, are supporting our Domino worlds.

I wish this were all in my head. But every single person in the room for my session at Engage was nodding their head at some point and others had very serious faces when confronted with my thoughts. The couple of people that talked with me afterwards were very happy they came to it. After all they gave up the Domino IQ roundtable for my session.

 

How did we get here?

 

The road that got us here is not the road that will get us out of here.

But enough cliché’s let’s be realistic.

We put ourselves in this situation.

Some items to think about:

(Almost) Every time we had a chance to ask for a budget, we failed.

We got what we needed, but this is not what an Enterprise solution desires, deserves, or requires.

We are selling our environments short if we only ask for licensing money, salaries, and some equipment. Way too short.

If your annual budget request does not include enough money that a respected enterprise solution requires, your request will not go up to the budget committee. Each company sets these meetings at various levels. Enterprise ready products have a staggeringly large annual budget, because that is how you know what is important. Or so the executives believe.

Maybe you think this is too much for “your team”.

Here is a little secret: Security budget money usually does not come from your team. It comes from the security budget. Leverage that every year.

Your environment needs to maintain perpetual security, which includes external and internal resources, people, apps, disaster recovery, development architectures, and more.

Everything you do in your Domino environment is for the company's greater good, and extending easier, faster processes for everyone, in a secure and meaningful way, needs to be backed by a secure environment.

I am not talking about 10k, 5k, or even 50k. You probably need to be asking for at least 100/250 or 500K to get to the budget executive committee. These days, maybe starting at a million. This is obviously relative to your situation and industry.

Some of you reading now might think I am out of my mind, but I am just a contrarian who has learned from 30 years of mistakes.

Maybe licensing is handled by a different group, so you didn’t need to ask for a budget. This also happens.

Once you stop asking for a budget, you don’t get invited to ask for one in the future. You mysteriously get left off the group email, or worse, your boss stops asking you about it. It is very hard to get back on the budget list. VERY HARD. 

For those who say, "No, we submit a budget," my question is, do they take it seriously, and do you get funding beyond the licensing basics?

Developers, you fall under this spell as well.

How many times have you said (as an employee), "Oh, I can put something together. Give me a few days or a week or two." Every time you did this but did not chargeback some business units' code or lay out the process and document why the app is needed and what it does for the company, you have also failed your Domino infrastructure.

If you were an outside vendor, you would have a project plan and bill X amount of hours or a total cost.

But you think that as an employee, you can’t do that, and you are wrong.

Everything goes to a cost center somewhere.

The group you are writing this for should be paying your team some of their budget.

But I bet few of you have done this.

While internal cost centers are a BS accounting move, they do work with your budget, so play ball by their rules, not the ones in your head.

Fear of Unemployment

I understand your predicament. You don’t want to lose your job, and I don’t want you to, either. However, no one has ever been fired for asking for budget money. A raise is a different matter.

For some reason, employees started to think they would get punished if they asked for the budget. You don’t get everything, but have you budgeted for the 2-8 various updates (now multiply by how many servers you have) you may need to do all year for your Domino environment? That number gets large fast, especially if you assign a value to it.

Why assign a value?

Because you should be clawing back money from every cost center. Again, internal budget money matters. Think about your budget if you had been "paid back" by the other cost centers.

When Lotusphere/Connect/Connected existed, you had to beg your company to go sometimes. How many of you went to the HCL Factory Tours? I hope you all knew they did these. If not, why not? You should all have been at them.

Did you think you would get fired for asking to go?

No, usually, the fear is to do anything that will get Domino seen inside your company. The CIO may demand someone's head for saying the D word, or your boss gets pushback for the old software. Whatever the reason, I understand, but keep in mind, you are not helping yourself in the long run because you aren't giving your company any reason to stick with Domino. 

I also blame the HCL sales rep at this point because they should be talking to you regularly by phone, email, WhatsApp, SMS, X, TikTok, set up an Ai auto message, whatever, I don't care, but they need to be on your side and not just "we have a webinar" or licensing renewal times. 

To be fair to the HCL rep, they do what makes them money first before anything else, but if they don't want to lose customers, they could be more proactive, so could most of us, that's all I will say here.

Money is everything, and you don’t understand what money means.

Money means one thing to you, but it is totally different to executives. 

You think asking for 10k is too much when the executive deals with million-dollar deals.

I am not saying deals don’t get lost because of price; that does happen. However, when properly laid out and defined, a solution for your company is not a 25k over-the-weekend app. If you want the executives to take it seriously, it is a 500k project or equivalent for your organization.

They will take it even more seriously if you can show that the new app either helps make money or manages some part, if not all, of your company's manufacturing, selling, marketing, or finance. 

Do this, and you can ask for even more money.

I am not talking about fake ROI projections of “time saved,” but real money tied to real work processes.

If you used your budget for licensing, what else would you ask for? I have listed what I expect to be in your budget in the spreadsheet I have uploaded for everyone. I presume you are the budget submitter; otherwise, you must bother your boss more.

Spreadsheet for download.

It includes guideline pricing, multiple items, education, conferences, T&E for these events, and other items that should be clawed back from cost centers.

