New Lotus chief preparing to lead a Notes/Domino rebirth
The first order of business will be to reveal that new versions of Notes/Domino will extend past Version 8, which could ship by the end of 2006.
Rhodin, a 21-year IBM veteran, says his skills as an innovator are his core strength, but it might be his ability as an orator that sets the tone for his leadership and wins the hearts of users looking to find their way in IBM’s shifting collaboration software strategy.
Rhodin’s public unveiling as leader is set for late January, when he will deliver a keynote address to thousands of Lotus faithful at the annual Lotusphere user conference. Among other things, he is armed with two numbers that he hopes will send the message that IBM has a strong hold on Notes/Domino.
Those numbers are 9 and 10, as in planned versions of Notes/Domino that will be released after Version 8, which IBM/Lotus began to detail in the fall with its new Hannover client.
Rhodin plans the first public demonstration of Hannover and the introduction of Domino 8, Hannover’s back-end companion, at Lotusphere.
“Hopefully the attendees walk away saying ‘we got it,’ ” he says.
“Got it” in terms of Notes/Domino as the focal point for collaboration and the Java-based Workplace environment as a complementary technology that helps deliver dynamically provisioned, server managed corporate desktops tailored to a worker’s role in a company.
Clearing the air
Users didn’t “get it” three years ago, and experts say neither did IBM, when then-General Manager Al Zollar introduced the Workplace strategy, a set of collaboration components running on WebSphere. It was a bomb that users believed had just blown Notes off the road map. Those same users were a bit less skeptical last year, when then-General Manager Ambuj Goyal said there would be no forced migrations.
Now Rhodin is tasked with shoring up the message that Notes/Domino is the core collaboration tool delivered within the Workplace framework, whose server-based architecture promises to reduce the cost of desktop maintenance and ease software upgrades.
“A lot of this is clarifying the message,” says Rhodin, who has shunned the corner office at Lotus’ Cambridge headquarters so he can stay in his office in Westford, Mass., close to the 800 software developers who work there.
If his message takes root, the next steps won’t be any easier, according to experts.
“There are two major challenges that are fundamental,” says Peter O’Kelly, an analyst with Burton Group. “Execution on Hannover. If they blow it, a lot of users will say that’s it. The second thing they have to do is move potential users from ‘we got it’ to ‘we need it.’ “
That is a place Lotus has not been in for a few years.
“What they need is more momentum in the partner and IT community. I am starting to see that come back,” says David Via, vice president of Wolcott Systems Group, a Lotus partner. Via recently participated in a road show for Notes 7, which was released in September. “People said to me they haven’t done anything with Notes for five years but that they are now coming back.” He says the trick is to again grow the user base, which stands at 120 million, just slightly more than a 1% increase over last year.
As evidence of user appeal, Lotus has posted double-digit revenue gains over the past three quarters, with most of the revenue coming from new licenses, converting Microsoft Exchange customers and Notes/Domino on Linux, Rhodin says.
That revenue, however, is not being pumped up by Workplace, where early adopters are showing interest but not the stellar results that Rhodin needs to merge Notes/Domino and Workplace.
“At this moment, I have to be honest, we are not satisfied with Workplace being ready as a full enterprise solution doing what we need it to do, but I am confident looking at the road map that we will be able to merge [from Notes to Workplace] and that it will all work for us,” says John Rood, vice president of IT for San Francisco State University.
The school, which uses Notes 7, was put forth by IBM last year as a high-profile Workplace convert. The school plans to migrate to Workplace in the spring but will continue to run Notes in parallel until it feels comfortable with a change for its 50,000 users. Rood says features such as Domino Web Access in Notes/Domino 7 show that Notes is still innovative and vibrant.
Other users, such as Dale Sinstead, director of IS for Pioneer Petroleum in Ontario, Canada, say the rough spots in Workplace are being worked out and his enthusiasm is climbing.
“Notes and Domino is not going away, which is good because we have a huge investment in that,” says Sinstead, who also has deployed to 150 users the Workplace Managed Client, a server-managed collaboration environment that works online and offline.
While the managed client has yet to match the rich feature set of Notes, it lets him extend collaboration tools to retailers, who don’t have IT departments, desktop support or broadband connections.
The managed client is one of the top entries on Rhodin’s to-do list for 2006, which includes evolving Workplace Services Express, a server-based bundle of basic collaboration tools.
He also plans to incorporate electronic forms-based business process-management software, which was part of IBM’s acquisition of PureEdge, and he plans to push Notes/Domino in developing markets, such as Russia, China and India.
Other efforts, he says, include fighting off Microsoft, which is rallying its collaboration strategy around Office, SharePoint, Live Communications Server and Exchange. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer added fuel in July when he said Lotus’ customer base was just waiting for Microsoft to move them off Notes.
“When their CEO declares the death of my product, that is throwing down the gauntlet,” Rhodin says. Part of the attack includes a long-awaited update to the IBM/Lotus Messaging and Conferencing Server, a real-time communications platform whose evolution has been stalled as Microsoft has extended into technologies such as VoIP.
Rhodin doesn’t plan to flinch, but says he won’t focus on Microsoft at the expense of new developments such as RSS, blogs and wikis that will bring emerging collaboration technologies to his own platform.
