A few brief Lotusphere observations
by Volker Weber
Back from Lotusphere and already digested most of the information. In no particular order:
- Three general sessions: Monday was quite good, Tuesday was enterprise strength bla-bla, Wednesday mixed. Tim Berners-Lee so-so, Watson Software GM very exciting, Polycon CEO was just a commercial.
- Social business, we get it. Now put Social Sandy back into the cage.
- It's all beta, all the time.
- I like the new design patterns. No "eye candy" decorations. Trump MSFT by going AAPL.
- Connections will have a great year.
- Integration with Microsoft stack is key.
- XWorks server does not fool anybody. Potential customers smell Domino.
- Has anybody heard Quickr?
- Sametime?
- IBM finally wakes up and does a full ActiveSync implementation. Calls it HTC and Nokia.
- Take note who ended up on Lotusphere backpacks and what happened to them. IT Factory, Sun Microsystems, HP, BlackBerry, the list goes on.
- Speaking of backpacks, Lotus now wears yellow on the inside.
- I have a feeling, life is going to get very hard for partners.
- As much as IBM is pushing other content, most people come for plain old Notes & Domino.
- Most interesting person I met: Manoj Saxena, GM of Watson Software. The stuff he does will change our lives in a good way.
- Lotus is going away. Notes needs to follow rebranding quickly, otherwise it looks even older than it is.
- Had a private PlayBook OS 2.0 demo. It looks really good.
- The closing session was the worst I have ever seen at Lotusphere. What a self-serving idiot.
- To be continued ...
As for my working conditions: I have never had a better service. Very much appreciated, Karen and Don.
Comments
Entertaining, Volker. :-)
@ "I have a feeling, life is going to get very hard for partners."
Partners welcome! Most partners have already had the same observations and are talking to us: lotus@microsoft.com
@ "Has anybody heard Quickr?"
We have several customers moving off of Quickr now because of the product quality and/or are integrating SharePoint instead.
Even the references that IBM is putting on stage (Continental AG) do that.
@ "IBM finally wakes up and does a full ActiveSync implementation. Calls it HTC and Nokia."
Thanks IBM! It's good for both of us (IBM and Microsoft).
ActiveSync; that should extend Notes' life around here by a few months
Dreamforce 2011 saw 45000 registered attendees. Metallica closed the event.
What was the attendance at this event?
What would you say was the customer / business partner attendance ratio?
Did you see anyone there under the age of 30?
Jeff, I am happy I did not have to endure a Metallica performance. As to your questions:
- I'd probably scratch one zero.
- No idea.
- Yes.
Lot of constructive comments on this thread...not suprising due to the post itself.
Sometimes I really wonder what's your goal with all those negative posts about your favorite targets (Lotus/ICS, Facebook...). I respect your opinions, but keeping on repeating them in all the variations you can find only gives more occasion to trolls like the first MS bigot here to say how good Sharepoint isand blabla... the grass is always greener on the other side...till you reach the other side.
Michael, thank you for your constructive comment.
So cynical...you're welcome ;-)
Chortle.
Actually IBM BPs already have it hard: have you ever tried unsubscribing from all the worthless PartnerWorld spam??
@Michael So you mean negative stuff like:
Monday was quite good, [..]
Watson Software GM very exciting,
I like the new design patterns. No "eye candy" decorations. Trump MSFT by going AAPL.
Connections will have a great year.
IBM [...] does a full ActiveSync implementation.
Manoj Saxena, GM of Watson Software. The stuff he does will change our lives in a good way.
Had a private PlayBook OS 2.0 demo. It looks really good.
The illusion, that if you close your eyes bad things just go away, only works for children. At least for me when I reopen them QuickR is still there in its usual bad shape it has been for so many years (although with free coverage for Connections Files and Profiles anybody should get the message). Same for the good old Workspace in Notes that I have been looking at for so many years or the thousands of bad looking Notes applications that may fit a purpose but have been abandoned many years ago.
And maybe you may ask what happened to the $1 Billion IBM investment in Unified Communications?
I will make a prediction for Connections.
Now that it seems to be selling Microsoft will have a competitive product in the next 24 months. They will probably just copy the concept, integrate it into their software stack and if needed sell it at a lower price. They did it with Exchange, Lync,Sharepoint etc.At the end they often win with this strategy (but not always).