It is also laid out as though you built an environment properly, and you can understand why, as you start playing with it, how the numbers multiply easily the more servers you have, and some costs also multiply. I aimed to show that all your costs after the Year 1 hardware purchases should be budgeted for you and cover your expenses.

Some of you may find this enlightening, while others may find it far from reality. I will wager that few of you even have something laid out like this, on which you are basing your budget. I hope I am wrong.

UI/UX is NOT HCL's Fault

All the BS talk about a poor UI/UX falls on your developers, now.

Older apps did have limitations, but this is not 2001 and R5, why haven't you refreshed them? Even just using Restyle would help. NOMAD web can be your friend here to reduce the web overhead to convert an app from Notes only to web, but you probably do need a nicer UI.

There are some gorgeous apps, Notes and web ones, so we know it is possible.

Again, who is to blame for this? Your app's UI/UX is not HCL’s fault.

Your executives see it as IBM/HCL's fault, but that only relates to the mail template. Your apps are your own to be creative.

Speaking of executives.....

New Executives have no idea what Domino does for your company

Because NO ONE has told them.

In this situation, I am talking about apps here. Mail is basically a cost of doing business. While on-premises and keeping your data inside are essential and more secure, email is a cost.

Some of you have been trapped by this “cost” term. Just because email is a cost and you are told to reduce expenses(notice they never drop new applications or revise older ones to save money), you may have been mistaken in thinking you shouldn’t ask for more money. But this, again, is what got us into this mess in the first place.

Servers do not update themselves; they can now under v14.5, but you get my point.

But apps, apps run your world, make you money, reduce paperwork (hopefully), and should be so good that no one is looking to replace them. 

Every time a new executive comes on board —and let’s face it, executives bounce between companies every 2-5 years—how have you briefed them on your Domino apps and what they do for the company, what they make for it, or what they provide that would cripple you if it suddenly stopped?

Have you? Has your HCL rep? Have you even told your rep what your apps do? Your HCL rep can't help you be that internal champion if you don't help them with what exists.

In my session, I used one of my clients as an example. They make millions of dollars a day using their Domino app worldwide inside their company. It handles everything from initial email requests for pricing and online sales to shipping, inventory, and manufacturing, tracking everything along the way. It is typical of Domino and an insanely elaborate application put together over two decades of teams of developers.

And yet, EVERY MEETING that involves leadership, I have to go to bat for my client and their app. Their internal people are too afraid to be connected to the “old server” stuff. See the above section Fear of Unemployment".

Imagine that meeting, discussing when we will move off Domino (I have been managing their environment for over 10 years or so) soon, but hearing this every year from me that it keeps them running.

They back down and then ask what is replacing it, which I suggest nothing, since it is an active and constantly changing environment, why would they replace it. Keep in mind that they only know the app by its internal name, which is how I introduce the topic, because they have zero idea it is a Domino application. But it always comes up from the Microsoft guy.

Of course, the business units say some cloud thing or an app made out of another database or workflow solution. Anything they move to would be a considerable cost, and ALL THEY WILL DO IS REWRITE WHAT THEY ALREADY HAVE, and from experience, end up with less functionality. I offer our help with whatever route they choose.

Like I said, 10 years, same meetings, every year. Many partners have similar stories, because we believe in the product, management believes in their bonus and their next salary when they move on.

This is exactly what one person in the meeting said about his situation. While he isn’t happy about the reduction in physical servers (personally I prefer less, but clustered, even when you have remote locations) he agreed that he will be there until he retires, nothing is moving that fast. 

Management has made the decision in his case, but to be fair, their environment might be faster and perform better with less overhead from the dozens of servers being consolidated.

Details matter, but for every excuse or peculiar circumstance, a completely normal one is ignored or under-budgeted until it becomes too late.

I hope my session and this blog post help you never reach that point of no return.

Conclusion

TL:DR The problem is and has been us.

I hit on other items that we all see or hear when advising clients. But almost everyone should know how to handle those by now.

If not, reach out to me. The lack of integration FUD, the “old software” line, the “lack of knowledge out there” hiring managers, and the perpetual “everyone uses <insert some other company>” lazy man excuse from someone that doesn’t want to be accountable for anything.

But we could turn this around by addressing the money issue and how we handle pricing/budgeting.

If you need help with this discussion, contact me, my fellow HCL Ambassadors, your Business Partner (or dump them for me), your HCL sales Rep/ Customer Success Manager/Customer Success Executive.

We are at a fulcrum. The cycle is coming back to in-house data from Cloud data, and now is the best time to Make Domino Great Again in your company and champion it as a proper Enterprise solution.

FudBuster Friday 2018 Edition: That GDPR = Dead Domino

"From the ashes we can build another day.."- from "Story in Your Eyes" by The Moody Blues

Every once in a while I feel the need to publish another FudBuster Friday post, yes it has been way too long but "fake news" makes these posts almost superfluous. I could write 10 a day and still never get them done.

Over the last few days some people I like, trust and learn from, were bothered by a "op-ed" type Press Release from the CEO of a company that obviously makes their money by moving IBM Domino shops to Microsoft.

