IBM Challenges Microsoft With an Ad Campaign

Rytis writes "IBM is about to spend $300 Million dollars on a campaign to win customers and to convert them from Microsoft Exchange to Lotus Notes and Domino under Linux. IBM is also said to offer resellers a bounty of $20,000 for switching customers to its Linux-based e-mail programs from Microsoft server software. It seems that the concurrence Microsoft Corp. is facing is getting tighter and tighter. The Penguin gets more and more support from the two biggest rivals that Microsoft have ever had."

Comments

IBM, anymore trustworthy in this?

[yagu]

Sometimes I'm not sure what IBM is thinking. I don't "get" this campaign. IBM is spending $300M on a campaign to convince customers to switch from MS' propietary to their propietary message product? Wow!

From the Seattle PI article:

"People are confused, and that's why we are going into that campaign," Harreld, who also took control of marketing in January, said in an interview at IBM's Armonk, N.Y., headquarters. "We're really trying to get at this problem."

I'm not sure I see this as a clarifying move. I see it only as another product offering. I've used Lotus Notes and worked with it many times. It has lots of interesting features, but I found it obtuse and overloaded at least in the context of an e-mail/calendaring product... the business world probably doesn't need or care about yet another e-mail.

And, IBM is couching this under the comforting and (maybe) enticing siren of Linux and open systems? Wow! A paragraph from the Bloomberg article:

"A growing number of organizations are interested in moving away from closed, proprietary technology platforms in favor of an open computing model," said Michael Loria, Director of Worldwide Channels, IBM Software Group. "As one of the fastest growing operating systems in the world, Linux is emerging as a viable alternative to Microsoft Windows as an email and collaboration platform," he added.

I find this invitation disingenuous, dishonest, and ethically bankrupt at best. I'm a huge fan of Linux, and hope for its eventual place in the business world (which I would submit it already has... except we all still have to whisper about it), but I think IBM is miscalculating on this.

And even if they are dead on in their marketing campaign, I'm not sure I'm entirely comfortable they piggyback so strongly on Linux. I know IBM has been a contributor to Linux -- has their backing been that strong?

I've worked with IBM throughout the years and my experience has been they are not too much different than Microsoft in their commitment to Unix platforms, i.e., it's a pill they'll swallow or pretend to swallow if it makes them look willing to play in the Open Source community.

IBM has diverted Unix technology before (anyone played with AIX before???), I fear they're using it today for personal (corporate) gain. I know corporation's responsibilities are to be as profitable as possible, but this smacks of lip service.

Re:IBM, anymore trustworthy in this?

[Hercules Peanut]

I think you are missing the point. Even if Lotus is a closed, proprietary system, linux isn't. O.K. so what you say.

Getting a non-windows server environment supported in an enterprise greatly increases the liklihood of moving away from proprietary protocols and methods of connecting to said environment.

Right now, our enterprise is MS biatch (sorry, I can't think of any other way of explaining it that so perfectly illustrates our IT and MS). My Mac (bought under the radar) doesn't properly display our Intranet (all sites developed exclusively for Windows IE), my Mac cannot connect to Exchange Servers (anything on the servers that might allow me to connect using entourage is turned off) and here is the big one, my Mac cannot connect to many internal sites as I am not authorized unless I use the old Mac version of IE because of the way we authenticate.

Everything is designed with MS standards and protocols and we turn nothing on to support any other platform. Perhaps (maybe?) if we had a non-MS server we might have to actually support an open standard or two. The day that happens is the day I (hopefully) gain a little more functionality.

Open isn't about the application, it's about the environment. Besides, doesn't Lotus support other platforms? Exchange doesn't, not really.

Good - but to Notes?

[caluml]

Hmmm. Last time I used Lotus, I thought, arrgh, what a POS. Clunky clients, flaky servers. Why are they pushing that, and not investing 1% of that 300 million in developing/extending some server based on Groupware.
Exchange is good for what it does, and users scream loudest when their email goes down. So I expect companies will be loath to change their entire messaging system. Especially to Notes.

Re:Good - but to Notes?

[Blakey Rat]

Notes is, by a wide margin, the worst email client I've ever used. The most normal and hum-drum activities in other email clients are either impossible in Notes (sorting email by subject line, for example), or grossly complicated and unreliable (setting up a forwarding rule, for example-- then watch it continue to run for hours after you delete the rule!)