Then there will be another Connectsphere and people will blame Volker for being all negative. In any case IBM will already have moved on pushing the next big thing into the market. They are always busy making money.
@Henning : of course Volker finds some things "good", always // stuff though.
I don't say he is right or wrong, I only question the usefulness of always saying, in any variation you can find, that "lotus is going away".
But saying "negative" stuff (be it there or in general info channels) is much more buzzy than being constructive. Sad but true.
And believe me, I'm not a Lotus bigot for a long time, I just try to be pragmatic and, in many situations, "Lotus" tools deserve much more respects that they get, including from their own community.
Michael, that is not even open to interpretation. Lotus does goes away. Connections, Sametime, Forms already dropped it. LotusLive becomes IBM SmartCloud for Social Business (what a name), LotusLive Symphony is IBM Docs, Lotus Symphony will be OpenOffice. All is left is Quickr and Notes/Domino.
But we all know AND want it. And I hope Domino will leave it's Lotus brand too. And, as I said, I never questioned your opinions, just the ongoing repetition which can only lead to trolls like the MS one being the first comment here.
Well, I haven’t been there, but I watched the OGS in the live stream and the recording of the Wednesday GS and Ed’s presentation. Didn’t care to watch the Tuesday GS at all.
From what I’ve seen and the comments in the live stream, the list seems pretty much spot on. I would add the availability of the quite excellent live streams and recordings for selected sessions, even without registering. That’s a start.
While there were a lot of improvements announced around Notes/Domino (Traveler, embedded browser client,…) and you might even be able to put the Connections lipstick on your Notes Client by the end of the year, it seems to me that the core Notes/Domino product doesn’t evolve at all over the next year. Considering this the post actually goes pretty easy on IBM.
Michael, if you think Bernd is a troll, you need to readjust your attitude.
He is a former Lotus Business Partner. And he has been working for Microsoft for quite a few years. Everybody in the German Lotus community knows and respects him. If only for being successful in converting Lotus customers into Microsoft customers.
Sorry, but to me, even if it's of course ok to change camp from Lotus to MS to whatever, recruiting on your old camp is not something you can be respected for. if MS products are so good, let's go and sell them to new customers. Riding the migration way can be very dangerous for both the customers and the influencer. But hey, these days, Sharepoint is "la poule aux oeufs d'or"...let's re talk about that in 5 years.
Michael, go away.
Just for the record. I like the Lotus brand and normally would like to have it until the product really changes. Renaming Notes and Domino does not make it work and look differently. I know this is a minority opinion.
But I acknowledge that some think just dropping the Lotus brand will make it selling again. It already works quite well for IBM Sametime (maybe it does, I really don't know).
This is the point where I would say "Let's do it". If it then does not sell like hot cake maybe there is a chance that it will really get fixed (or not).
@Michael
I don't want to argue with you but what you are asking for is pure marketing. There is nothing wrong with it but this normally is not something I would do for free.
Sorry, but to me, even if it's of course ok to change camp from Lotus to MS to whatever, recruiting on your old camp is not something you can be respected for.
What utter drivel. This is the software business, not some kind of school playground.
Other opinions are well respected, don't they ?
Ben, I Know it s bizness not religion, but that does not prevent me to favor trust and fidelity.
As I m no longer welcome, accept my "au revoir "
I've been very hesitant to comment, being an ex-Lotus guy who now works for the competition. I watched the OGS because a) I'm still interested, b) it's good competitive info, and c) some of my customers went to Lotusphere and I wanted to know what they were hearing.
Things that struck me about the OGS:
1) the most commonly-mentioned product was the iPad (maybe it wasn't, but it did seem like it)
2) Sametime got the briefest of mentions
3) Quickr got no mention at all
4) Notes / Domino - 8.5 was released over 3 years ago, and there's no major release coming in 2011 (right?) - I'm sure there was more Notes / Domino content during the sessions but it's lack of presence in the OGS was rather telling... if I were a Notes customer in the audience what would I be thinking?
5) Connections continues to develop as a strong product, I'd even go so far to say it's now the flagship product for the once-Lotus brand and the one to beat
Quickr, I asked a lot of IBM people about the future of Quickr. The response was a general, "probably going to get folded into Connections".
