Old vs Future

If you know what dot matrix means, and I do not refer to the character in Spaceballs, then you probably are in my age bracket.

To many, we are old.

• We don't work so hard
• We don't work so lat
• We don't use <insert some app name no one heard of and will disappear in a month)
• We use email
• We like our old ways
• We don't like change
• We are too slow
• We need too much in salary
• We don't like to travel for work. 

Maybe.

I could just as well say the same things about the younger generation too, aside from the email part :-)

And yet, inside your company, you are maintaining pretty old hardware and software. Why? Because.it.just.works and is paid for itself many times over the years.

Then one day your company says some old systems have to go. Why? They make you money, they run smoothly and everyone is trained on them.

New systems, to do the same thing as the old system, but from a new company. Why? How much money has to be wasted in conversion/migration fees to get what you already have?

If this was a car analogy, you would be leasing a new car every 3 years and never look back, and it usually does not cost you much more if anything for the next lease. Marginal cost but maximum gain.

I don't see that from your software solutions that you want to change. I see huge money spent with Business Partners from the new Vendor laughing all the way to the bank.

Intrinsically, when you look upon Microsoft Office, yes, it has had a good run, over 30 years old and still works, like a Volkswagen Beetle. Has it really advanced in all these years? Has Outlook? Exchange? Using Google Spreadsheet will really stop you from producing your simple spreadsheets which rely on the same basic functionality as 30 years ago?

Maybe

The same arguments have been used against Domino and Notes and Sametime. Maybe the UI was getting a bit dated, but functionally it was still the same as ever. And yet, what replaces Domino completely?

Nothing

Thus your company will spend a lot of money, millions usually, and get a nice UI but not even 75% of the functionality in return.

Sounds crazy right? Who would let their executives do such a poor deal? What Board of Directors would allow such malfeasance?

But they do.

If a new UI was necessary, or better integration into other applications was required, or something else was desired that you as CIO or CMO or CEO need for your business, wouldn't you try to get the most out of your existing solution?

Oh, right, it's old. Forgot about that nugget of wisdom.

And so instead of getting a new lease on your software, with a minimum of cost to your business, you prefer to go out and buy a whole new package...and then you want that new one to look and feel like the old one, but you know, not in that way, just you know, newer.

Right, because that makes sense. So much for your transformation project.

The future of Domino is what you make of it. HCL is adding items all the time to it so they will be ahead of your curve and know what you need before you do, so it will be there waiting for when your new executive walks in on their first day and starts asking why are you maintaining old software.

You can say, you just wrote this app this year, you advance all your apps every year and it is costing the company nothing but your salaries.

But the choice is yours, teach the new kids, learn from the new kids. Everyone that learned to play guitar, or skateboard, or drive had to watch and learn from others, usually, and this is no different. Together we can build a better future,

So are we old? Yes

Are our apps? Sometimes

Can they be updated? Almost always

Should they be? Absolutely!

You may not be listening to HCL yet, but if you do, you may find what your executives seek.

One Firm's Wild Ride to the Cloud

My IBM Connect presentation is now posted on Slideshare.

Thank you everyone for coming and your questions.

One Firm's Wild Ride to The Cloud from Keith Brooks

Cloud thoughts from CIO's

I attended the local CIO Council annual event which is State of the CIO with Gary Beach publisher emeritus of CIO magazine.

Nice attendance, over 150 I guess, many staffing people. A few IBMers, didn't see any Microsoft people, but there were at least 3 Microsoft BPs with tables. I opted not to have a table this year for various reasons and they didn't have any space anyway.

The discussion after Gary's session was a Q/A with 4 CIO's. What was interesting to note for me was 2 of them are large Lotus Notes/Domino shops, one a client of mine. The third was from a large software company based here and the 4th represented some of the local sports teams.

When a discussion about "The Cloud" came up, my client said that it made no sense whatsoever for them, the cost($) was too great. Plus they have their own infrastructure and like managing everything in house. Similar to my discussions previously about this idea that if you have built your own infrastructure why would you drop it now?

The exact opposite came from the software company. In fact they sounded like a company on the verge of death or the verge of being reborn.

They have employees bring in their own private laptops to work, no more company supplied ones. The company does provide some monetary amount in return. Can't imagine they have a hardware help desk anymore, so maybe its just about saving some money.

They didn't say anyone could work at home, which would be a better solution in my mind.

