Can you explain the LotusLive Notes announcement?
by Volker Weber
IBM announces LotusLive Notes:
LotusLive Notes®, as part of IBM® LotusLive 1.3, is designed to:
- Enhance the security, integrity, and availability of the messaging system
- Keep costs lower by using automated processes and an integrated platform
- Support a faster implementation with an established infrastructure and a team of subject matter experts
Can you figure out what's new? I only see enterprise-strength bla-bla.
Oh wait, there is one thing I figured out:
LotusLive iNotes is completely different from Lotus iNotes, the artist formerly known as Lotus Domino Web Access, the artist formerly known as Lotus iNotes (full circle, I know). LotusLive iNotes was born as a messaging asset of Outblaze, Hong Kong, and made to somewhat look like Lotus iNotes. What you and I would call LotusLive iNotes, the web interface to a cloud-based Domino mailbox, is called LotusLive Notes Web. That is a new name for the cloud version of Lotus iNotes.
On top of that confusion, there are iNotes, iNotes Lite, and iNotes Ultralite. iNotes is the old clunky one, iNotes Lite is the cool new version you want to use, and iNotes Ultralite is the interface for mobile phones, which was built to support the iPhone when Domino was unable to accomodate it.
Comments
I know we'll hear more about this later today and beyond, but my understanding is that this is LotusLive Notes being officially launched - we have had Hosted Notes before, but this is it properly joining the LotusLive suite.
Of course, I might have completely the wrong end of the stick - that announcement letter is even more vague than usual...
Oh and on your update - will we now see Lotus Notes Web (formerly known as Lotus iNotes, formerly known as Lotus Domino Web Access, formerly known as Lotus iNotes)?
Calling Outblaze LotusLive iNotes was a huge mistake - shame as its a good product...
"iNotes is the old clunky one"
-> that does everything you want
"iNotes Lite is the cool new version you want to use"
-> as long as you don't mind missing out on some nice features like preview-on-side and send-and-file
-> "and iNotes Ultralite is the interface for mobile phones"
that doesn't do very much but does it quite prettily.
But, yes, I agree with Stuart: by using the "iNotes" name for something which is neither Notes nor iNotes as we would recognise it, IBM have got themselves in a big pickle and now have to stick "Lotus", "Live", "Web", "Notes", "iNotes", "Domino" and "Pickle" in a hat and pull them out in random order to find new names. I look forward to "LotusLive Pickle Web" being announced shortly ;-)
Marketing team did it again. And guess what? They are preparing to release 8.5.2 during the last weeks of summer vacations.
This nonsense started with the renaming of the Notes server to Domino. Ever since you had to say Notes&Domino. Hence Domino Web Access, and then iNotes because you could have web access to Domino for other things.
Pierre, four weeks of summer vacation is a concept unknown in the US. :-)
@Volker. True, but Microsoft had "Outlook and Exchange", so Lotus had to follow suit (or they thought they did). Similarly with "Outlook Web Access".
The renaming back to "iNotes" was a step in the right direction, but then they went and blew it...
I think the intent was different. At that time "Notes was dead" because of the web and the Internet. Domino was the project name for the web server and Lotus figured they could get the cool kids with a new name. That did not work.
But now the server had a name that was widely recognized as a Pizza delivery service or small blocks falling over in interesting ways.
I'm not being sarcastic or cynical, but I'm wondering if anyone has already drawn a chart that explains all the different client names? (so I don't have to)
@Alan there are Wikis where customers can do that ;-)
Does anyone know if there is a revenue split for a business partner referring clients to this ? or is the split 100%ibm 0bp ?
@Flemming, if there is a split, then I'd assume:
- You have to spend 8 hours entering it in Siebel
- You have to list your customer contacts
- You have to be prepared to be stomped all over by IBM for big deals
- You have to be prepared to be undercut by the local box shifter if they get wind of it
- You have to sacrifice a chicken
- You have to be prepared for Lotus Sales guys at end-quarter to contact your customers
- You have to be prepared to be bypassed around renewal time.
This is assuming its anything like the old program.
I may have made a couple of these up.
---* Bill
-Bill
Scary and Funny at the same time , if there is no split i guess BP will rather shoot themself in the food than hand over their customers to IBM
I agree completely about the confusion between Lotus Live iNotes, which isn't based on iNotes, and Lotus Live Notes Web, which is.
But I'm wondering why you're bringing it up? This announcement is about LotusLive Notes, not about LotusLive iNotes, and evvvverybody knows that LotusLive Notes is about the Notes client and the Notes Web (aka iNotes) client, not about LotusLive iNotes (aka Outblaze, aka not iNotes) client, right?
The announcement makes it clear when it says LotusLive Notes "Includes both the service and the software via the Lotus Notes® client or Web browser (via LotusLive Notes Web)."
But in the interest of keeping our brains from exploding, I suggest we all ignore the part of the announcement where it says "In addition to LotusLive Notes, you get: Enhanced calendaring support in LotusLive iNotes that allows free and busy time lookups when scheduling meetings"... It obviously can't be right! It must be a cut-and-paste error or something similar. IBM wouldn't confuse using the LotusLive Notes announcement to announce a new feature of LotusLive iNotes (aka Outblaze, aka not iNotes) that has actually been a feature of Notes and Notes Web (aka iNotes) for many, many years.
*sigh*
-rich