Darren, meet 2012. 2012, meet Darren.
@pat - Did you ask the same people about the future of the Notes mail client? If so, did they also say, "probably going to get folded into Connections" - or did they just look away?
@Ian, IBM announced a browser plug-in for Mozilla Browser on Windows to let the apps run in a browser. Also they announced Notes Social Edition. Connections will integrate Domino Mail and Calandar as well as Exchange - they called it Social Mail.
Multi-platform-support is gone away.
And iNotes will not make it into Connections - only a feed of your inbox will reach the activity stream.
to be more precise - multi-platform-support is not available in time of writing this for the Browser plug-in, not for Connections at all.
I particularly enjoyed the backhanded swipe at GBS buried in the middle of the list. "Take note... what happened to them." Okay, let's do exactly that:
- IT Factory was run by a guy whose illegal actions caused the company to fail.
- Sun was bought by Oracle.
- HP blew a wad of cash buying Palm, then didn't do anything worthwhile with their people or technology.
- BlackBerry (or, rather, RIM) dominated the space they created for quite a while, but have failed to continue to out-innovate their competitors.
I'm not seeing a connection between the list above and the names on this year's backpack, but I might well be blinded by my personal interactions with our executive management, the way I'm treated by the company as a whole, and the innovation I've personally witnessed or even, occasionally, contributed to. Perhaps you'd care to enlighten us regarding what insight you have into the reasons this year's sponsors are ultimately doomed to fail.
Tim, I have no insights in the future. I can only remember that in the past this has not been a good space to be seen in. I can also remember Nokia, Compaq and IT Factory when it was run by Lars Munch Johansen and not Stein Bagger. Theo seems to have a large collection of bags. Maybe he can show us some more logos.
Correlation does not imply causation.
The causation lies only in how much money you spend on what.
@Thomas Landgraf
Could you please explain "multi-plattform" is gone?
@Claus,
the plug-in for Notes runs only on Windows in Mozilla Firefox Browser. No futher information if it will ever run inside FF on Linux and Mac has been disclosed. No Information if it runs on Terminalservers / CITRIX or virtulized/streamd. No further information if it is 32-bit/64-bit. If you want to run your Notes app unmodified in a Browser (no X-PAGES transformation is necessary), you have to access them on Windows - This is my latest information.
So far IBM is adding a new option so for me nothing is gone (so far). 8.5.4 has already been confirmed and the new Social Edition is to install on top of 8.5.X. Given that the application player, only being able to run classic Notes applications, gets so much attention it seems that lots of customers are not going the XPages way!? I expect you have to be on Passport Advantage to use it (and I think it is safe to say that this will be 32bit only). The current multi-platform support IBM provides is no joy anyway (at least on my Macs).
some comments on multiple post:
the application player is intended for applications and you need your normal already existing enterprise cal. the plugin is a small plugin which uses the normal client infrastructure in the backend (basic notes client dlls, notes-data directory, notes.id). that means once you install it via download (similar to a adobe reader) you need to leverage policies and a config file, id-vault etc to have the configuration done. that part remains and the only difference is the plugin.
from technology point of view this is a plugin that hooks into the same UI reparenting that has been used for the standard client.
the result is that the deployment will be quite easy.
yes for now this is a win32 application only. but the notes client is 32bit only too. no idea if at least a 64bit FF is planned.
the Notes client remains 32bit on all platforms. on the Mac it will use the more modern Coco interfaces but still remains 32bit.
because the OS is 64bit a 32bit client application should have sufficient (4 GB) room to run.
there are good reasons not to move to native 64bit on the client side and not many reasons to move to native 64bit on the client side.
Even on the server native 64bit does not make a lot of sense in most cases from performance point of view.
IMHO it would be important if we would get the application player also for Linux and Mac and because the plugin does leverage the existing backend code this should be possible ...
But yes IBM is not taking anything away. The standard/basic client will continue to be supported and is still getting new features with the social edition.
@Thomas, Daniel
thank you for the explanations about the platform questions. It is only a plugin issue.
@Daniel,
thanks for clarification. You are right. Platform support at all is not going away. But currently for the deployment option plug-in it's currently not there.
@Thomas, Daniel
Thank you for the additional information.
