Eight Quarters
by Volker Weber
If you look at quarterly earnings, you need to take a look at last year's quarter as well. For instance the first quarter was pretty bad in 2009 and in 2010 Lotus was able to win something back. 2Q09 was the worst, and in 2Q10 they were not able to gain against those bad numbers and lost even more. If you only look at all the yellow bars, you can see the business leveling out in 2010 instead of going into free fall.
If you compare these numbers to Websphere though, things are pretty clear. Websphere had pretty good numbers in 2009 and grew on top of that by leaps and bounds.
Comments
I would expect to see a lot of growth back in the Lotus brand as their Connections and LotusLive offerings mature and the market demand for them increases. The rethink of their messaging client strategy ("project vulcan"), if well executed, will also help.
That's quite possible. Notes is a huge revenue base. It takes a while for new products to pick up, even at high growth rates. Vulcan looks very promising, on the client side. On the server side, it smells of Websphere. It could run on the Mashup hub, but it's unlikely that IBM will make it so.
@Volker : not sure IBM re-does the "workplace" mistake by trying to introduce Websphere on the backend for core "domino" services. Of course, additional services may require "additional" servers when that makes sens though (activities from connections, advanced sametime stuff from sametime 8.5...)
PS : just speculating, I'v no insider info (and would not reveal them if I had some ehehehe)
If you go to the Innovation Lab at Lotusphere you will find that most if not all project build on top of Websphere. Lab code never gets published as a product, but it set a precedent. I don't think anybody would try to rebuild Domino on Websphere, but you will find core services on other platforms. LotusLive iNotes for instance does not run on Domino.
@Volker : LotusLive iNotes is a product IBM bought (outblaze)...
and don't forget that XPages runtime is no less than a small JEE container (IBM LWI if I'm correct)...
I would not be suprised if Domino "seemlessly" grew in a more JEE-aware server and be able to run all those new stuff ;-). The challenge will then be to stay "accessible" and RAD enough...and for now, as of XPages, I think it's nearly perfect !
The interesting thought here is that you can't get much more RAD than an Innovation Lab.
@Volker : then IBM would be the first on earth to use "classic" JEE dev for RAD for an innovation lab..."classic" JEE tends to be S(low)AD more than RAD.
Interesting, isn't it? Go to the lab and ask the developers what tools they use.
Eclipse ? That's fine ;-)
Looking at the graph. If the percentage declines are calculated on an accumulative basis, then my quick sums indicates that Lotus revenue has declined about 35-39% in 2 years. ouch!
Not sure if that is indicative of the cannibalization via license fee changes like LotusLive, or genuine seat losses..probably a mix of both.
No, that's not how it works. These are year over year. If all quarters had the same revenue, you could build an average over four quarters. For 2010 that would be around 3%.
Clarification on the innovation lab:
These are research projects that are not linked or related to the product development pipeline per default. A lot of them are projects where IBMers at large devote 20% of their time to contribute to them. Some of them are showcased, some shelfed and some fed into the production pipeline.
:-) stw