They also started to use their own software for their benefit. This is equally odd since one would expect a company to use the solutions they provide, if for no other reason than to show proof of concept or to help the sales people feel more comfortable in selling the solution.

I couldn't help but feel that perhaps they were barely treading water looking for any life preserver. Who knows.

Was your CIO on this call?

Just got off a call from CIO magazine in which Dell was hawking their MessageOne solution.

I am not happy about this. Maybe it's my fault, I expect more from CIO, or maybe I expect more from other CIOs.

If I wanted a sales pitch I could call Dell or anyone else to do it, so why bother me with this? Enticing it was to discuss issues corporations face when migrating to Exchange 2007 with other CIOs but that wasn't what it became.

The presenter not only related why 2003 was so bad, but why 2007 in some cases still is and only Dell has the services to help you. You'd think IBM Global Services gave it.

Although it was to be about Dell the last few minutes of the hour, it was about Dell from about 1/2 way through the call. You can try to listen here, but I don't vouch the link will work.

Companies are trying to conserve money, don't you think they could let their own employees do some work for a change? Everyone is busy, but Domino admins get their servers upgraded regularly and easily. Why do Exchange companies take 3 years to finish an installation then months at a time to do upgrades?

Both systems are unique and difficult in their own way and have similar issues of backup, down time slots, resources but somehow I never hear about Exchange admins getting servers updated the day a release comes out like Domino.

CIO should be providing harder sessions and questions to the CIO community out there than what is shown. In the last few magazine issues the stress has been CIOs need to do more with less, be proactive, reach for greater returns, yet they then provide wimpy sessions like this one. This could have been a solid session on what to do, how to do it or when to do it, but instead it was a "let Dell do it for you, as much or as little as you need".

IBM probably does similar sessions and I am against that as well if done purely in a sales selfish way. Speak to be understood, not to sell. No case study or client references were used either for recent work. If you do your job properly, they will buy from you or at least listen in the future.

Mail Fidelity, do you really have it with Exchange?

I wondered about this as well.

CIO magazine recently had an article in the June 15th edition about Records Management That works.

What was very interesting was this quote:

"One of the issues is to make sure that the documents in their electronic form can be upgraded and transitioned from one technology to the next over decades," says GWU's Bonig. "

This implies the data MUST be transitioned between systems, (GWU must be a Microsoft University)in order to stay fully usable for future reference/lawsuits et al.
Why do they say this, because if you had been using Microsoft email programs since MS Mail, you would have had to translate or migrate or convert those emails to Exchange mail, Outlook 2000, 2003, 2007 and now Live.

You can not read older Exchange emails in Outlook 2007 unless they have been converted to a format which is acceptable to the new system.

Now, let's compare Domino mail. You can, and I do, access emails from R3(few companies were into Notes prior to R3 but even their emails are accessible) using my R8 client. From 15 years ago to now, it only takes one mail file, one client.

Lawyers should be pushing all their clients to use Domino for this reason if nothing else. The cost to maintain old hardware, backups and software is not justified, especially if you are a financial, insurance, government(cough cough The White House fiasco) or manufacturing entity.

CIO Magazine quotes me regarding the iPhone

Al Sacco wrote the article, and I had responded with my thoughts about the discussion being rather funny.
What makes a phone a corproate item? For that matter what makes a laptop?

I enjoyed seeing he printed my thoughts about a BES like server for iPhones, called an MIS. Read and enjoy.

Iphone lovers, I am not against it or for it, but it was nie to know Lotus was teh first to work with it.

What if you knew the company

" and found them dead on the ground, how can you run when you know?"

Apologies to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young for using their lyrics from OHIO.

A large monopoly of an electric company in Florida is migrating from Domino, if it takes them as long to do it as it took to get on Domino again I can not see a ROI on this one.
If they had hired the right people, paid them a decent salary(or hired me any one of the more than 5 times I was in discussions with them, over 10 years) they would not be at this stage of events.
I still offerred my services as they are trying deperately to get some one in there to stabilize it all during the migration.
I don't want to see them go under or leave Domino, but what can you do from the outside looking in. It's just a shame when good companies go bad and take their IT down with them as well.

Some companies just do not know how to treat their employees. No incentive or bonus, a 1% raise, if that, manic hours and you should thank them for having a job.

Sadly this is not limited to South Florida but is a growing problem.

If you have IT staff and do not provide incentives to them, and money is not the best or only option, you get what you deserve and your company will eventually feel it.
You can not build a house with cosmetic plastics that look like cement. So you can not build a decent infrastrcuture without solid foundations.