Their own website even states in absolute terms "Our mission is to develop user-friendly, cost effective technology solutions to help companies escape the IBM Domino/Notes application landscape.:"

From their site I get the impression they have not been around for a long time but obviously are unhappy that people use Notes and Domino. This is their prerogative and in business there are many ways to make money. However, FUD ways are not funny, nor valid reasons to ever do something.

In this case they try to angle that the old solution is not up to par for the imminent on May 25, 2018 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the EU. For a great article about it read this. 

GDPR is a regulation that requires businesses to protect the personal data and privacy of EU citizens for transactions that occur within EU member states. It also is applicable to US companies that STORE the data.

Taking a few items to task, let's start with 

"It is compelling because organisations are expected to create a single view of a customer – leaving data in old Notes databases is likely to render users non-compliant"

No explanation is provided and it is "just a fact". There is no requirement, that I found, requiring a single view of a customer. And even if there was, given Domino is a flat database solution, the data is sitting in one nsf although it may be called and referenced by others. Of course you may have data shared in various formats across your CRM, your SAP, your individual sales people as well. This would not change no matter what or how you store your data. What becomes incumbent on companies is the need to document their data workflows and processes for reporting breaches of the said data. 

Domino non-compliant? No way.

He then goes on to lay out a process of three steps that are required to help you meet GDPR requirements, namely: Discovery, Data Extraction and Archiving. In truth none of these steps do anything except pad a consultants pocket and sell, as we will see, many software licenses.

Discovery phase in which they inventory your Domino servers looking for applications. How exciting! our interns can and should do this for us if the built in tools of Domino can not.

Again, this has nothing to do with GDPR or Domino, it is just a normal project process. 

Data Extraction

"A key area of importance to the GDPR compliance directives is being able to get to all the data that is held on an individual so that, for example, a request to be forgotten is executed with a high degree of certainty. This means that getting data out of the Notes databases into an easily searched Relational Database is critical."

What? A did not go to B and definitely did not reach C in that sentence. If you already mapped out your data workflows and locations, then you would have a process in place to eliminate the data asked to be forgotten.

You do not need a relational database to do an index lookup, Excel does it quite well and so does your own internal search solution hopefully. If not, you may want  to invest in a corporate search appliance but this is still no reason to give up on Domino nor does it prove any non compliance. Just bad FUD.

The author then goes on to elaborate about how data could be dumped out of Domino into not one (MS SQL), not two (MS Dynamics), but three (Alfresco) different solutions and somehow this is a better idea? Imagine how many licenses and servers and billable hours this requires compared to your existing team looking at your data and mapping it out.

Archiving of data is always fun. those of you with 20 year old tapes of customer data, how will you rectify this? There is a serious business. This however is just bad rhetoric. Do you really need an all encompassing search solution? Perhaps, but if you have workflowed your data, you should know exactly where it resides and be able to easily identify what parts need to be marked/deleted.

Again, Domino is no different than any other database when it comes to finding your data.

The gist of the PR is a SQL server will give you better control, indexing, deletion of the data. No, it will not and no matter what database or solution you use if you do not document it or manage it properly you will face some huge fines. Any business no matter how small or large if you have personal/private data of EU members you will need to sit down and sort yourselves out.

In the end, no, moving to Microsoft SQL server will not be more compliant for GDPR than Domino.

You will have spent way too much money to move data from one solution to another for zero, I repeat zero reasons other than you were blindly following some entity because you were ignorant and uninformed!

I welcome feedback, further details which maybe I have neglected to research thoroughly enough or even an official statement from IBM or HCL that provides me with a reason to edit this post.

Google Beats Microsoft, Yes but beat IBM Notes? No Way

Google, I love you guys, I really do, you do some amazing things and the Doodles are the best!
But sometimes your business partners really have no clue what they are talking about and should rethink their marketing.

Case in point, a company produced a 3 page document(link to my server, not giving them the traffic) on why Google trumps MS Exchange as an alternative to IBM Lotus Notes.

The opening salvo is hyperbole at the best of times. People move systems back and forth and, although I can not name names, I know of a few well known companies that are coming back or at least increasing their Notes usage.

The document discusses how cloud is the key driver for IT and Mobility is also a trend. Funny, we had mobile apps and mail back in 1999 or 2000 on GSM phones with native Lotus Notes apps. I know because I was there at Lotusphere Europe in Berlin and ran the wireless phone system for the CXO's that came, still have one of the phones we did it on.

What took the world so long to catch up? Just like that chiclet icon map your iPhone and Android uses, came from the Lotus Notes workspace Release 1, 20+ years ago. Say what you want about IBM Notes, it was way ahead of its time.

I do not know about you, but if the word "dope" shows up in someone's advertising it usually implies one thing. A poor choice of words, or genius, given how the Cloud is so enticing, you try a little and beg for more. What? That isn't how it works? I don't know either what they are thinking.

"Gmail is familiar to most work-force as a personal email solution." This may be true, but the Gmail UI SUCKS! Sorry, showing my age there. I mean I am not comfortable with it because it doesn't do ANYTHING except email. Ok, so where is my integrated calendar? How do I schedule meetings? How do we handle archiving and offline email when traveling? Where is my integration into Facebook CRM, SAP, Vacation requests even? Training is only easy because....it does not do much of anything.

