No more "the boss loves Microsoft.." sessions at Lotusphere. Is Ed Brill throwing in the towel ?

Not really (I hope). But Ed did share his thoughts on competetion and motivated why he will not do another The Boss Loves Microsoft: Where does that leave Lotus?” session at Lotusphere this year.

… The energy is back in so many ways, and there’s so much new and positive to talk about, that Ben is right — I need to let up on defense a bit and remember that things are going really well on almost every front at the moment. …

… And that’s why for Lotusphere 2007, I am taking a pass on doing a “The Boss Loves Microsoft: Where does that leave Lotus?” session, or having anything like it on the conference agenda.  Even with an expanded number of conference sessions, why allocate one to talking about the competition?  We have other ways to do that, both at Lotusphere and elsewhere.  For me personally, I’ve done this session (or one like it) at Lotusphere for six years now.  It’s time to go out on top (just from Lotusphere — I’m not going anywhere!). …

I am sorry to hear that because things are (just beginning to get) interesting. The IBM / Lotus vs Microsoft compete discussion has evolved bigtime over the last 6 years and gone way beyond Lotus Notes/Domino vs Microsoft Exchange in the last few years. And although there is always “”room for improvement” I think that even Ed has to admit the competition has changed and has become way more challenging over the 6 years in which he delivered his presentation.

A brief summary of some of the points I have blogged about this year shows why bosses love Microsoft or at least truely consider it as (one of) the alternatives in almost every platform decision they make :

In summary from where I am standing there is not much / no change in perception on the “boss level” in many organisations. The sessions stop, the love for Microsoft has increased.

I do agree with Ed that also IBM has very good things to show after a number of years in which it struggled with its Workplace message to the market. But the competition is not sitting still … When playing offense watch out for the “SharePoint train” 🙂