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Bob Congdon asks...

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Remember Lotus SmartSuite?, yep I remember, still use it today. The truth is the answer to his question is a thesis waiting to be written. There are so many reasons why SmartSuite is not very well known today, everybody involved has their own theories (obviously mine are the correct ones), there were some great management blunders, and I most of them were made by senior Loti not IBMers. Although IBM really was involved heavily in the eventual demise, yes you can still buy it, but lets face it, it's dead. The quick reasons of the top of my head that helped put SmartSuite where it is today:

  • No fighting spirit
  • eSuite - and the Java religious wars
  • Removal of SmartSuite from Sales Reps quota
  • Iris using Office not SmartSuite
  • Development teams in different parts of the country with constant bickering amongst them, no management strong enough to grab the bull by the horns to sort it out.
  • The 1-2-3, it wasn't invented here team.
  • Lack of urgency
  • Killing NotesSuite
  • Outlook shipping for free with Office
  • The belief that file filters weren't important
  • Telling the sales force that SmartSuite sales figures were better than they were to keep the sales force happy
  • No willingness to use the cash cow as a competitive weapon (SmartSuite was the cash cow for a long time, it took many many years for Notes to make more money)
  • Death by committee

You get the idea, there are a lot, and I mean a lot of reasons. Did you notice I didn't even mention Microsoft? Microsoft obviously played a part, but to be honest Lotus did more damage to itself than Microsoft ever did, Microsoft were just there to pick up the pieces. How do I know this? Well I probably went head to head against Microsoft more than anyone else and pleased to say I never lost.

Comments

Gravatar Image1 - Carl,

I could quibble about a couple of items on your list but this is an excellent response. Exactly what I was looking for. I think it's worth looking at this history when considering what's going on now.

Lotus lost momentum in desktop productivity software before IBM bought the company. Microsoft is a convenient scapegoat but the answer is more complicated. When 1-2-3 faltered, that was a serious but not fatal blow. WordPro was not as good as Word. Office suites lead with their word processor. Another problem. When it became clear that Lotus had tried to buy WordPerfect and dump WordPro, that was another blow. Staffing up the eSuite effort while SmartSuite continued to languish just made it a certainty that the end was near. When eSuite failed, Lotus was effectively out of the business. Note: eSuite was, at least initially, funded directly by IBM since it was originally intended to run on diskless Network Computers. Remember those?

So what's this all mean for IBM's OpenOffice strategy? It's not clear to me. Backing Apache was a smart move. It's server software. Releasing Eclipse as open source was a smart move too. It's an IDE for developers. But OpenOffice is desktop software for the masses. And it's an Office clone. And anyone can download it themselves. How does IBM make money in on this?

Gravatar Image2 - Remember the NCs? The little black IBM NC1000s, I still have a couple sitting on a shelf

The transition from Ami Pro to Word Pro hurt Lotus, I would agree Word Pro 96 was worse than Word because of stability issues, but I would disagree with that belief for releases post that, but by then it was mostly too late.

having looked at OpenOffice many years ago when it was out for Windows and OS/2 form the little German company and then again recently now that it is OpenSource, SmartSuite still beats it in my opinion.

If IBM was smart, they would bundle SmartSuite free with the Notes CAL. Just like the Sametime license there would be some uptake, at worst it would make some companies waste Microsoft's time by trying to negotiate down the price they pay for Office as they get SmartSuite for free, ie do to Microsoft, what Microsoft do to everyone else.

Gravatar Image3 - Bundling. Lack thereof. That's what really did it in. As I recall, only two major PC manufacturers bundled SmartSuite with new machines. Everyone else bundled Microsoft products.

Gravatar Image4 - Yeah bundling was big part of it, although WordPerfect bundled like crazy but it didn't help them.

IBM even screwed SmartSuite a fair bit in the bundling area. Although PC Co bundled a SmartSuite license with the machines, they did not pre install SmartSuite, this meant customers had to call and wait a few weeks for the CD to arrive. Guess what they were willing to pre-install, yep Office.

The killing of LotusWorks also had an impact on LOtus and OEM agreements, we didn't have anything to compete with Microsoft Works at the low level. It also meant MS could bundle Works without eating away at Office revenue and customers could upgrade to Office. Lotus had to sell SmartSuite cheap and had no upgrade revenue.

