Ed Brill posted an “evaluation” of our seminar and the slidedeck used.
Read all about it at Ed Brill’s blog : [Via Ed Brill]
Fst of all I think it shows that when you put some effort into an event it shows. Look at the publicity internationally 🙂 and the fact that a large number of Notes users and partners attended. In fact we had to do a rerun on Dec 1st.
The comments Ed makes may be true if you take the information completely out of context and put your own objective of communication (a different) message around it. To comment on the content actually delivered (presentation and the explanation given per slide) is something different. Both seminars were attended by IBM / Lotus staff (incognito 😉 ). Ed, I am sure they can give you more context as to what actually has been delivered and said.
In general the conclusion were that attendees :
1. Liked the approach to this competitive discussion
2. Were very positively surprised by the breadth and depth of the Microsoft Solutions in the field of Communication and Collaboration
3. The live demo’s scored very high and provided even more insight to Microsoft’s solutions
4. The story around migration of application was delivered in a realistic way; absolutely no rip and replace story.
5. Microsoft does have a compelling alternative solution to Notes Domino.
My overall conclusion : Organisation using Notes Domino know very little about Microsoft’s overall proposition. We are going to change that !
The Microsoft presentation cites a Network World article that is over 13 months old. Is this still an accurate reflection of the market?
True. Objective of the slide is to show that this is not a discussion started a few weeks ago, but is going on for quite some years now. Confusion about IBM’s story around Notes Domino and Workplace remains confusing. The slide after this one is the very recent recent Gartner View. This actually shows how recent this discussion is and some proof that it is still a valid one.
The Microsoft presentaiton cites a SearchDomino user poll that is over 13 months old. A) Is this still an accurate reflection of the market? B) A SearchDomino poll? Last I checked, polls on media websites are anything but scientific. How do we know that the 440 people who voted for that poll reflect the larger market?
Was something done with the poll to prevent multiple votes from the same IP address?
To be honoust I know little about the integrety of user polls at SearchDomino. I view them a community site often visited by Notes specialists. Again the objective here was to show a big difference in Notes cult followers (and I do mean this in the most positive way possible) and the fact that this community is much more sceptical about Websphere for their future job. I would welcome more recent information on this topic however.
The Microsoft presentation cites Accenture as a case study. I find this intriguing. I’ve been told by direct sources that Accenture has indeed migrated their mail away from Notes, but still have thousands of applications running on Notes/Domino today. Since Microsoft’s seminar was designed to talk about migrating to the MS vision of collaboration, I’m surprised they would try to assert a less-than-successful customer as a success story. Perhaps that is the Microsoft way…
The Accenture story is an actual Microsoft Case study on this topic. The one slide is a very brief overview. To form an opinion on this, read the whole story here. This could differ from what you heard from “direct sources”.
The partner’s presentation talks about the Microsoft Application Analyzer for Notes, and shows a sample analysis output. Count the number of moving parts required to migrate just a small handful of Notes apps — and then multiply by the typical Notes shop. There’s no magic here – migration of applications is still something not to be undertaken lightly…no matter how many “wizards”
are thrown at the problem.
I do agree that applicatipn lock-in can be a serious problem for Notes clients. Migration of applications is a sensitve subject and is indeed treated this way. 3rd Party tools can help in this but are only part of the solution. A large number of Notes users carry along a large amount of applications developed in the 4.x timefame. Despite the backward compatibility Notes proved I would argue that some business problems that were there some 5-8 years ago can be solved differently with todays solutions.
I’m sure Peter de Haas will again thank me for giving his presentations much broader attention than they would otherwise receive. As with previous times that I’ve highlighted messages from the competition, I do so because I believe it serves the entire market to know what exactly is — and is not — being said.
In summary, commenting selective slides from a slide deck without the context in which the message was delivered is hard. The objective of serving the market as to what exactly is and isn’t said is not met.
