Carl Tyler's Blog :: Is Lotus Notes losing the Australian email market?

Category ZDNet Notes

ZDNet Australia has an article Lotus Notes losing Aussie email war? An interesting question and one I'm sure will get forwarded around and discussed quite a bit.

I found a couple of things interesting, one being

Furthermore, Carr wrote, version 7 of Notes proved a particular problem for companies because its application footprint was too large; meaning it was not suitable for lower powered computers that had previously been able to run Notes 6.

I don't remember Notes 7 being much bigger than Notes 6? Notes 8 bigger than 7 sure, but not Notes 7. I never come across that as a reason why people considered or switched from Notes, so interesting that he would think that.

What we thought about IBM marketing, also has an IBMer kind of confirming it, IBM takes the if you build it they will come Field of Dreams approach, versus the more typical lets build demand approach.

The executive added IBM was taking a different approach to its collaboration suite than its competitors. "We're not investing millions of dollars in marketing and advertising," he said. "What we do is we push those dollars into the development of the platform."

I wonder which approach is working out better?

It's important to remember this article came about because of a report from Peter Carr's company Longhaus, which wants to sell reports, especially their latest analyst report Australia’s Enterprise Email Market: Collaboration or Communication. Which makes these conclusions. Bugger, I just fell into their trap by mentioning this article, which potentially can drive more interest in their reports.

Looking at this objectively and speaking to friends and Lotus Partners in Austrlia things are not particularly rosie down there right now, with a number of companies that have switched or are in the process of switching, they do however saying they are getting some interest in Lotus Foundations. I always hope that articles like this one wiggle the toe of the sleeping giant and it lumbers up and gets into action.

Comments

1 - Ah yes, the 40% percent market share always is somewhere else. Not in the US, not in Europe, not in Australia, not in Africa. Ok, maybe IBM still has that in Japan (I just don't know).
But at the end I just read that IBM is winning every day so you must all be wrong.

Posted by Henning Heinz At 09:37:59 AM On 06/17/2009 | - Website - |

2 - "We're not investing millions of dollars in marketing and advertising," he said. "What we do is we push those dollars into the development of the platform."

Translation: we'll build great solutions, but we don't tell anybody about them.

Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 06:07:46 PM On 06/17/2009 | - Website - |

3 - Is Lotus Notes losing the Australian email market?

Yes.

The reaction I get when I tell people that I am a Lotus Notes developer and administrator has always ranged from puzzled (what is that?) to dismissive (is that still being used?) to downright hostile (the I Hate Notes camp). Lately it's just the first one.

Not a scientific survey I know, but probably as accurate as any figures quoted in the article

Posted by Michelle O'Rorke At 01:26:07 AM On 06/18/2009 | - Website - |

4 - Just one question, how big is Australian market ? The country is huge but its population is not too high.

If I was IBM I would be more worried in losing Spanish or Italian market share, countries that are two or three times more populated than Australia. Is that happening ?

Posted by Miguel Calvo At 02:58:55 AM On 06/18/2009 | - Website - |

5 - Given we have ~21 million people the market is not huge by world standards. I have worked with Notes for the last 15 years and I agree with Michelle re the comments you get from people. We don't and never have used Notes email, just db stuff, and there is a push to simply and migrate to MS.

IBM don't seem to care and you can go years without hearing form Account reps etc. Our organisation is not big, around 1800 seats but reasonable size for Aus.

Posted by Kezza At 08:21:43 PM On 06/18/2009 | - Website - |

6 - Comment #4 reminds me of a World War 2 defensive strategy that was proposed here in Australia called "The Brisbane Line"

Effectively, it was to cede the top half of the country to invading enemy troops without resistance.

{ Link }

Emoticon