Our Collabsphere Session about O365 from the viewpoint of an Admin and a User

Hogne Pettersen and I gave this session today at Collabpshere.

It is a mix of good, bad, bewildering, and impressive views about the whole O365 story, solution, and parts within it.

We could spend all day discussing this and are happy to do so if anyone wishes to ask for our help.

For more details, follow us on our Twitter accounts at @LotusEvangelist and @NordicCUG

Shoot me NOW! The Life and Death of an O365 Admin and User from Keith Brooks

Cloud vs. Licenses

Been debating this for quite some time but it comes up quite often.
On one hand, some IBMers get paid on selling licenses, others get paid on Cloud initiatives.
On the other hand, as an example, Lotus Connections IBMers would prefer if clients bought licenses instead of LL Engage.
This short lived cannibalization of sales and internal posturing is not unique to IBM. Microsoft has similar issues, especially when confronted with losing major money from their #1 money maker, Office.
So what is a Business Partner to do? Naturally offer clients the best of what is available and make the proper choice. Not just select the one that pays more commission. And on that note, Cloud options pay much less, as if there was any doubt.

So what can the mothership do to resolve this dilemma?

One thing to do is compensate everyone, internally and externally, equally for the products. Really, what benefit does it serve to have it any other way?

Another option is to provide equality to all products and let the PC side be equal to the Cloud side. If someone owns one license, they should get one Cloud account for free. I understand this may reduce revenue, but this also provides an excellent way to work in the interim while companies try to decide their future directions, or more importantly when they will make the leap, if ever. Charging twice is just not a nice option.

Lastly, applications are needed. No offense to the great marketers out there, but just going to the cloud, without a real application, I do not consider social media or Office related tools as applications, doesn't have enough excitement by itself.

What would be exciting? Let your imagination run wild.

Quickr 8.2 licensing bothers me

My thoughts around the Lotus Quickr 8.2 requirement around Lotus Domino 8.5 garnered a few interesting discussions and thoughts.

I am not a master of licensing but this strikes me as odd.

One question I posited was how does IBM license this?

I was pointed to this IBM license agreement for Quickr 8.2 by an IBMer.

As I understand it I am entitled to Domino 8.5 in order to install Quickr but not to use Domino for any other purpose?! An interesting idea since mail must flow, websites must run, both using Domino, which is already serving these purposes, does this negate the license agreement if they are not working with Quickr? Evidently, but why is IBM hampering SMB clients this way?

Are you prevented from using Domino this way thus requiring my SMB client to buy a second server for Quickr and maintain a separate server for email too?

What if they want to use Quickr now?
What if they are only on R6 right now? Does running an 8.5 server with DAOS and a names.nsf template from R6.5.x work properly?
Are you allowed to use the 8.5 template for names.nsf on your R6 server and across your domain? Or must it stay in a stand alone mode?

Or if they have an existing server, say Domino Enterprise Edition for 8.5 for example, by buying the license to Quickr 8.2 is IBM basically double billing, well let's say, double reporting licenses? Do these licenses count to the grand total announced at Lotusphere? Do IBM sales reps get these added to their commission checks and target goals?

Isn't this what Microsoft does as well that we complain about (and I have posted about)?

You can argue this is how it has always been and we should pay more careful attention to our license agreements in the future, but this, to me, just seems like something is odd. Or business as usual.

It's been a while since I was forced to ONLY use one version of a product with another.

Lastly, who thought of naming a version of Quickr which is in sync with Domino at 8.5, but call it instead the easy to remember Quickr 8.2?

LS08 BD DAY: Microsoft's Software Assurance

From what I learned and revisited in Lotusphere today.

I've written a few times about the Exchange side of the equation and even Sharepoint but I learned more today.
And now so will you.

Here's the premise:
Microsoft has offerred you or your client Sharepoint and Exchange for free.
And your client wants the same from IBM to stay with Lotus.

The reason is because they want to put you into an enterprise agreement which has Software Assurance(still an oxymoron). Software Assurance, if you do not know, allows for a company to receive "free" upgrades on their licenses IF new software comes out in the next 3 years or however long you commit to int he agreement.
You can also do this if you know you will be updating soon.
Of course you pay for this benefit...each year of the agreement.
And the cost for SA is about 1/3 of the total licensing cost. So not a small chunk of change.

So let's look at all the companies that bought into it in 2003 for example.
Name one product which you paid for an upgrade that materialized from the "Desktop Professional" or "Professional Desktop" or even the "Enterprise Desktop".

Windows upgrade from XP, nope.... Vista came out in 2007
Office upgrade from Office 2003, nope......office 2007 came out in 2007
Exchange upgrade from Exchange 2003, nope....Exchange 2007
Outlook upgrade from Outlook 2003, nope......Outlook 2007

So what did you pay all that money for in the first place?
Well, MAYBE you were on 2000 and you expected to move to 2003 someday. Fair enough.
What if you bought this in 2004? Same problem. 2005? You start to see a pattern of course.

If your company continues to do this, as one company admin told me today theirs does, not only are you wasting money, you are perpetuating the Microsoft arms in your company.
If you convinced your company to review the policy, you would see a huge reduction in licensing to MS.
Your company SHOULD care and reward you for saving them money. If your boss doesn't, go to his boss. Someone wants to pocket that budget money, trust me.

Of course Sharepoint(MOSS) is free to you, because Microsoft gets you to buy licenses for:
SQL(server and CAL)
Communications Server(server and CAL)
Groove
and if you used advanced options in MOSS you also need
Office 2007!
And more pieces I can't even remember.

Don't forget you also MUST be on Windows 2003 server and updated AD and Exchange 2007 which requires 64bit code and thus 64bit Windows Server.
PLUS the new hardware.

So Sharepoint being free is like when you buy a dining set and get the choice of seat cushion color for free.

If it's free it's for me, but in this case it isn't free and really isn't for me....or you.

You always have other options....think about it and look into it.