How winners are made
by Volker Weber
IBM claims Coca Cola as a win. So does Microsoft. Today I learned that one is Coca Cola Cie, the other Coca Cola Enterprises.
Microsoft claims that 4.7 Mio Notes users started (!) switching to Exchange and Sharepoint. I wonder how many IBM claims to have won from Microsoft. Have not seen any numbers on that.
Comments
Ed Brill referenced this over a year ago -
Reuters: Microsoft braces for major customer shift
A bit provocative but as Notes is becoming a carbon copy of Outlook in many ways why should anyone switch from Microsoft to IBM?
IBM once announced triple digit growth and nearly 3000 customers for IBM Lotus Workplace too (at Lotusphere 2006 I think).
To be fair I think there are only little people who still believe IBM's growth stories, even in the "Yellow Bubble". I am uncomfortable with Notes and Domino as it is today but the Microsoft offerings do not look much better to me. They are easier to sell but technology wise both platforms share many deficiencies.
Ouch the linked Microsoft press release is kinda harsh "[...] I suppose a company choosing to keep Notes is pretty newsworthy these days."
It strikes me that there are a lot of bare faced untruths in the linked Microsoft piece written by their Director of Exchange Marketing.
To pick just one "With Notes, the skills are dwindling and expensive". Well, I know for a fact that I earn less today as a Notes developer than I did 10 years ago - and that is despite being much much better at it. Julia White is thus mistaken.
Anyway, this has all got me obliquely recalling a past US Presidential Election when Walter Mondale kept asking, "Where's the beef?". Eventually George H. Bush hit back with, "They're the Pepsi Boys. We're the Real Thing".
It's got me wondering if one of the Coca Cola's is more 'real' than the other ;-)
It's an important distinction. The Coca Cola Company (TCCC) is the company that owns the secret recipe and manufactures the syrup. Coca Cola Enterprises (CCE) is one of a few dozen regional bottling companies in the world; they buy the syrup from TCCC, add fizzy water and put it in bottles, and sell it to distributors. CCE is the largest of the bottlers.
TCCC and its bottlers have a tight business relationship, but TCCC exercises no command/control over the bottlers. The bottlers don't compete with each other, each was granted a fixed "territory" by TCCC decades ago. Very interesting business model.
It's not uncommon for the various coke-related companies to share technology, but also not uncommon for them to make individual infrastructure choices, as has happened with email.
Ian, for you it is far easier to spot the halftruths in Microsoft's propaganda than in Lotus'. It's all fun and games until you believe your own propaganda.
Oh Microsoft, will you please help free us from "complicated, proprietary Notes applications."
As opposed to complicated, proprietary Microsoft applications...
lol
Volker, I'm sure it is but I still think Microsoft plays faster and looser with the truth than IBM Lotus does. IBM Lotus is more likely to say and do nothing.
Seeing as I will only claim my company's Notes development headcount has increased by one over the last year rather than 100% (which is just as true - if misleading - a measure of growth), I reckon I can remain detached from local propaganda and resist nonsensical extrapolations :-)
