I am a developer

By Nick Hortovanyi

I like reading Ed Brill's blog . Why you may ask, do I like reading a senior IBM Lotus executive's blog?

Well, he is a superb writer, participates in the online community that he is a part off and gives some key insights into the inner workings of a large multi-national software brand. In the past, he has also left comments on my blog. This showed to me that elements inside of IBM can be approached if the discussion is framed properly. However Ed, I find stands out in the IBM hierarchy and leverages social media, where others are still passive observers. Its a pity that they don't, as until they do they won't understand the innovation that is in the Lotus brand with products like Lotus Connections and Lotus Sametime. We'll come back to this point as tacit knowledge in ICT is important. It is one of the main reasons I started this blog.

I can get quite vocal on twitter about IBM, if I feel that I've been .. well, I can't write those words here. If the IBM Australia Software Channel management team are unresponsive and not transparent, I'll notch it up a tone or two. I'm now finding people inside IBM Australia, not the management team, are responding, as the comments will appear as a red flag on a report. But that is not the reason I'm writing this blog post.

Ed wrote a post "I've never been a developer" and it hit a note with a number of people from across the globe in the Lotus community, with some 125+ comments. It also had resonance with me because I've experienced, and could associate quite strongly, with a number of the points made.

I did not originally sign up to IBM, for the Lotus brand. My interest was with WebSphere & Java (I was mentoring development teams in its use) and WebSphere Portal. IBM moved the WebSphere Portal product into the Lotus brand a few years back. I had to make a choice did I want to continue to leverage the investments in WebSphere Portal certifications through the Lotus brand or resit other certifications to remain in the WebSphere brand? I was tired of certifications so I moved forward with Lotus.

If we found potential sales opportunities we got some excellent pre-sales support from the IBM Lotus guys which also included WebSphere Portal pre-sales. Unfortunately, we either arrived too late to influence a sale and/or when Lotus was mentioned the customer lost interest. Didn't matter if it was Government, SMB or larger business. I kept thinking what is happening here? These products hold significant market share according to all the research I could find. If I keep at it, the effort should result in sales. During this period I learnt a lot of course about cash flow and demand
generation. I became very adept at running marketing campaigns and the pre-sales process (this could be a blog post in its own right).

The sales did not come. The effort I was spending on IBM certifications, meetings and pre-sales was increasing dramatically but the income sources (non-IBM) were drying up as I was neglecting them as the commitment to IBM software increased. In short, none of the IBM pre-sales material helped me achieve any significant sales in the local Australian markets that I tried - Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia. Additionally there was no appreciation or understanding with my potential customers what an IBM Advanced Partner was and what specialisation in an IBM software brand (eg Lotus, WebSphere and Rational) meant for them. There were a few small wins, including being the second company in the world to sell IBM Workplace Services Express (the product was briefly introduced to supplant WebSphere Portal Express with more collaborative components. Was withdrawn from market due to poor sales).

During this whole period, I was working 60+ hours a week (sales, technical, business development) for what seemed like a very, very long period. I wasn't winning. It also had a bad affect on my health.

Was it me? Was it just the local market? The analysts statistics were saying that WebSphere Portal had continuously for a number of years held the top spot in sales. Why couldn't I compete and win against Microsoft?

I started researching this and the major two items I found were:

1. Customers believed that it was a wiser move to leverage their existing investment in Microsoft; and
   
2. Microsoft realised it was their responsibility to generate demand - that is the channel was a fulfillment mechanism.

I started deeply questioning (some said that I have a very interrogative and probing style) why I had been directed by IBM to performing the activities I did. I quickly came to the realisation that in the IBM Australia Software channel, that outside the technical persons I was engaging with, that there was very limited current understanding of the market and what the customer needs were. I could say a lot more here, but believe it may not be wise to in a public blog (if you want to know, email me directly). The short of it, is that they are mainly vertical experts, that is they understand their area of expertise that they are employed to do (and incentified to perform well) but have no tacit knowledge (which I mentioned before) regarding the actual procurement process the customers had to follow. As well as, no first hand knowledge of how to implement, upgrade or develop new components using the IBM software being sold. Now if I'm wrong with these statements, I'd welcome constructive and evidence (not emotion) based debate on the subject. If I'm wrong, I want to know why?

I've got deep technical skills, and can deploy, administer and develop components. I still cut code and consider this to be an essential skill moving forward and wrote about it in a post here. It gives me that tacit knowledge to understand this technology and how to assist clients with its implementation.

What concerns me is that in IBM, the majority of persons I come across, outside of the technical pre-sales team, have no tacit knowledge regarding implementing IBM software on a customer's project. This may be a cheeky statement to make but it would surprise me if more then 5% of IBM's management could write and deploy a Hello World servlet on a linux based WebSphere Application Server deployment by themselves.

So Ed if you read this, I'd encourage you to become a developer and to participate in actual customer projects and to encourage others in the IBM management to do the same.

If people are looking for a scenario, for a hypothetical SMB customer
(with <10 employees with max 2 internal IT persons), try implementing a records management system from a customers perspective, starting with requirements, moving through vendor selection, implementation and the first upgrade. The SMB customer is more then likely to already have an email system (either Exchange or Google Mail) and is not looking to replace it. I've had this scenario before, with a strong relationship with the customer and the IBM Lotus software group, were unable to provide me with a viable solution and competitive positioning to ensure that I won the deal!

Tags lotus developers brand smb market ibm customer   |  Comments 1

IBM vs IBM in SMB - the competition continues

By Nick Hortovanyi

Following twitter the other day, I noticed a tweet by Ed Brill -  "I've been tempted to think about whether failed institutions used Notes vs. Exchange, but all of them are likely IBM customers somewhere.". I sent Ed a tweet containing a link to a blog entry I'd written previously on IBM vs IBM in SMB.