"Costing" is saved because "Migration costs, licensing costs and ongoing maintenance costs form a major point of decision. Google has a simpler, lighter cost structure." Yes and no, the basic license may be cheaper, in Year 1, but in Year 2, no way are you cheaper than IBM or MS on support licensing. Google is TWICE the price or more of a Lotus client license in Year 2-whenever. Migration costs are not free either and can become staggering when involved with vendors that are ill equipped to grasp the complexities of a Domino environment. One Google partner told me that Google has no advice for Lotus customers, they basically edited the Exchange checklist title!

"Google ecosystem has got built over time with millions of users adopting it and driving it based on their preferences on personal productivity and collaboration needs." And so few corporations. Personal productivity has nothing on corporate productivity. This is like saying my kindergartener edited my MBA thesis.

They do get two things perfect "MS Office has very powerful set of tools, but still not designed toward collaboration." and "In Lotus Notes alternative scenario, collaboration and groupware requirements trump individual productivity tool preference." WOW, didn't they just start off saying how great Google was for personal productivity? I know, splitting hairs, individual vs. personal, but this is just so much fun.

Notice they are discussing MS Office, not MS Exchange. So this is about Google Apps? Right, so there are Google Apps that handle international workflow processes? No? What about vacation requests? Conference room scheduling? No? And you want to play in the big leagues?

They must know or respect IBM Notes a bit, see this:

Then, there is a case of Business Applications. Large enterprises with an extensive Lotus Notes deployment typically have hundreds of Notes applications that play a key role in keeping the enterprise running smoothly. There could be hundreds of workflow Apps, and few very complex functional Apps (like CRM) built on Lotus over time.

Workflow apps by the way are complex usually, it is not just forward an email and click yes. They suggest the Google App Engine could replace these apps. If this were really true, IBM would not be spreading the news about XPages and the advances in the IBM Domino server that let it integrate into so much of that precious Cloud world they mentioned. IBM knows they have a product unlike anything else and it makes them quite a bit of money on an annual basis.

This was obviously another attempt by a vendor to portray their migration apps in a better light. But really, better subterfuges must exist than this SEO heavy document of theirs. If you are facing Google as competition, you have more than enough weapons about messaging and now you have some about applications too. No doubt other fellow bloggers and IBM Champions will give their input as well.

As an executive, your role is NOT to waste shareholder value or reduce your bonus by your stock dropping which is what happens to companies in the throws of a mail migration, no matter to/from whatever. Put those millions to better usage.

eWeek on Google Wave, What a Lark

David retweeted about this online slidedeck from Novell.

10 Persistent Messaging Problems that Google Wave Solves by Clint Boulton

You can see it here.

I appreciate that Novell is working on their Wave Server/services and it's an intriguing idea, but what does that say about Groupwise's future?

But I want to focus on some points in the slides, which were simplistic and in one case just blatant FUD.

Slide 1(Screen2) says Wave is free and open source. Great, just how long will Google support your file storage junkies for free? Last I checked there was no impediment to using Lotus products with other open source pieces. True the core Notes & Domino is IBM owned and not "free" but then it is more open to integration than Outlook and Exchange. You can even use Wave from your Notes client, or so I have been told, probably a sidebar app.

Slide 4 (screen5)Wave gives the same view to everyone, which to me is difficult to figure out the last development. But maybe I am just linear. I prefer a standardized way to see my information so every time I go there I don't need to relearn how to find information.

Slide 6 (screen7) FUD alert. 10MB limits exist because it's a default standard, which most admins never change and most companies never know they could change. Google has no such limits, per se. Just wait and see, corporates will limit it, when they start paying for the usage. Oh and tell your admins to raise the attachment limit or better yet use a Lotus Quickr server running DAOS on Domino to reduce the disk space used.

Slide 7 (screen8) a reminder that Outlook doesn't reply with attachments which drives people crazy, and why Notes clients have the options to send email with or without attachments. Wave will keep the attachments in place. Right, like Quickr does or Wiki's to a lesser extent.

They also discuss clean threading and error correcting data. So no one else has any live documents? IBM and Microsoft would argue differently. Yes past items might be stuck in a thread, but if you are using a modern platform, aside from your email to work in a collaborative manner, editing is not only available but open/secured as well to a much greater degree.

I liked Wave when I saw it but now that I have had time to play with it, I am not happy with how it works, for me, for business. Business needs a logic, sometimes bad logic, but needs logic for others to be able to work, repeat, reuse and provide training. If one has to jump around everywhere in a thread to find what could be easily defined or found using existing tools, this has a way to go to be ready for the business world.

Fud Buster Friday #49 - Groupwise Beats Domino

As with many of these, this one, believe it or not is true.
Well at least the customer reference story claims it is.

Novell posted this customer reference story from Lentis, a major mental health organization in the Netherlands, on their website and at first glance it made me laugh.

Then I read it. And laughed some more.

There seemed to be a mixture of problems at Lentis which I will break down, based on this document.

1) Lentis was running Domino on an AS/400 which normally should be highly efficient and have extremely great uptime. My guess from reading this is the hardware was rather old as was the Domino and Notes clients.

