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Can IBM Take On Google, Microsoft With iNotes?

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the better-late-than-never-i-guess dept.

CWmike writes to mention that IBM has launched LotusLive iNotes, a system designed to compete with GMail and Exchange that offers email, calendaring, and contact management. "Pricing starts at $3 per user per month, undercutting Google Apps Premier Edition, which costs $50 per user per year. IBM is aiming the software at large enterprises that want to migrate an on-premise e-mail system to SaaS (software as a service), particularly for users who aren't tied to a desk, such as retail workers. It is also hoping to win business from smaller companies interested in on-demand software but with concerns about security and service outages, such as those suffered by Gmail in recent months. LotusLive iNotes is based on technology IBM purchased from the Hong Kong company Outblaze."

9 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. If LotusLive iNotes is in any way based on by 3waygeek · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Lotus Notes, no way in hell will it succeed. Lotus Notes was pure crap, and I say that as an ex-Lotus employee.

    1. Re:If LotusLive iNotes is in any way based on by rs79 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Google brings out Wave and IBM clones Gmail?

      --
      Need Mercedes parts ?
    2. Re:If LotusLive iNotes is in any way based on by mcgrew · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Lotus 123 is pure crap, too. Long ago, before IBM got hold of it, it was a good, arguably the best, spreadsheet. But last year I started getting Lotus spreadsheets, so I had them get me a copy (I have to use Quattro and Excel as well). The damned peogram loaded a ton of crap, and had the ton of crap loaded on startup, even though I only use the spreadsheet portion and then only once every few months.

      I had to do a lot of googling to find out how to make the crap stop starting at startup. It wanted to become a shell for Windows! A shell for a shell, what an amusing concept.

      My mouse's scroll wheel doesn't even work in the damned thing. Of the three spreadsheets I have the extreme mispleasure of using, I hate Lotus' the most. Damn but I look forward to retirement!

      --
      Free Martian Whores!
    3. Re:If LotusLive iNotes is in any way based on by FriendlyPrimate · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It may be crap, but that doesn't imply that it's not going to succeed. As the ex-Lotus employee can probably attest, software development in IBM rarely involves making products faster or more stable. It's all about features, and making sure that your product has more feature-list checkboxes checked than the other guys. "Starts in under 127 seconds" is not a sell-able feature. The only thing the PHBs buying this stuff see is that iNotes has 100 features, and product X only has 75. The only time performance or stability is really ever considered is when customers start complaining that they're going to drop the IBM product. And by then, the product is so bloated that improving performance to any significant degree is virtually impossible.

    4. Re:If LotusLive iNotes is in any way based on by tjwhaynes · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Lotus Notes isn't an email program. It's an application development platform with multiple backend databases, networking interfaces plus a scripting language, a plugin system and a ton of other stuff. That it reads and writes email is just proof of JWZ's assertion.

      Cheers,
      Toby Haynes

      --
      Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
  2. Re:It's about Local Control by trevorrowe · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Storing confidential data in the "cloud" (how I hate that term) is a ...

    Lots of users say they hate using the term "the cloud", but they continue to use it anyway. Why not just say "other peoples servers"?

  3. Bwahahhahahahahah by MBGMorden · · Score: 4, Insightful

    . . .hah haha hah hah.

    Oh that was good.

    Lotus Notes, iNotes, and all over it's incarnations is the most convoluted and insane system I've ever used (and this is after 4 years of admining a 400+ user Lotus Domino server). I've often heard the joke that Emacs would be a great OS if only it included a decent text editor. I've never felt it applied since I actually like emacs for text editing, but boy does the same type of line apply to Notes: it'd be a great OS if only it included a decent email client.

    --
    "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
  4. Cell phones by sunderland56 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Businesses have become used to smart phones, the majority of which work with Microsoft Exchange. Phones have pre-loaded clients for Exchange, not for anything from Lotus. If iNotes can't play with current phones, it will be a non-starter.

  5. Gmail:Exchange::iNotes:Lotus? by Jim+Efaw · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What Gmail is to MS Exchange is what iNotes is to Lotus. It's a web interface for a lotus system.

    Except that Gmail doesn't have the baggage of being associated with Microsoft or Lotus, and a name like "LotusLive iNotes" does. Even though they based it on Outblaze, if they put any Lotus back-end architecture into it since then, there's a good chance at it being a rolling failure waiting to happen. The luckiest thing that could happen to a LotusLive iNotes user is that it turns out the programmers have still kept it far away from any code from any other Lotus product whatsoever.