Lotus Is Finally A Key Part Of IBM
February 6 2011 10:00:00 AM
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Last week I had the pleasure of attending Lotusphere in Orlando. I've been to almost all of them, and this was my second time attending as a non-IBM employee. It's a challenging week both physically and emotionally. There is a lot of information to learn and a lot of people to see, with a few occasions to have fun thrown in. I was very excited to be there again this year, but from the moment the show opened something felt different. It took me a while to process it, but I now know what it is...
In June 1995, IBM hostilely acquired Lotus Development Corporation.
In January 2011, IBM publically embraced Lotus as a key component of the IBM Software Group.
For those not deeply entrenched in Lotus/IBM-lore that may not make much sense to you, so let me tell you a little story based on my experiences.
In 1993 I was working at IBM Canada with this unknown program call Lotus Notes (2.1a I believe) to help the Sales team track information about their customers. A year later, IBM acquired Lotus, so this little program I was working with was suddenly an internally owned tool. As one of the few people in the company with Lotus Notes experience, I was moved to a team that was responsible for IBM's internal deployment. This meant I got to travel down to Lotus headquarters in Boston and to the extremely cool Iris offices in Westford. Guess what? No one at Lotus or Iris wanted to have anything to do with us IBMers. Interactions were cold and sometimes even hostile. Fast forward a few years to a time when IBM is using Notes internally for mail, calendar and applications all across the company. At this point I've changed roles and am actually working for Lotus. Surprise, surprise. From inside Lotus it felt like no one in the IBM Software Group wanted to talk to us. IBM Executives were shuffled in and out of Lotus tasked with various business and a technology missions. I'm not going to get into the successes and failures of those years, but I think it is safe to say everyone involved both internally and externally still sports a few battle scars. The IBM-ification never really seemed to work. That left Lotus in a sort of limbo. How did it fit in? What was going to happen to the tools in it's portfolio?
In Orlando the answer was quite clear...
Over the last few years "social software" has become one of the darling markets of the software industry. In order to participate, IBM has had to move Lotus from the sidelines to the headlines. For the first time at Lotusphere executives from other divisions of IBM were in attendance. Leaders from Rational, Tivoli, Cognos and even IBM's internal Marketing and Communication teams shared the stage with their Lotus counterparts. Previous Lotus execs Mike Rhodin and Bob Picciano were there, and not just to sing karaoke. Lotusphere 2011 made it very clear that IBM needs Lotus and Lotus needs IBM.
Years ago I talked about how I wished the brand names would go away completely. Finally the lines are blurring between the brands and technologies from each group are finally being combined. All the divisions of IBM are involved as social features are mixed with analytical tools, cloud storage, compliance and other management tools. So how do you name that? Die-hards in the "yellow bubble" can protest all they want, but I think the best thing for everyone would be to just call it all IBM software. That did not happen this year, but I think it is something everyone should expect at some point.
This Lotusphere also reminded of how "big" IBM is. I don't mean just in number of employees. It's hard to explain, but everywhere I looked things felt complex. Support for lots of devices. Support for lots of industries. This lab, that lab. This team, that team. Cloud this, hybrid that. There are a lot of moving parts. That is not necessarily a bad thing. It's IBM were talking about after all, and some customers require that. But it made me appreciate how different it is working at Socialtext. We're not trying to work with the world's largest companies, instead we're providing solutions for the tens of thousands of mid-size businesses out there. While it is great that IBM is now telling customers to "Get Social", we've been doing it for years. We even integrate with Lotus in several ways, and you'll be hearing more about that soon.
Anyway, before the comments start, I want to point out that I did not mention specific products or technology platforms on purpose. I don't care if something is based on Domino or WebSphere. I don't care if it is stored in NSF or DB2. I don't care if applications are based on OpenSocial or Xpages. I don't have the technical knowledge or the energy to get involved in those religious wars. I'm just reporting how I see things as an outsider, with no previous bias and my eyes open towards the future.