2) 3,000 people is not a lot of people. Don't get me wrong, for some countries it is, but I am used to that many per server. And it only requires 1 admin to manage it. And since they were running Domino on an AS/400 most likely they only had one admin, perhaps more an AS/400 admin than a Domino one.

3) Lentis has 45 locations linked by low bandwidth, 128kb/s to 2MB/s. Naturally this could be slow for some people if they used their email on the server only instead of having it locally replicated, why they chose to use Lotus Notes and Domino this way was their own choice. Perhaps they used roaming or maybe there was an issue about storing data on local PCs or sharing of desktops. In any event, this problem will not go away because one changes software.

4) Lentis chose to use iNotes which, given they were on an old version, my guess is R5 of Lotus Notes and Domino, they found it a bit heavy on the server usage. Of course if they had been upgrading their server along the way they would have found not just performance enhancements but in the R8 stream an excellent UI that almost equals the full client functionality.

5) Lentis claimed it was costly and difficult to manage and was a time consuming process to manage and setup email accounts. Having been an Admin since R2 I can safely say that making an ID file, and a mail file for a new person takes a minute perhaps? Maybe 5 at the longest, if you include the automated mail file being built on a remote server from the admin doing the work. Sad to say but your network is only as good as your Admins. Pay your Admins well and get ones that know what they are doing, it WILL save you a lot of money, face and time in the long run.

6)Lentis also said:

Equally, Lentis felt that iNotes represented a dead-end in terms of the development of new functionality and in terms of integration with other systems.

This one had me confused. Webmail, no matter from who, doesn't "integrate" to anything. We could write the connector so the mailto function calls up webmail if that is what they wanted. Lack of imagination or initiative on your part does not mean everyone has the same closed view. There is help, Business Partners are here for you. I'm here for you.

7) Lentis continues on:

We are now hosting four different internal mail domains; such an expansion would have been extremely difficult to manage in the past.

Not sure what is difficult here. One Admin, one client, N possibilities of domains and files, there is no problem in adding or merging more organizations. It takes planning ahead to ensure some logic exists, but there is no more difficulty in managing 1 or 1,000 domains. lack of Knowledge is a horrible thing to have, especially if you are an IT person.

8) Lastly, this nugget:

Another benefit of choosing Novell GroupWise over Lotus Notes or Microsoft Exchange was the ease of serving mobile users.

They then explain how they have 2 new servers just to handle their mobile executives and will be going to get a "PDA" solution. Domino, with Lotus Notes Traveler or a BES was always available to Lentis, if they asked. The mobile users share one template now and can live together well, but depending on the number of users one may want separate servers.

A sad loss for IBM on both hardware and software fronts but the bottom line is bad infrastructure is a by-product of your hiring practices, not anyone's product, usually.

FudBuster Friday #17 - I Don't Know

How can you discuss something you don't know about?
Listen children, all is not lost....

If you are in sales or marketing, you probably don't understand this blog post already.
I don't know where I'm a gonna go when the Volcano blows...

If you work at a major software company you probably never hear these 3 words said by your executives. OK, maybe if you also worked at a bank, auto manufacturer, AIG, Enron, Worldcom, NASA.
I read the news today oh boy...

You see the problem is you can't know everything. When you don't know something is when the FUD spews faster than Superman can circle the Earth.
When the world is running down....

So why not stop and pay attention to what you say in front of customers. Sure some people can spin anything, but you will go further and build a better confidence with your customer if you admit what you don't know, especially if you are an experienced individual.
You got to know when to hold em...

Folding in Poker is the hardest thing to teach someone. So.is.this. As much as I try to train admins and sales people that it's okay to not know everything, just look at some of my posts, one can't really know it all. Once you start spinning or lying about a product, a sale, or a price, you dig yourself far deeper than anyone can pull you out.
Don't pay the Ferryman until...

Stop the FUD, Lotus is not dead, Microsoft doesn't suck, Google is not a startup.If you never expand your mind or accept you really don't know if these are true or not, then you will become the FUD you produce and that is not fun.
From you I get opinions, from you I get the story.....

Fud Buster Friday #15 - Exchange 2007, What? You thought Clustering would Work this time?

Continuing from my post yesterday, I listened to a call from CIO magazine about Risks and Mitigation Strategies for Exchange 2007. Professional courtesy, obvious interest for my benefit, but what I wasn't expecting was a complete sales pitch from Dell. I really wanted to know what does or doesn't work and how they get around it, it's the geek in me, probably should have realized this wasn't a CTO call.

Well the good news is I did get some of that information. Bad news was I had to listen to the presenter, Samy Aboel-Nil, Director, Product Management for Dell MessageOne and it's co-founder, about why Dell is better equipped to handle the task of migrating, yes he used the word migrating, your infrastructure from 2000/2003 to 2007. To be fair he sounded a bit under the weather.

Maybe some want to use Dell, but I am still bothered by the fact that if you have IT staff and don't trust them to do your work, then why have them at all? They are too busy? Why because the existing infrastructure has problems perhaps? It's not because of all the cool new functions they are rolling out in 85% of your companies.