Gravatar Image5 - Yes, the lack of OEM deals was a killer. But the seeds of that problem were planted much earlier. Microsoft had a very nice GUI spreadsheet on the Macintosh (Excel) well before Windows 3.0 came out. Lotus had a Mac spreadsheet as well (remember Jazz?) but abandoned it. Microsoft released new versions of Excel on the Mac, adding features, polishing the UI. What was Lotus doing? Milking the 1-2-3 for DOS cash cow. The OS/2 version was a a GUI product but was completely different code base.

When Windows 3.0 came out, Microsoft had a mature GUI spreadsheet on the platform. What did Lotus have? Lotus ported the DOS codebase to Windows and slapped a GUI on top. Frankly it wasn't a very good product. Lotus bought AmiPro even before this release came out and had Freelance as well so it had the components of an office suite. But it had stumbled badly with 1-2-3 and never recovered.

An effort to build a powerful cross-platform version of 1-2-3 was started in 1991. It was going to have all sorts of advanced features It was going support Windows, Macintosh, OS/2 and Unix. Over time, this project slipped its schedule again and again. Mac and Unix platform support was dropped. This version of 1-2-3 shipped in 1997. By that point it really didn't matter. Microsoft Office was the dominant player.

Gravatar Image6 - Back in the day, I actually met the guy that wrote Ami Pro. Lotus brought him around since we were using Ami Pro in the early Windows days.

Now, there are only a couple of people that I know that use SmartSuite, my parents being one of them (it was bundled on their IBM machine that they bought). Another is a client that uses it because it came free on their notebooks and they don't want to spend a nickel moving to MS. The filters work fine, but they have to remember to save the files back as Word/Excel docs before sending stuff to customers.

I could be wrong, but they didn't upgrade that product very much, either. Probably for one of the reasons listed.

Gravatar Image7 - My list:

1) Embracing of OS/2 not windows - yes Lotus took in on the chin on that one. 123 for Windows took 3 years to become decent and then by that time had lost the market. 123 for OS/2 was very nice (multi-threaded).
2) Improv
Great idea - but the effort should have been on 123 for windows. And platform support? NeXT as its first platform?
3) Organizer should have been better integrated
4) No dual strategy - should have had a "lite" version of amipro for free
5) Wordpro did cause problems - shipped too early (something like 1000 known bugs 2 weeks before ship)
6) Lotus's emphasis suddenly became notes after they found they couldn't get the old 123 profit margins
7) 123 - yes I think this was the dog of the suite near the end. They focused on stuff like datalense when all the customer wanted was different fonts in cells.
8) Shipping all development to India
9) Should have bundled CC:Mail earlier - but they wanted to kill it for Notes

Gravatar Image8 - I can't help but jump into this fray:

Lotus was late to recognize the validity of Windows - which had become the 'dominant design' for the desktop + corporate OS. 123 for OS/2 was a mess and the port to Windows was too late and vastly under delivered. Not to mention, the time spent on Improv with Next...arghhh.

Development teams were placed around the country and turf wars were frequent. Approach, Samna, ccMail, etc...were all excellent development teams. However, the cross continent management was more than Cambridge could handle. Not to mention that the 123 team felt it was running the show...and potentially had the weakest product.
As mentioned, lack of file format and file filter support. Microsoft quickly set the format standard with their word and excel formats. We failed to recognize the importance of file format and document fidelity. Sure, we had people on filters, but I think it should have been a much higher priority.

Products were over engineered and lots of resources were placed into cross platform support. Ports to OS/2, MAC, unix were expensive, time consuming, fractored the development resources, and added lots of complexity to the products

Design groups were too far removed from the customers. There was a feeling that the customers actually didnt' know what they wanted..and that the product design folks were way ahead of the curve. Of course, customers sensed this arrogance and voted with their wallet.

Internal culture was too slow to recognize threats and real market forces; it was politically correct, bureaucratic, and not capable of competing with a hard hitting, no holds barred, culture of Microsoft. The internal goals became 'provide a nice place to work', instead of 'dominate the software landscape for the next 20 years'

Gravatar Image9 - There was never any doubt who would win the office applications turf war. Lotus, however, enjoyed winning many significant battles back in the day.

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