I'm working at an IBM shop right now, meaning that we use Notes for email, and everybody hates it. The users hate it because it's difficult to use. The network administrator hates it because it's a pain in the ass to do simple tasks like, for example, changing a user's name. The accounting department hates it because it's expensive.

And yes, this is where the Notes supporters will chime in to remind me that Notes is more than just an email client-- it's also a network-aware database host ala Access. Except there's two major problems with this:
1) IBM advertises that Notes is an email client.
2) It's a crappy DB host also.

Look, supporting Linux is one thing, but nobody should be supporting Notes. If the free market worked at all in the computing industry, this program would have died out years ago because it's too crappy for anybody to purchase. If you want to support Linux, do it in such a way that you're not also supporting a horrible piece of software like Notes.

As an aside, why do all groupware products suck? Groupwise sucks. Domino/Notes sucks. Exchange/Outlook sucks. Why doesn't someone like Adobe create a groupware product to completely blow these suckers away?

Re:Good - but to Notes?

[caluml]

Yep - the problem with this is that people will associate Linux with "slow, flaky, awkward to use" because to them, Linux will be what they've heard, and they'll be using the Lotus clients all the time. I, as (generally) a Linux advocate, don't want that association.
In the company I work for, we moved from Lotus to Exchange/Outlook, and I have to say, even though I would rather not use MS stuff, I wholeheartedly embraced the change. I think the last version of the client I used was 4 or 5, so it may be that it's got much better. However, I remember that there was something amazingly easy in Outlook (setting up an out of office message?) that was nigh on impossible in Notes.

I think IBM have done some clever things so far, but dumping 300 million to try and get Notes running again is a losing battle.

Re:Good - but to Notes?

[operagost]

I looked it up and apparently, Adobe applications use curiously evil activation. Somehow this causes them to periodically require reactivation. Adobe's "workaround" is, naturally, not to use RAID. I have a feeling Adobe employees are the ones without a clue here.

Dead On Arrival

[Anonymous Coward]

As soon as anyone actually tries to use Notes, the evaluation will be over.

I hear Lotus Notes blows.

[mcc]

Maybe it would make more sense for IBM to build an exchange replacement that is actually good, and then advertise the hell out of it? I think if they spend a lot of money on calling peoples' attention to Notes, it will just backfire.

Fun With Lotus Notes

[Zerbs]

Oops, guess I forgot the tag in the subject line. Notes is an intriguing concept of storing information in hierarchical "documents" but a number of things make it difficult to use. I spent months at my last company converting Lotus Notes applications that someone had written into an Oracle database with a web front end. One thing interesting though about Notes, when we sent an e-mail to Australia from the U.S. asking for a read receipt, the receipt gladly told us that our message "was read tomorrow".

For email/calendaring, Exchange is easier.

[khasim]

Lotus Notes is an incredible platform. It does just about everything.

Unfortunately, most companies just want something that will handle the email and calendaring with Outlook.

Instead of putting $300 million into this stupid ad campaign, spend $250 million on a basic corporate email server that handles email and calendaring that works with Outlook (or clone the Outlook ... look). Then spend $50 million on getting the word out.

Start small and build up. Lotus Notes is anything but small.

Re:Domino/Notes

[absinthminded64]

Because I use email so extensively in the workplace I will actively refuse employment at a firm that uses Lotus Notes. It is the most horrendous application I've ever had to use and in my opinion it gives IBM a black eye to those that have to use it. Fortunately for IBM the CIOs, CTOs, C* don't use email and don't have a problem purchasing the triangular wheel that is Lotus Notes.

The simplest of things just do not work in Lotus Notes's email client. And their flat file "databases" aren't too impressive either. If only they put %005 percent of that $300M into making the user experience JUST tolerable.

Re:how to refresh the Notes inbox

[Blakey Rat]

Or hit F9. (F5 won't refresh like you expect, it'll actually lock you out.)

Re:I am so sick of hearing about Notes sucking

[Blakey Rat]

1. Notes has an odd UI with some challenges, we agree on that. Of course, that's because it was DESIGNED TO BE CROSS PLATFORM. In fact, the next rev includes a LINUX CLIENT.

It was designed to *run* on multiple platforms (which they still screwed up; why did it take so long to get a working Linux version?), but it's definitely not "cross-platform."

Firefox is cross-platform. When it's running on a Mac, the Preferences menu item goes into the application menu where it belongs. It uses sensible font sizes that mere mortals can actually read. It uses Macintosh standard keyboard shortcuts. And I consider Firefox for Mac a mediocre port... it doesn't have access to the OS X spell-checker, for instance.