Being at Lotusphere 2011 was wonderful. It was great to see everyone and I look forward to next year.
In June 1995, IBM hostilely acquired Lotus Development Corporation.
In January 2011, IBM publically embraced Lotus as a key component of the IBM Software Group.
For those not deeply entrenched in Lotus/IBM-lore that may not make much sense to you, so let me tell you a little story based on my experiences.
In 1993 I was working at IBM Canada with this unknown program call Lotus Notes (2.1a I believe) to help the Sales team track information about their customers. A year later, IBM acquired Lotus, so this little program I was working with was suddenly an internally owned tool. As one of the few people in the company with Lotus Notes experience, I was moved to a team that was responsible for IBM's internal deployment. This meant I got to travel down to Lotus headquarters in Boston and to the extremely cool Iris offices in Westford. Guess what? No one at Lotus or Iris wanted to have anything to do with us IBMers. Interactions were cold and sometimes even hostile. Fast forward a few years to a time when IBM is using Notes internally for mail, calendar and applications all across the company. At this point I've changed roles and am actually working for Lotus. Surprise, surprise. From inside Lotus it felt like no one in the IBM Software Group wanted to talk to us. IBM Executives were shuffled in and out of Lotus tasked with various business and a technology missions. I'm not going to get into the successes and failures of those years, but I think it is safe to say everyone involved both internally and externally still sports a few battle scars. The IBM-ification never really seemed to work. That left Lotus in a sort of limbo. How did it fit in? What was going to happen to the tools in it's portfolio?
In Orlando the answer was quite clear...
Over the last few years "social software" has become one of the darling markets of the software industry. In order to participate, IBM has had to move Lotus from the sidelines to the headlines. For the first time at Lotusphere executives from other divisions of IBM were in attendance. Leaders from Rational, Tivoli, Cognos and even IBM's internal Marketing and Communication teams shared the stage with their Lotus counterparts. Previous Lotus execs Mike Rhodin and Bob Picciano were there, and not just to sing karaoke. Lotusphere 2011 made it very clear that IBM needs Lotus and Lotus needs IBM.
Years ago I talked about how I wished the brand names would go away completely. Finally the lines are blurring between the brands and technologies from each group are finally being combined. All the divisions of IBM are involved as social features are mixed with analytical tools, cloud storage, compliance and other management tools. So how do you name that? Die-hards in the "yellow bubble" can protest all they want, but I think the best thing for everyone would be to just call it all IBM software. That did not happen this year, but I think it is something everyone should expect at some point.
This Lotusphere also reminded of how "big" IBM is. I don't mean just in number of employees. It's hard to explain, but everywhere I looked things felt complex. Support for lots of devices. Support for lots of industries. This lab, that lab. This team, that team. Cloud this, hybrid that. There are a lot of moving parts. That is not necessarily a bad thing. It's IBM were talking about after all, and some customers require that. But it made me appreciate how different it is working at Socialtext. We're not trying to work with the world's largest companies, instead we're providing solutions for the tens of thousands of mid-size businesses out there. While it is great that IBM is now telling customers to "Get Social", we've been doing it for years. We even integrate with Lotus in several ways, and you'll be hearing more about that soon.
Anyway, before the comments start, I want to point out that I did not mention specific products or technology platforms on purpose. I don't care if something is based on Domino or WebSphere. I don't care if it is stored in NSF or DB2. I don't care if applications are based on OpenSocial or Xpages. I don't have the technical knowledge or the energy to get involved in those religious wars. I'm just reporting how I see things as an outsider, with no previous bias and my eyes open towards the future.
Being at Lotusphere 2011 was wonderful. It was great to see everyone and I look forward to next year.
OMG! You wrote my blog post that is queued for tomorrow!
LOL. We are the same person.
Well said, Alan.
Well said indeed. I've been trying to come up with a single "unified field theory" theme for #LS11 to blog about and this pretty much the only general one I can find.