If and when I am CEO of a company, my raise is not going to be more than the average across the entire company. Why should it be? Why are you proud your IT budget has not grown in years but shrank? Do you really have much to show for it?
How does this instill hope or vision or loyalty to your employees?

My new job is in IT incentives, anyone in need contact me, I do house calls.

Exchange to Domino and Vice Versa

Does it make sense? In either direction? Of course not, even if one is just discussing email.
Go ask The White House if it was worth it.

Unless your job as CIO depends on having a major project under your belt and you figured this is easier than implementing SAP you are just wasting your companies money and that is just not a good reason to do anything.
Shame on you if you are that type of CIO. But your CEO is probably like that as well so you are safe, sadly, for the year or 2. And if you are that kind of a person please let me come in as your understudy, I promise to give you all the credit you are due but move the company forward once you leave as well.

It does not make financial sense from almost all angles.
You still need admins, servers, networks, firewalls, licenses, support, etc.
Yes one could argue there is a long list of Microsoft products required to do what one Domino server does, but that is not the issue for the moment, if we are truly discussing only email.

Does it really make sense politically? Yes there are Microsoft and Lotus evangelists and we love our jobs and possibly as well too much our respective companies.
The problem is what happens when you get in the middle.

Is it politics that dictates wasting a million dollars or 5 just because of a UI? Or a personal hatred of IBM or Microsoft or Sun or Oracle?

Sure Outlook is unimpressive, it's 5 years old, unless you use office 2007 and then what is so exciting about it, the ribbon? Yes the Notes client looked about the same for the last 12 years but the R8 client really is very different and more functional than Outlook, as discussed in a previous post.

You could train the users in the new product.
Stop laughing everyone reading this. Some companies do believe in training, they just tell you to do it on your own time. Pay for training is almost unheard of today.

Does it make business or operational sense? Will either one help you go forward faster, see an ROI or allow your sales force or manufacturing plant or research staff to be more productive faster? That is the key question in my mind, one which I have held since around 1991 when I first not only experienced Notes but started working on Windows 2.

If, in a 10,000 user company you can replace Domino with Exchange for email at the same price as it costs you for Domino, maybe you have a winner bet there. Although if you wanted to go from Exchange to Domino you would see an immediate ROI and cost savings. It just costs less to not need CALs for every piece of software and licenses, all esle being equal.

But I am quite confident it is not possible to save money moving to Exchanegf rom Domino and in this age where economics are out of line, budgets are in limbo from quarter to quarter if not week to week, you want to push through a swap of your email system you either have too much time on your hands or too much money because I can think of better ways to spend that money... and so should you.

Widgets are cool, but twitter in a Notes client can be useful too

Apologies to Pink Floyd but...
"You twitter and waste the hours in an offhand way"

Well you can and is that a good thing or bad from your IT department's perspective?

I was on the phone today with someone at CIO magazine and he was writing an article about Facebook from an IT perspective. Should have discussed Twitter instead, Chris if you read this, call me, I have your next article.

While I do not see Twitter as useful to me in my daily life, one person, Luis Suarez of IBM Spain is using it now almost exclusively and shuns his email. An interesting thought.

At Lotusphere many of us, including myself, used Twitter non-stop, nameless Lotii twittering at 3 or 4 am even. Now at a conferene like that it was very useful because, there was no way to sametime anyone...yet(read future posts on this topic). Well Lotus 911 did get Bleedyellow to handle Sametime for all of us, but it was mostly afterwards we all joined.

So with nothing from Lotusphere itself, we could rely on Twitter. And it was great especially during the opening sessiosn when we all probably killed the Twitter servers tryingt o be first or last with a comment.

Anyway, so now it's a gadget in my 801 Notes client and it is enjoyable to read an occasional missive from Luis or Chris Miller of IDONOtes fame or Bruce "Ideajam" Elgort among many others.

But as I received an email which would interest Luis I could twitter him directly and send him the information. Yes I could IM him as well(I need your IM Luis) but since he was just sitting there this worked out well.

The bottom line is, I never had to leave my Notes client for anything, browser pages are embedded in it, Sametime is as well and now Twitter, Linkedin, the Symphony suite and more.

Thanks Mary Beth for adding this benefit for everyone. And thanks to the Turtle Partnership for hosting an open Widget catalog for everyone as well!