So the 1st graphic is about the idea that Exchange 2007 doesn't do everything although you might think that because of their FUD. Sure neither does Domino, but you know Microsoft has your customer convinced that Exchange can do it all. Granular real time retention? Interesting choice of words. And Exchange has a comprehensive high availability solution.Which leads me to graphic #2.

Clustering in 3 flavors, none of which covers all bases and some of which is no better than previous versions. Cluster Continuous Replication still can not be done unless the servers are close to each other physically? And they want you to work off the Cloud with Azure? With what? A Mini Cloud outside your office or home?

Still that's better than Standby Continuous Replication which will lose data and take 30 minutes to kick in! Amazing! Where do I sign up for such sloth like functionality?

Lotus Domino servers fail over immediately and without the user knowing or caring it happens. Even across the US on 2 different platforms, Windows and AIX in our case, it just works and in seconds. And Microsoft boasts 30 minutes?!!!!

Fud Buster Friday #8 - The Ex-Lotii Knows

Ex-Lotus people who end up at Microsoft always have great insights about what's wrong with Lotus? Or IBM killed Notes! Or Websphere will replace Domino!

I could accept their premises, if not for the fact when these rats abandoned ship R7 wasn't even out yet.

Now some would argue what about me, I left Lotus in 2001 and what do I know or why do I care. I care because clients should know what they are getting into. True sharing and collaboration can exist, no matter what solution the client wants, IF the client wants to make it happen.

Back to the questions above.

Nothing is wrong with Lotus and as far as I know, IBM sales people do not go around saying Microsoft has problems because they lost their head and the body is flailing in the wind grasping at dead branches. Yes, IBM has reduced head count for Lotus at times and detoured down a Workplace path but the last 6 months to a year has seen a renewed interest in everything Lotus, not just from the company but from the Press, advertisements and general sentiment. So unless you have been under a rock for the last year Lotus is anything but dead.

IBM killed Lotus Notes. No, Workplace did hurt the company but as discussed previously the recent 3 years growth is unprecedented in a flat market. If anything IBM encourages Lotus to move forward by not only working with Apple, RIM and Nokia but providing advances in development and technology into the core products. And IBM spent the money to have the R8 UI improved to a point where Outlook users prefer it.

Websphere will replace Domino? This one is possibly true(again what would I know as an outsider), but more than likely is they will coexist in a way which will only make the 2 products even stronger. IBM gets closer to this reality with every release and the robustness of the 2 together will make a very formidable opponent to Microsoft.

So the next time you hear a Microsoft sales rep or ex-Lotus person lay down some silly ideas about Lotus, remind them that even great baseball hitters only hit the ball 1/3 of the time. But if you don't take a chance with some pitches out of your comfort zone you may miss an easy home run too.

FudBuster Friday #5 - No Resources

This FudBuster is for everyone in Sales or IT, depends on how you view it.
Following up from Ed Brill's post yesterday and some comments I made there got me thinking.

The #1 answer I get when asking clients why they don't upgrade to R8 of Domino or Sametime or Quickr is:
1) No Money
2) No Time
3) Why, we are happy on the version we are using
4) Lack of Resources (whatever that means in reality)
5) All of the above

Bingo, #5. No doubt many of you have more answers, please comment withthem, they might make it into FudBuister #6.

Many clients have been paying for support and maintenance which usually means you are entitled to upgrade AT ANY TIME. Sadly, they don't. They pay and pay and IBM/Lotus makes money off them, but suffers because these same clients are at least 1-2 versions behind.

So they spent all their money on software.... but they own it and could upgrade at anytime.
Whoah! You say you don't have enough staff to do this? OK, simple numbers, can you upgrade one server a week? Probably.
Can you upgrade a batch of clients at a time? Probably, with some preliminary work.
Can you do 10,000 people in one week? Yes, but you won't usually for various reasons, but it CAN be done.

Small staff numbers? Get help, it's cheaper than you think.

No budget? Go ask a business line how they expect to sell more with less people and slower programs or how you could provide them with quotes/pricing to their phone while sitting with the client? You don't know how to do this? Call me or come to Lotusphere.

Happy on the version we use. Hardest one to beat, especialy in organizations with large turnover of staff or very specific needs. One answer is to run your machine like a demonstration box. Make every business line person or sales or whoever come to you or if you have a laptop go to them. I don't know your business, but if you do, I am quite sure you could create a very functional and useful UI that they would jump at to own. This is how I do demo's for potential clients on why they should be upgrading to R8 of Domino, Notes, Sametime or Quickr.

Money is the easiest and hardest thing to get around. Yet, if the business line or executive wants it, suddenly there is money. Just remember my thoughts on this, it is not CHEAP. I fyou say it will cost $5,000 to do it you will not get any respect from executives or business lines.

They want to perceive value based on price. That doesn't mean to tell them it's $1 million, but make it enough so it goes to a budget meeting, not someone who just says yes or no.

If Lotus is truly a corporate solution for you and your company, then treat it like one.

FudBuster #3: Exchange is Free and how they got 100 million MOSS licenses

"And that's why we are migrating away from Lotus." Cost

Right, and I have a bridge in Miami for you.

