Какво бихте направили, ако сте ръководител на Lotus
Goran Angelov
В последните няколко дни Volker Weber в свой известен блог vowe dot net инициар няколко доста интересни дискусии на темите - Какво е най-голямото предимство на Лотус, Каква е най-голямата му слабост и последната - Какво бихте сторили, ако сте ръководител на Лотус.
Дискусиите си заслужават да бъдат проследени. Десетки Лотус специалисти с многогодишен стаж в индустрията са оставили свойте мисли в коментарите към блога. Към последната тема е най-значим коментара на Алан Леповски, човек, който направи през последните години мого за IBM/Lotus, а накоро премина в друга компания. Докато четях коментара му изпитах много странно усещане - този човек е наясно с всички болни въпроси на маркетинга и стратегията на Lotus, а като човек доскоро на доста вискоа позиция в IBM/Lotus това би следвало да означава, че мениджмънта на компанията е 100% наясно със ситуацията. Тогава защо не се действа веднага?
Препечатвам тук целия коментар на Алан! Ще ми бъде интересно какво мислите вие!
While this is a fun exercise, no one will be able to stick
to the rules of "remember, you have to pay for it with your revenue. You
have to keep your management, your customers and your employees happy. And you
cannot change how other parts of the Software Group or your competitors conduct
their business.". BTW I'd also add, keep your partners happy.
So, with reality of those restrictions removed, here is my
list.
DRAMATICALLY simplify the product portfolio down to only 3
offerings: Notes/Domino, Sametime, and Connections.
Gone as standalone products would be Quickr, Doc, Workflow,
Portal, Forms, Portal, Mash-ups, Traveler, Symphony, and anything else I've
left off. Not gone as features, just gone as stand alone purchasable units
which require marketing, confuse customers and press, etc. Take their code, and
weave it appropriately into the 3 products above.
For example, Quickr does two things, file/attachment sharing
and team sharing sites. The main confusion over Quickr is Domino or J2EE? Fine,
remove any talk about that, by taking the Domino Quickr code and moving it
into... Domino. Take the J2EE Quickr code, and make it part of Connections.
Don't talk about parity across the platforms, talk about how Domino now has
file sharing and team spaces, and how Connections now has file sharing and team
spaces. That is not overlapping product functionality, as both products need
those features.
Forms is an awesome product, which was shot in the foot from
the start by not just taking it's technology and improving the form
capabilities of Notes and Domino applications, thus putting pixel perfect layouts,
digital signatures, and other features in the hands of Lotus's largest customer
base. Instead, IBM tried to make it into it's own product, and it did not gain
the popularity that I think it should.
Portal as a standalone offering, gone. Make it part of
Connections. If companies want to run intranets or internets, great... get
Connections out there!
Mash-ups, gone. Turn it into a part of Connections, and turn
it into the Notes welcome page. How cool would that be?
Traveler? It is a Domino server task, why does it get such
special treatment? There is no product for "replication",
"updall", or "fix-up". So stop talking about it standalone,
and just talk about the great new mobile features of Domino.
Symphony, this one is harder for me to say it should go
away, but I will. Remove it as standalone. I don't think enough
non-existing-Lotus customers are going to really use this standalone vs. other
office alternative. However, keep it inside of Notes. Turn the document
component into the editor for Notes, and allow Notes users to create
presentations and spreadsheets, integrated, and seamlessly across their
collaboration applications.
Once you simplify the portfolio, make it a thousand times
easier to buy. Remove all the various versions of the products. No more
collaboration, messaging, entry, advanced, utility, premium, express, or
whatever else.
Just sell Notes/Domino, Sametime, and Connections, and
charge per user.
Notes/Domino = x currency /user
Sametime = y currency /user
Connections = z currency /user.
Notes/Domino + Sametime = .85(x +y) /user
Notes/Domino + Connections = .85(x+z)/user
Sametime + Connections = .85(y+z)/user
All three = .75(x+y+z)/user.
Fix the issues Partners have been complaining about for
years, such as the PartnerWorld downloads, and the limitations on membership
levels. I've recently bumped into this myself, as we (Socialtext) are not
allowed to put the IBM logo on our web site, because our level in PartnerWorld
is not high enough. Gees, thanks for making us feel like a partner!
Advertising. It is time to try a new agency. I'm not going
to rant about marketing overall, but from the advertising standpoint, the
existing ads don't convey a message that compels me to buy, or even to be
interested enough to find out more.
So there you have it, my short list of what I'd do if I ran
Lotus. (I have a longer one!) But let me be clear, I don't think any of these
things can be done under the restrictions listed above. Don't forget, my old
job was to do exactly this, make recommendations on Lotus strategy, so these
are all things I've said before internally dozens of times. The people at Lotus
are much smarter, and more in touch with what could be done right, than I think
you (the community) give them credit for. None of your ideas, nor mine, are things
the execs have not heard already.
It is easy to know what to do, it is much harder to execute.