James Governor, picked up on it here in a blog entry and highlighted the issue of X Series advertising and success of IBM software in SMB. Mark Cathcart, jumped in here, with James supporting the case of the underdog (being myself, Aussies are known for coming from behind and winning). Mark commented on the very competitive nature of the x86 market, and eluded if they didn't advertise Microsoft software, they'd be out of business before you could spell b-u-s-n-e-s-s i-n-t-e-l-l-i-g-e-n-c-e. Thinking aloud here, is that why IBM is allowing Lenovo to license their X Series technology in certain areas?

But again his statement conflicts with the view of IBM Lotus as expressed on the comment left by Ed Brill. Through Lotus Foundations, Lotus are intending to deploy an appliance into these SMBs. This appliance will ultimately also have access to Lotus Bluehouse.  On a side note, the Lotus Foundations/Bluehouse scenario was what I was looking at eventually achieving five years ago, through WebSphere Portal Express.  I'm glad to see that Lotus Foundations runs Linux (no Microsoft required - finally Lotus getting off of Microsoft Operating Systems), think it might use an X Series server (but there is no mention of it that I can point to), and the focus is on your business, not IT. Am a little concerned at the focus on Lotus Notes (but it does allow Outlook connection, not sure about the Mac) but at the end of day, until Lotus Bluehouse is effective, its only email. So for an SMB, why not use Google Apps & Google Mail?

Mark mentioned a product called iDataPlex, which seemed to be targeted at ISPs or larger organisations. Not sure how many SMB organisations, need a "Right-size your Internet-scale data center" type infrastructure? This highlights to me, the difference in thinking between those that sell and support the larger end of town and those that support SMBs.

Its two different worlds, that are equally important but completely separate in what the immediate business drivers are.

Now I did agree about Mark's point regarding the support and incentive to sell, however that's useless if the customers don't want to buy IBM Software in the first place. The x86 hardware market is so competitive that it has now got to the point that it is not worth while quoting, as the winning bid (every one gets the special bid) on a large transaction will have a margin of 1% (that also needs to cover the cost of warehousing and delivery) for the business partner.

The point I'm making here is that the support and incentives are irrelevant, if IBM has not primed the SMB market using business intelligence itself to help progress potential buyers through the product buying lifecycle. I don't want to engage with the customer with an IBM product, if it is the first time they have heard about it. The sales cycle is just too long and hence then unprofitable with considerable training expenses.

In my experience, SMB customer's perceive IBM as IBM, not the individual brands, be it hardware, software or services that make up the organisation. If there is confusion, or mixed messages, they will go to other vendors with clear and consistent messages and experiences. Maybe that is one of the reasons Apple is starting to do so well (this blog post has been written on my Mac Book Pro).

Tags linux google dynamics apple smb lotus+bluehouse lotus+foundations ibm market   |  Comments 1

IBM vs IBM in SMB

By Nick Hortovanyi

Ed Brill in a recent blog entry "Two views of Lotus in SMB", is asking readers to comment on a couple of memes regarding IBM and SMB.

From the land down under, my external observation, is that with the IBM classification of organisations that there are few organisations that do not fall into IBM's SMB classification. So the assertions mentioned are quite relevant. What we see here, is great software, that normally has quite a large learning curve. I can attest to the time spent learning some of it. Don't have time to do twin PhDs in computer science and comparative philology as am busy with usage of the actual IBM technology. This can become all encompassing with no time left for other educational learning activities.

Unlike in the US, us Aussies normally span many roles, and tend to be specialists in multiple complementary disciplines. So when we see different products for different roles, the eye balls roll back, as we would much rather have a single product with the flexibility to on-demand enable the roles to suit the tasks we are performing. This sounds simple, but is really costly to purchase all the licenses. When we seeing on-demand pricing for the WebSphere and Rational development tools? - it may help us down here, we are normally early adopters!

In the past we experimented with offering a combined package of IBM Software (WebSphere Portal Express then Workplace Services Express), Linux and IBM Hardware to overcome some of the issues mentioned in Philip Storry's blog entry - "tragedy" of IBM Lotus in SMB. Our intention was to use IBM Express software and overcome the internal learning curve issue, through implementing a repeatable on-premise solution.

This sounded really great and we got a lot of initial support from various programs and IBM Marketing. Lots of effort was put in to engaging with IBM.com and IBM client executives. What we found in practice was, if there was a decision between helping us sell our combined solution or selling some X Series hardware, knowing that the customer had budget, to make this quarter's sales targets. The X Series hardware, like a new SAN won out every time. Our focus was really on software, so another Business Partner profited from the SAN hardware sale.

Also we noticed during this period, that IBM was advertising X Series hardware on the popular IT related web sites. I think the slogan was "... and best of all, it comes pre-installed with Microsoft Small Business Server".

So in IBM vs IBM, IBM wins - this leads me to ask when will something be done by IBM to give a fairer playing field for its own software against Microsoft on its own X Series hardware? This may be controversial, but I can see as the software percentage of total revenue for IBM rises, that it must be looking to sell off the X Series division to give its own software more of a chance!

So to answers Ed's question "Do you agree or disagree with Charles and Philip?" I would say IBM needs to enable its SMB software to be provisioned in a SaaS off-premise model. To overcome the issue of the quarterly incentified client executives and direct sales representatives, this should be done by certified Business Partners that have the interest of the clients and the running of the software service as prime importance!

Tags smb ibm lotus saas   |  Comments 3