Andrew Pollack's Blog

Technology, Family, Entertainment, Politics, and Random Noise

I always wondered what it would be like to have IBM's full support behind Lotus Notes and Domino. Now we're finding out.

By Andrew Pollack on 05/18/2006 at 07:40 AM EDT

Support at IBM for Lotus Notes and Domino is as high now as I've ever seen it, and its fantastic. IBM's renewed commitment to Lotus Notes and Domino first became noticeable with the now famous whitepaper in 2003. For the first time in a few years, you could start talking about Domino inside IBM seriously again. Revisionists will tell you it wasn't that bad, but I'm not about to let them forget. Before Dr. Goyal was able to sift through the competing strategies and oversee the development of a plan to incorporate Lotus Notes and Domino into the rest of the IBM product strategy things were pretty bleak for the dedicated Domino fanatics. Isn't it great how things have changed since those days?

The Hannover team deserves a great deal of credit for the success you're about to start seeing in the market place. The workplace effort ended up creating a few very important technologies which have found their way through the process and now form the core of the changes coming to the Notes world. The success of the Notes team is that when presented with these technologies they were able to adapt and even surpass the original workplace designs so quickly that they are clearly now leading the development cycle.

The new Lotus Notes client, while fully compatible with previous versions -- so much so that any incompatibility is to be considered a bug and addressed as such -- is so obviously improved and exciting that it has gained clear support within IBM's toughest customer. IBM. The same IBM that derided its own product while pushing Websphere and Portal based on the industry pundits' promise of huge cash in that market is now stepping up to the plate and making things happen for Notes and Domino. I expect BIG things from then around Hannover.

What are we seeing? We're seeing fantastic advertising that has an inclusive message and clearly sets the stage for a big "Collaboration" push. We're seeing integration deals that are being pushed at the highest levels and are resulting in great deals and tighter integration with important vendors like Blackberry -- who are now offering the "BlackBerry Enterprise Server for IBM Lotus Domino Quick Start Edition Offer."

Is this Mike Rhodin's doing? Will he turn out to be as good for the Marketing side of Lotus products as Dr. Goyal was on the technical side? I wouldn't have guessed that would be the case, as I've only known him on the technical side of the organization and I wasn't a fan of his Lotusphere performance but if its true I'll take it and be grateful. Maybe the product's success is letting people like Ed Brill have more of a say in the marketing. Who knows.

One thing I know for sure -- LotusSphere 2007 in January is going to be one you do not want to miss.


There are  - loading -  comments....

I just spent four days with those folks at DNUGBy Wild Bill on 05/18/2006 at 12:12 PM EDT
DNUG is a much smaller event than Lotusphere, and as a result, I spent a lot of
social time with the Lotus senior folks.

Without breaking the unwritten rule of "what goes in Karlsruhle stays in
Karlsruhle" can I just say that these guys are on a complete roll.

No talk of gloom, doom, etc. No talk of lack of support. If anything, grumbling
about the requirement for *more* good team players, and demanding quality
questions from customers that they can resolve.

Its a real sea change from the Dark Dark "Zoller" days for sure. They really
reinforced the feel-good factor..

Is it all to do with Mike Rhodin ? I'm sure thats he's not responsble for it
all - no one person could - but I think the breaking down of "Iris's" doors and
componentisation played a big part. As did the five straight "growth" quarters.

Next Lotusphere will be exiting in many many ways. Not least because I'm going
to throw the biggest, baddest Party that Lotusphere has ever seen.....

---* Bill
Thank you.By Ed Brill on 05/18/2006 at 08:24 PM EDT
I think there are a lot of factors, some of which start at the top and some of
which are in the development team and some of which are in sales and marketing
and some of which are, surprisingly, due to the increased competitive
pressure. Oh, and a lot is due to great partners.

I have to save some other observations for my post-retirement book, but for
sure, there's a lot to be happy about in the Lotus organization today.
the bookBy on 05/19/2006 at 08:05 AM EDT
Can I put in an advance order?

Site Links

Useful Links



Other Recent Stories...

  1. 01/26/2023Better Running VirtualBox or VMWARE Virtual Machines on Windows 10+ Forgive me, Reader, for I have sinned. I has been nearly 3 years since my last blog entry. The truth is, I haven't had much to say that was worthy of more than a basic social media post -- until today. For my current work, I was assigned a new laptop. It's a real powerhouse machine with 14 processor cores and 64 gigs of ram. It should be perfect for running my development environment in a virtual machine, but it wasn't. VirtualBox was barely starting, and no matter how many features I turned off, it could ...... 
  2. 04/04/2020How many Ventilators for the price of those tanks the Pentagon didn't even want?This goes WAY beyond Trump or Obama. This is decades of poor planning and poor use of funds. Certainly it should have been addressed in the Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Reagan administrations -- all of which were well aware of the implications of a pandemic. I want a military prepared to help us, not just hurt other people. As an American I expect that with the ridiculous funding of our military might, we are prepared for damn near everything. Not just killing people and breaking things, but ...... 
  3. 01/28/2020Copyright Troll WarningThere's a copyright troll firm that has automated reverse-image searches and goes around looking for any posted images that they can make a quick copyright claim on. This is not quite a scam because it's technically legal, but it's run very much like a scam. This company works with a few "clients" that have vast repositories of copyrighted images. The trolls do a reverse web search on those images looking for hits. When they find one on a site that looks like someone they can scare, they work it like ...... 
  4. 03/26/2019Undestanding how OAUTH scopes will bring the concept of APPS to your Domino server 
  5. 02/05/2019Toro Yard Equipment - Not really a premium brand as far as I am concerned 
  6. 10/08/2018Will you be at the NYC Launch Event for HCL Domino v10 -- Find me! 
  7. 09/04/2018With two big projects on hold, I suddenly find myself very available for new short and long term projects.  
  8. 07/13/2018Who is HCL and why is it a good thing that they are now the ones behind Notes and Domino? 
  9. 03/21/2018Domino Apps on IOS is a Game Changer. Quit holding back. 
  10. 02/15/2018Andrew’s Proposed Gun Laws 
Click here for more articles.....


pen icon Comment Entry
Subject
Your Name
Homepage
*Your Email
* Your email address is required, but not displayed.
 
Your thoughts....
 
Remember Me  

Please wait while your document is saved.