They say honesty is the best policy, but Microsoft does their best to not change your perception's of the truth, even if you are wrong.

Yes, I have discussed this many times in the past, but let's do this simply.

In order for your company to obtain EXACTLY what you already have in the Lotus Notes Client and Lotus Domino Server you will need the following items(NOT Including the OS):

1) Exchange Server 2007
2) Exchange Server Standard CAL 2007
3) Exchange Server Enterprise CAL 2007 which is a 2nd CAL you MUST buy if you want the added items for the RIGHTS to use Unified Messaging, Journaling, Compliancy(?), "Premium" Anti-Spam and Anti-virus. Hopefully better than what goes into MSN/Hotmail Live. Some of this is built in to Domino by default.
4) Office Groove 2007 - Similar to the teamroom template but in equating Like to Like it must be added.
5) Office 2007 - One version or another which is the only way to obtain an Outlook client. Most larger companies will be swayed into buying the Office Enterprise 2007 version which includes #4, the first of the "look what you get for free" discussions plus pieces of other Microsoft products you are not likely to use or hear from in the future.
6) Outlook 2007 requires the Core CAL Suite if you will access Exchange but this CAL also includes Sharepoint Server 2007 CAL and thus one insight to how Microsoft claims to have sold 100 Million licenses Which this articles shows is a $10/CAL 1billion/100million.
7) Enterprise CAL Suite is what you REALLY require since it includes among other bits, the ability to encrypt messaging traffic generated through emails and instant messages. Buying this includes #6 so another "look what you get for free or included" discussion.

Now if you are a small shop you may only need some of these and if you are a large enterprise I have a longer list of what you need or rather what Microsoft says you need.

If you are contemplating the move to Exchange, or your Enterprise renewal is coming up, think about it and if you need more information, just ask. Remember, it was someone else's over payments to Microsoft which allowed them to bid for Yahoo! at $44 Billion in CASH! Don't make their mistake.

The Mojave Experiment....FudBuster #2

I got side tracked this week and wanted to look into this.
The Mojave experiment as Microsoft called it was an interesting idea.
For those not in the know,
100 people off the street, so to speak, were shown a "new" Microsoft OS after some questions about how they viewed Vista. Of course what they saw was Vista.
And low and behold, eye candy makes them decide to go with Vista.

Because in Microsoft's world, it's all about Eye Candy.Even if it takes sometime to produce it.

In the real world, well at least the business world, it's about business, expenses, revenue, ROI, and a million other things, but because software looks good? Nope.
It should integrate well with other software, yes.
It should run on multiple solutions, from Macs to Linux to windows to PDA's, phones, sunglasses(hey a guy can dream), blackberries and evidently nowadays on your refrigerator, dish washer and other appliances. Oh and a coffee table, thank you Microsoft.
Fahrenheit 451's author, Ray Bradbury would be either ecstatic to hear this or ashamed.
So you should go buy and use Vista because it looks good.
I use Vista. And aside from a few VPN clients rarely have problems. Ok recent times were Microsoft updates to Vista, so maybe I have some issues on occassion.

But really no worse than my XP machines after updates break all my mailto options and other security settings.

So where am I going with this? Easy, the UI sucks label on Lotus has to stop.
If you are in a company still using R5,6 or even 7, go yell at your IT staff or CIO who is paying Lotus big money to get updates and they shoulsd install them and use it.
I can show you in 5 minutes of a web conference everything you are missing!

Can your Outlook allow windows to float on their own?
Can your Outlook you so desire stop opening a ton of windows just because you are trying to do a simple task?
Why doesn't your Outlook do name lookups properly? My biggest gripe with Outlook 2003 at least.
Wouldn't you liek to not have a full AD directory all the time?

I can show you in a side by side demonstration that if nothing was branded you could not tell them apart, Mr. CEO.

BUT if you have a mixed environment of Lotus and Exchange shame on you! Spending twice the amount of money to get what you already pay for from Lotus, just because of a UI? Butthat's another post, past and future for another day.

Fudbuster Friday #1 - Microsoft Press Doc

Great news, I was able to secure a domain, fudbuster.net, now to find a host.

Anyway, where to start, Microsoft leaves a trail a 5 year old with a Google search bar can find.

I thought I would start inside the beasts stomach, the Microsoft website.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/uc/docs/MoveWP.pdf
If you see this document on your customer's desk, just grab it and tear it up. It's blatant FUD beyond imagination.

According to Microsoft and their partners, Casahl and Excipio Consulting,
The Top 3 Reasons Why Companies Still Run Notes/Domino (Their line as #Q my reply as #A):
1Q)Inability to get budgeting approved for the migration
1A)This has what to do with running Domino? Nothing.

2Q)Lack of an accurate Domino database inventory to estimate the conversion effort
2A)Funny, last I checked, since Release 1 you could get a database listing of all your databases, it's called the Database catalog and you should use it. If you aren't already, look at the tools which came out in R7 to perform analysis on your network for consolidation of servers, which you will want to do as you can scale into the 1,000's these days per server.

