Carl Tyler's Blog

1 - Carl,

Do you really think so ?

The author of the article starts off stating that his company uses Lotus Notes Domino. I can imagine his excitement. I do wonder however how much he knows about the Microsoft platform besides Outlook ...

IBM had clients waiting for an Outlook look-a-like for years. They now finally managed to create something like Outlook *2003* but with a few options more in one screen.
The press / analyst info I have seen so far don't not look like a warm welcome and IBM is already talking about the next version that will do some additional catch up with Micrsoft (web client, mobile access to email, etc). The article states the following on the roadmap :

"The best news is that Lotus now seems to be moving quickly to improve Notes. It has announced a planned upgrade, called 8.0.1 for early 2008, including a new thin web mail access client, improvements in the calendar, a mail quota gauge, and a new "Notes Traveller" which will give native push email. In addition, Lotus will be introducing an on-demand offering,offering mailboxes for $5 to $10 per month per user, aimed at what IBM considers the small to midsize business market, up to 10,000 users. (Personally I tend to think of 1000 users as getting close to an enterprise customer, but it probably doesn't really matter.)"

All of this is readily available in the Microsoft platform ... today

2 - @1 Is this a nice write up for IBM? Yes. Honestly, the percentage of the articles written in favour of Notes from ZD tends to be very very small, so the fact that this is from ZD and is positive makes it a nice write up for IBM.

3 - @2

I agree on that perspective, but nevertheless the bias of the author is evident and from a marketperpsective this move by Lotus was required and not innovative at all ...

4 - @ Yes, but I never made a judgement about the author, or an bias, I just stated that it was a nice write up for IBM

Besides, all journalists have some bias of some kind or another, otherwise they wouldn't be human.

5 - @4 I agree. Thank god for human journalists

6 - Peter, at least the author makes it clear that he uses Lotus Notes which is something not usually done when they're writing about your product. He's not hiding it.

7 - so this is the new Peter de Haas tactic, try to take the fight to neutral websites where his baseless assertions will be ignored by the site owner and thus believed by some readers.

Peter, please...what is it about Notes 8 that makes you think it is like Outlook 2003? What innovation is in Outlook 2007 that outpaces Notes in some way? Why do you view a second-generation lightweight web UI as "catch up" rather than the additional approach to the best-in-class Domino Web Access that we will continue to ship? I'm willing to ack that Notes Traveler is a feature driven by competitive requirements, but third parties like RIM already provide way better support for Notes/Domino/Sametime than they do for Exchange/Outlook.

The real question is, where is Microsoft's vision of doing something innovative and different in the future, instead of more/better Office documents online or offline?

8 - Ed, you're not expecting any answers are you?
The tactic is hit and run, and it's not new. Never stays around to have a meaningful conversation.

9 - Ed,

No new tactic whatsoever. Carl just beat you to it with a link to this article. I comment on Carls posts sometimes, and I hope you will allow me to.
I look at Notes 8 like the market does, a countertactic to Outlook ... not a very good one (yet) according to most of the reviews I have read. That was something I shared in my cmments to this blogpost.
Good that there is you scanning all of the "neutral sites" and eliminating my perspective on things isn't it
@8. I am always in for a discussion, should you have anything meaningful to share

10 - @9. I've just re-read all the comments and it really doesn't seem like you are in for anything other than listening to yourself.

11 - @10 thanks for the feedback. but did you hnoustly expect a comment on your point @6 ?

12 - Well, yes. You seemed surprised that the writer mentioned which software we was using before having is say.
Not something you're used to see?
And I'll bet you he didn't get a laptop from IBM.

13 - Well now that we're having this 'discussion'

I was not surprised that the author mentioned the fact that he is a Notes user. I meant to illustrate that this may have caused his bias regarding the article. If I were a Notes 5,6,7.x user I too would be keen on working with a new UI (that looks kike Outlook). That was sort of my argument.
Carl made a true statement that Jounalists are human too and that many of them are biased one way or the other.
Well thats sort of all there is to day about that. No "hit and run" Intended; I just wanted to add a little perspective to the matter.

14 - Oh, I see it now. You were just stating the obvious, something the writer had mentioned in the first few lines. That makes a whole lot more sense. Thanks.