Interesting observations at the Collaboration UK meeting.
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Overall it looks like the message that Workplace is killing Notes/Domino is gone. Sadly, the belief was very strong across the group that Quickplace is pretty much dead, and the version you have now is as much as you'll get unless at some point in the future you migrate to Workplace, which at some point in the future may offer the same level of functionality as today. The same went for peoples view on the future of Sametime.
Pretty much everyone there was happy with Quickplace and Sametime, but are starting to consider alternatives because of the confusion. I sometimes wonder if IBM ever does a survey of their customers to check their understanding on these things. I know Sametime inside out and I have access to chat with people who are supposed to "be in the know", and I am still unclear exactly what the future is for Sametime and it's toolkits and how it is all going to work with Workplace.
It's very likely this post may upset some people, as I know they work hard to try and deliver a clear message, but as an observer I can tell you the message around these products is not getting through, to make matters worse the people who are unclear on the future are some of the biggest customers for IBM around Quickplace and Sametime, that cannot indicate that things are being explained well. Also I don't buy the story anymore that this is all being fleshed out, version 2.0 of Workplace is about to ship, version 2! If it isn't fleshed out yet, then surely version 1 shouldn't have shipped yet?
From a vendors point of view, this is one area where IBM differs greatly to Microsoft. Microsoft will ship their partners toolkits long before the products ship, in order to build up a large partner base of applications. The reason why Microsoft also takes toolkits so seriously is because other groups in Microsoft have to use them in order to hook their applications into them. It's all very well if you're IBM global services and can bypass the normal channels and get the source code to the apps to see how they work etc. but for vendors who IBM would like to work with, this model makes it very hard, and very very frustrating.
I had stopped griping about this for a while as it just pisses most of the people at Lotus off, but after today's user group meeting, it came across to me that damn I'm not the only person that thinks this is getting f*&ked up. It's sad because IBM has a great position and a couple of great products, and it's theirs to lose. Right now it looks like they are going to do it with no interference from Microsoft. Maybe I just focused on what I wanted to focus on in the meeting, but this is how I interpreted what people were saying. OK mindless ramble off, for people that read this blog for my personal stuff, this is one thing I can't blame GW for (yet) and you can ignore the whole previous section.
Overall it looks like the message that Workplace is killing Notes/Domino is gone. Sadly, the belief was very strong across the group that Quickplace is pretty much dead, and the version you have now is as much as you'll get unless at some point in the future you migrate to Workplace, which at some point in the future may offer the same level of functionality as today. The same went for peoples view on the future of Sametime.
Pretty much everyone there was happy with Quickplace and Sametime, but are starting to consider alternatives because of the confusion. I sometimes wonder if IBM ever does a survey of their customers to check their understanding on these things. I know Sametime inside out and I have access to chat with people who are supposed to "be in the know", and I am still unclear exactly what the future is for Sametime and it's toolkits and how it is all going to work with Workplace.
It's very likely this post may upset some people, as I know they work hard to try and deliver a clear message, but as an observer I can tell you the message around these products is not getting through, to make matters worse the people who are unclear on the future are some of the biggest customers for IBM around Quickplace and Sametime, that cannot indicate that things are being explained well. Also I don't buy the story anymore that this is all being fleshed out, version 2.0 of Workplace is about to ship, version 2! If it isn't fleshed out yet, then surely version 1 shouldn't have shipped yet?
From a vendors point of view, this is one area where IBM differs greatly to Microsoft. Microsoft will ship their partners toolkits long before the products ship, in order to build up a large partner base of applications. The reason why Microsoft also takes toolkits so seriously is because other groups in Microsoft have to use them in order to hook their applications into them. It's all very well if you're IBM global services and can bypass the normal channels and get the source code to the apps to see how they work etc. but for vendors who IBM would like to work with, this model makes it very hard, and very very frustrating.
I had stopped griping about this for a while as it just pisses most of the people at Lotus off, but after today's user group meeting, it came across to me that damn I'm not the only person that thinks this is getting f*&ked up. It's sad because IBM has a great position and a couple of great products, and it's theirs to lose. Right now it looks like they are going to do it with no interference from Microsoft. Maybe I just focused on what I wanted to focus on in the meeting, but this is how I interpreted what people were saying. OK mindless ramble off, for people that read this blog for my personal stuff, this is one thing I can't blame GW for (yet) and you can ignore the whole previous section.
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