3Q)Technical bias by the IT staff
3A)So the fact that your own IT people prefer it, because it has technical benefits and is superior to other solutions is a reason for you to get rid of it, Mr. CEO. So who do you trust, Mr. CEO, Microsoft who cares about your money they will steal from you or your own staff that manages everything in your company and cares about your costs?

The document also goes on to say:
Excipio and Casahl have interviewed numerous clients and compiled the most
common business challenges faced by organizations with legacy platforms. For the sake of argument, given the document is about IBM vs. Microsoft the implication is clear, Microsoft thinks Lotus is a legacy system and expresses it to anyone that will listen to them.

1Q) The platform is perceived as too complex with too much potential exposure
1A) Potential exposure? to what? Is this compared to Exchange and Outlook which have suffered some major problems over the years because of Microsoft's excellent security. One example of recent issues with Exchange 2007 and Outlook can be found in July 2008.

2Q) Lack of a legacy platform’s ability to change with the business
2A) Let's see now, what part of ODF,Java,RAD, J2EE and the Eclipse environment is not about changing with business and technology times? Business lines can have any application they wish, and it will be fully portable for offline usage as well, built in. Can your Microsoft program do that?

3Q) The organization’s Inability to get meaningful information the appropriate
people in a timely manner
3A) I love this, a grammar typo in their public press document. hmm, Word's grammar checker not doing too well is it? If you have a file, a database, a browser, or a phone you can access the data you require in a format desired. and if you want it to look different, do it yourself or get your staff to do it. There is no great secret to creating a view.

4Q) Existing systems operate on costly, outdated, or unsupported platforms,
thus the systems are unreliable
4A) The funny thing about this line is they are usually talking about Microsoft's own systems. Costly, yes Windows is for sure. Unreliable, definitely more than other OS's. Outdated, also for sure, Windows 2000? End of Life. 2003? End of Life Coming up soon. Now let's say you were not running on Windows but AIX or As/400 or Mainframe or Linux, and almost all of these are cheaper and faster and scale higher than Windows Server. Clients prove it all the time if you read various posts , blogs and forums.

5Q) “It’s always worked this way, so why change?”
5A) Excellent question? What is so bad about a platform that provides email, collaboration, clustering and document archiving all in one server?

6Q) Operating costs continue to rise, while the value of the legacy systems continue
to decline
6A) You got me here. Tax purposes allow you to depreciate your purchases every year so yes the value goes down. Costs don't go up, aside from the CIO salary. If you haven't noticed most companies provide an annual raise of maybe 1-5%, but it has been rather nominal. Electricity has gone up? Great! Consolidate your servers, pull some back to a central data center, your server can scale higher, right? If you aren't seeing 2,000+ on a server you need some help, email me immediately.
Try doing that with Exchange, there's a reason Lotus Foundations servers also come in an Exchange version, because it does not deal very well with remote activities.

7Q) The feeling that the vendor appears to “hold us hostage” versus more cost
effective alternatives
7A) Vendor lock in? Lotus? How? With what? Lotus lets you run on almost any platform(some variations of Linux excluded), not just Windows. Sametime, Quickr run on multiple platforms as well. And they integrate better with Office than Office integrates with Office.


Well, there is a lot more to this article than I want o put in this posting, maybe this one piece can keep me writing for a few weeks. We didn't even get to the money part yet.

Feedback is always appreciated, and my services are available if your company finds itself in need of defending Microsoft FUD.

Fudbuster Friday's are here!

Yes folks, tired of hearing the old Microsoft lines, now used by other competitors as well, or annoyd that users can't read blogs, or the web for updted articles?

Maybe you think the Accenture deal should be revisited for clarity?

Or maybe you think Microsoft's definition of Legacy should be redirected inward given the 4 years between releases of Exchange and 5 for Windows Server!

Well the LotusEvangelist is planning to knock em off, one at a time every Friday. If you are interested in assisting please comment or email(lotus.evangelist at yahoo.com) or IM(Bleedyellow) or DM(Twitter) me your ideas or FUDs to be cleared up.

MS relying on office Sales to Beat Lotus?

Fellow bloggers, Greg Eldred and Glenn Irvine both found this article ahead of me.

What neither pointed out is the ruse Microsoft makes, well Kevin turner makes, that:
"This past year we sold in 4.86 million seats of our collaboration solution – SharePoint, Exchange and Office – into IBM Lotus Notes accounts"

Office is now considered a collaboration product. Right.
So Microsoft can use this product any way they want, what companies do not use Office, any version?

Would like Mr. Turner to provide a better break down when you take Office out of the picture.

For that matter take Exchange out of the picture as well since the likelihood of a Lotus company using Exchange as well is nominal which leaves Sharepoint.

Sharepoint, and the Microsoft people love telling everyone, sells like water at a baseball game in Miami in the summertime. What they don't tell you is every Enterprise Agreement includes CALs for Sharepoint, by default, in addition to other licensing areas which require a CAL, even if you don't use it.

Or as some say, Microsoft gives it away for free and gets you on year 2 licensing maintenance.

Just more FUD from Redmond, and I expected better from Kevin Turner.

Maybe the Lotus Symphony team has some similar numbers we can play with against Microsoft. And it's free, really it is, go get it now and try it, http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/home.jspa.