Intelliwatch Statistics...
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Approximately one year ago, Thomas Duff made available the wonderful Google Alerts tracking database, and it's something I check into a few times a day, as I have a number of google news alerts configured. One that I pay particular attention to is the competition between Lotus Sametime (or it's newer names) and Microsoft Live Communications Server. These articles are not direct press releases from IBM or Microsoft, but any article that mentions LCS or Sametime which can include official press releases. This is not a scientific database, but it gives a good idea of who's doing what and the kind of news and articles that are appearing around the products.
Today I decided it would be interesting to see how IBM Sametime marketing holds up against the Microsoft LCS marketing machine. Basically it comes out to this, there are approx six times as many articles/stories each month for LCS than there are for Sametime. Why is this? Well some of it is I believe down to pure numbers, Microsoft have more people dedicated to marketing LCS, whereas IBM have them dedicated to a broader brand awareness, but where the press releases really show the most impact is in the number of companies Microsoft are partnering with to integrate with Microsoft LCS. I believe this also comes down to numbers, Microsoft have many more people dedicated to working with partners on purely LCS than IBM does for Sametime.. Most of the stories I have tracked are from partners announcing new products working with LCS, especially telephony companies.
So to make it easier to read, here's a graph of the results for the last year. Obviously this is not a scientific study, but I think the numbers are an accurate indication of Sametime vs LCS coverage.
Before anyone asks, I have not done any analysis of Workplace (the brand or the product) against Sharepoint Portal as I don't really care too much about that stuff.
These numbers aren't the most important thing though, what really matters is user seats, but I don't track that. I do believe that this year will be the year that LCS starts to win some customers with LCS 2005, I am already hearing some disgruntled rumblngs within a few IBM accounts so truly believe the easy ride Sametime has had up until now will become much much bumpier.
Approximately one year ago, Thomas Duff made available the wonderful Google Alerts tracking database, and it's something I check into a few times a day, as I have a number of google news alerts configured. One that I pay particular attention to is the competition between Lotus Sametime (or it's newer names) and Microsoft Live Communications Server. These articles are not direct press releases from IBM or Microsoft, but any article that mentions LCS or Sametime which can include official press releases. This is not a scientific database, but it gives a good idea of who's doing what and the kind of news and articles that are appearing around the products.
Today I decided it would be interesting to see how IBM Sametime marketing holds up against the Microsoft LCS marketing machine. Basically it comes out to this, there are approx six times as many articles/stories each month for LCS than there are for Sametime. Why is this? Well some of it is I believe down to pure numbers, Microsoft have more people dedicated to marketing LCS, whereas IBM have them dedicated to a broader brand awareness, but where the press releases really show the most impact is in the number of companies Microsoft are partnering with to integrate with Microsoft LCS. I believe this also comes down to numbers, Microsoft have many more people dedicated to working with partners on purely LCS than IBM does for Sametime.. Most of the stories I have tracked are from partners announcing new products working with LCS, especially telephony companies.
So to make it easier to read, here's a graph of the results for the last year. Obviously this is not a scientific study, but I think the numbers are an accurate indication of Sametime vs LCS coverage.
Before anyone asks, I have not done any analysis of Workplace (the brand or the product) against Sharepoint Portal as I don't really care too much about that stuff.
These numbers aren't the most important thing though, what really matters is user seats, but I don't track that. I do believe that this year will be the year that LCS starts to win some customers with LCS 2005, I am already hearing some disgruntled rumblngs within a few IBM accounts so truly believe the easy ride Sametime has had up until now will become much much bumpier.
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Comments
Posted by Duffbert At 09:07:39 PM On 02/10/2005 | - Website - |
No surprises here.
Posted by Adam Osborne At 02:34:22 AM On 02/11/2005 | - Website - |
The truth is that MS whilst good at marketing it's not of the mythological proportions that people make it out be, it's just IBM are crap at it.
Posted by Tony C At 05:20:26 AM On 02/14/2005 | - Website - |
Contrast that with IBM's print or TV ads. I don't read the print ads anymore. They all look the same! I turn the page thinking "IBM" but I don't know anything about what product they're advertising. Nada. Zip.
There are a lot of "power users" at my company. If there wasn't a Trillian plug-in for Sametime, I think our network admins would have dropped it by now.
http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/stplugin4trillian
Posted by Kevin At 08:50:23 PM On 02/14/2005 | - Website - |
Posted by Sean At 11:09:33 PM On 04/24/2005 | - Website - |