Lotus Foundations is not dead yet

by Volker Weber

MR-Foundations

The Lotus Foundations hardware appliance is no longer available for new orders. The Lotus Foundations software products will be removed from Passport Advantage and will not be available for new orders after February 8, 2011. We will continue to make Foundations software available for partners in North America with the Lotus Foundations VAR agreement in place.

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Comments

I see...another prolonged, agonizing death....just pull the band-aid off already and be done with it!

Curt Carlson, 2011-01-28

So here's a question, did IBM ever actually ship that tiny server as an IBM/Lotus box shown at Lotusphere?

Carl Tyler, 2011-01-28

There's been a lot of discussion in the Foundations group on LinkedIn on this. Sure, Foundations didn't take off like IBM planned, even though they signed up "200 Microsoft Partners a month" to the product. It was how they handled the announcements, the severe lack of communication with the Partners, and the silence from that group that caused rumor, anger, and frustration from the Foundations Business Partner community. Now, three months after the original EOF announcement, we get this communication.

If IBM announces another SMB product/offering at Lotusphere 2011, I would guess that there will be some Partners that will be hard pressed to get on board after the way they were treated by the Foundations group. In no way do I want to make it sound like the product was crap, it was an excellent offering for SMB. The Foundations Technical Support team was/is one of the best at IBM. Management of the product, communication with the Partners, those are probably the areas where most of the anger/frustration is directed.

Gregg Eldred, 2011-01-28

@Carl, they did, but not for long. That server was one of the offerings from Nitix and was available for, maybe, six months after it was shown at Lotusphere. Once Nitix was fully absorbed into IBM, bigger, badder hardware was the only choice (if you bought the whole kit from IBM).

Gregg Eldred, 2011-01-28

Yes, they did ship the mini product, but not all decked out in yellow, that was a stage prop.
I had one, sent it back, it could only be ordered with a maximum of 5 user licenses, or after one for me as the admin, 4 people, not very useful.
That device faded into a larger tower server. Rumors of a rack server/blade server never materialized.
As a software solution it is really good but it no longer has an advantage over native Domino on Linux, for me that is.

Keith Brooks, 2011-01-28

The way IBM treated us partners was insulting. If you are killing the product, just say so. Don't dance around with conflicting statement and in this case total silent. Most of us have been partners for many years and I myself have been a partner for almost 20 years despite all the problems that IBM have given me including competing with me. We believe in the products and the community.

Domino was the most important aspect of Foundations for me because it gave a turnkey solution to get Domino into small businesses and I didn't have to deal with the hardware or maintenance issues since our primary focus was applications. It would have been a good product to bring together into a hybrid cloud model which is what will prevail in the future not a pure cloud solution which some of us who have been around long enough have seen before.

They are planning to show so of the new stuff from IBM Smart Business at Lotusphere 2011 I believe, but the focus is mid-size businesses (IBM version of small businesses). Given how we were treated, I am very hesitation to invest time in any of IBM small business solutions except the core Domino-based products.

Richard Moy, 2011-01-28

I will not get back into bed with IBM on a Foundations type of business. They had a great product and essentially killed it instead of giving those of us out there time to get our hands on it.

Their sales channel essentially sucked. There is no other way to say it. They just didn't understand that SMBs need to get their products in days not weeks or months and they certainly do not want to have to go through the hassle of navigating through the website and pricing models.

Roy Rumaner, 2011-01-28

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