Nice to see this from your point of view.
I wrote the following on my blog a couple of days ago:
"It might be a good thing to get rid of the 'Lotus is old' adagio, but, having used the yellow brand for over almost 20 years now, it saddens me to see it go".
It's an emotional thing. But I agree it is common sense business wise.
Alan, thank you for posting this. I had this same conversation with many customers and business partners all week who wondered what it all meant for Lotus. You are absolutely right it is not about Lotus as a brand, it is about these amazing capabilities and social software now being a core component of the IBM Software portfolio and Social Business as the newest cross-company focus in the IBM Smarter Planet Agenda. It is people transforming the world and social software the technology that is enabling it. Lotus is now center stage in the evolution of IBM.
Really really odd - my post with a similar theme is lined up for tomorrow. Well written, Alan.
Everyone above, thank you for your comments. I apprecaite you taking your time to post.
Stuart, you're like the 5th person to tell me that. Glad I posted today I guess! I'll probably retweet about it tomorrow as some people may not be looking at their streams today.
Kick ass blog post Alan. I am writing #ls11 thoughts as we speak up in the air and this will alter mine - so I don't repeat what you said.
Excellent post Alan.
I'm not sure the "I don't care if something is based on Domino or WebSphere" plays well outside of the corporate market. The old Lotus, despite its Fortune-100 start, did really well selling into real SMB (100 people or less), and still has more footprint there than most people give it credit for. But the more IBM focuses on Websphere-based server platforms, the more the cost of ownership goes up, and the harder it will be to compete in that market against MS and more importantly open-source.
So there will be a lot of bleating from the yellow-bubblers (holds up hand and admits guilt), as there are a lot of one- to five-man bands who could end up as victims of friendly fire in this process - we've seen some of them expressing their frustration in the blogsphere recently - but from an IBM point of view the brand centralisation is definitely the right way to be going and I can't do anything but agree with it.
@Alan, you coaxed me out of hiding early with my own post:
{ Link }
@10 Julian, I am not sure how the IBM brand works against going into SMB vs. Lotus? SMB is most likely place to encounter "you mean Lotus 1-2-3?" The products and the technologies don't change just because the brand lead and the message do. I still build Lotus Notes and Domino as products in my team, and Lotus Symphony too.
Well Lotus has always been a bit different than the rest of IBM. For you this is probably a disadvantage but for me it often was what made the product more accessible and attractive. I understand the direction IBM is now going and it might be the right thing to do. In my small world Lotus often is the only IBM product being used. IBM is a strong brand but it more copes with big corporations solving big problems.
For you as a competitor this is a good move too. You care about mid-size businesses, IBM about the world's largest companies.
And it is a more honest approach because IBM is concentrating on the areas where they are strong and powerful. Again it is a move that makes a lot of sense for IBM. Having just watched the technical Lotusphere keynote just proved how different IBM#s world is from mine (but Andrew McAfee was great).
Of course this does not mean that I will stop using IBM software tomorrow. I choose the tools that best solve my problems (at least I hope that I do so).
@11 - I think the answer to your question is in the first full paragraph of my post. I'm 100% with you (notwithstanding nostalgia) about the "rebranding" (okay, it's not rebranding, yet, but it kind of is, or will be, sort of thing, possibly).
No, it's the broader IBMisation, which focuses all the attention on the guys with budgets to buy and run lots of hefty hardware, which is the source of pain for the small partners and small customers. The 'rebranding' is certainly not going to slow that down. Also, don't forget that IBM software has very low brand recognition at the low end of the market. Hardware, yes, but ask a small business owner when was the last time he saw any IBM software ...
Thanks John.
Ed, stop copying me! ;-)
Julian, for smaller customers, go with Socialtext!
Henning, "how different IBM's world is from mine" is something that most people can relate to. IBM is fantastic for their target audience, the largest most complex companies in the world.
@14 :-)