Notes on Macintosh looks, feels, and runs *exactly* like Notes on Windows. (Which, BTW, isn't how a Windows application is supposed to look, feel or run.) It also helpfully decides to use microscopic 8-point fonts all over the place that nobody can read.

So, given all these things -- every one of which is something in general /.'ers scream for, WHAT IS THE F'ING PROBLEM?

Have you ever tried to USE it? Have you ever just looked at Notes' main menu and said, "holy shit this app looks ugly?" The calendar doesn't work; it loses meetings all the time. It doesn't sync with any handhelds out there unless you buy IBM's EasySyncPro and EasySyncPro randomly fails about once a week with mysterious errors that can only be solved by forcing a full synchronization (which takes several minutes.) When you hit F5 to refresh your mail, Notes locks you out for no apparent reason. It takes up to a FULL MINUTE to open an email on my 1.7 ghz, 512 MB RAM PC at work if it gets swapped out of RAM. Nobody can figure out how to do basic tasks like changing the password or setting up a mail rule. Settings are grouped in the most moronic fashion ever... how come my preferred browser for viewing HTML mail is in the "Location" setting but the interval for checking for new mail is in "User Settings?" Also, have you ever seen Lotus Notes attempt to render HTML? It's pathetic. If there's an error in a script you'll see a dialog that reads "Error: Object cannot update Property" and Notes won't tell you *which* object or *which* property, making it entirely impossible to debug anything.

Note has compelling features. All of them are implemented in a confusing and half-assed fashion.

Users hate Notes. Admins hate Notes. There are only two types of people who like Notes:
1) IBM salesmen who talk CFOs (generally ones who don't even use email) into buying it and making huge commissions
2) Notes developers. And I think that's more a case of Stockholm Syndrome than anything else.

See this blog for only a small sampling of things Lotus Notes sucks at: http://damienkatz.net/2005/02/70-reasons-lotus-not es-sucks.html

Why I'm not on a Outlook/Exchange...

[HockeyPuck]

I've been running lotus notes for 5 years now, and the reason why we didn't switch to exchange?

Because to scale exchange to support the number of users we have, we'd need to deploy *FARMS* of intel boxes.

Oddly, it's been about two years since we had to reboot our iSeries (AS/400). Yeah, it's not as sexy as running 100s of windows or linux servers. As it's just a pair of clustered boxes in the corner, each running multiple LPARs that serve to provide redundancy for the other. But it just works, plain and simple.

Re:I make a good living with it, and its VERY robu

[blincoln]

It only requires 15 people to support the entire environment.

We use Exchange to support email and calendaring for at least twice that number, and it takes 1-2 of us to support it part time. It pretty much takes care of itself. The only downtime we've had since upgrading to 2003 was when a third-party backup app started locking up one of the servers every weekend.

I'm not a huge MS fan, and I do tend to like IBM, but Notes is a pile of shit. The only thing I ever liked about it was the hieroglyphics when I entered my password, and I still thought that didn't belong in an enterprise desktop app. It's not a matter of redesigning it or adding new features - the whole concept is flawed. Email and calendar apps go together - that's why Outlook is so popular. Email, calendar apps, the worst database product evar, and whatever else IBM decided to shovel into Notes for the releases after 5 do not belong in the same executable.

Notes is such a terrible product that I thought this article was one of the April Fools' jokes.

Re:Domino/Notes

[tinkertim]

Agreed. They're about to spend $300M to make Exchange server look even better. Unless they plan on using a version of Notes I've never seen or worked with, this might not be the best marketing idea IBM has ever come up with.

Microsoft has Bob, IBM has notes. Notes is better than Bob, therefore IBM is better. The comparison being both were amazingly bad things to try and market so aggressively.

However after coming out with both barrels blasting like this, IBM has really boxed themselves into a corner they can't quietly retreat from like MS did with Bob and (many) of their other blunders.

So the conclusion of this is easy to predict, notes will get better after IBM gets a larger market telling them how it should be made better. I think this is an opportunistic strike capitalizing on MS's current woes and bad publicity .. I would not be at all amazed to learn a new version or re-write is soon to come out - just launching at the most opportune time and rallying growing support and enthusiasm for Linux.

I've often thought "If that weenie head doesn't STFU about his ping times I'm going to install BOB on his desktop and take the following week off" .. now I can do it with Notes and get $20k to spend on the vacation! Wooo Hooooooo!