IBM should Dump Eclipse and Flock to the Web
Katherine Heires writes about interesting stuff. You can find her list of articles here: http://www.mediakat.com/ The very web site is a kind of hybrid of Web 2.0 and traditional professional freelance reporting.
Her two most recent reports are very interesting. The first is about GlobeOp, which is a full service mid and back office out-sourcing solution for fund managers, including hedge funds. GlobeOp is service plus customized versions of vendor software run as SaaS. Last year, I had a chance to sit down with one of the founders, and to this day, I can’t tell you how impressed I was with their business model. It will be interesting to watch other companies follow suit in other areas. GlobeOp is a vertical play. What about a horizontal play like sourcing the whole “Knowledge Management” and IT department?
IBM using Eclipse for their next generation clients
Kartherine’s most recent article is about IBM’s new version of their IM system, Sametime. The new system is based on top of the Eclipse Rich Client Platform. I use Eclipse to develop code. Check out RadRails. Eclipse is a “Open Client”, meaning that it is both open source and has a plug-in architecture. Jabber offered the open plug-ins years ago. And if you are looking for a truly flexible client, that accepts plug-ins, and is capable of dealing with the largest number of content and application providers, there is always Mozilla.
The Future is on the Web
My take is that if IBM really wanted to make an impressive open client platform, they would buy Flock. Flock is a browser, built on top of Mozilla.
And, please be sure to note that I have no idea if the brilliant Flock team are even willing to sell the company at the moment. It is a great platform, and clearly has a bright future ahead of it.
That being said, if IBM used something like Flock as their Hanover Client, IBM would truly be setting a level open playing field. They could add features to the browser that would integrate security with the Domino platform, and even allow extra windows with Java applications. And, they could do all this while allowing other vendors both inside and outside the firewall to cleanly integrate into the IBM client experience without having to change a single thing. End users would be able to switch seamlessly between legacy Notes client applications and open Internet SaaS applications like Joyent, iUpload and Teqlo.
But, that would threaten IBM’s cherished Lotus Notes lock-in. The dreaded Lotus Notes Asbestos effect.
Google Has No Lock-In
This line of thinking brought me to a realization. Google doesn’t have any lock-in. At least, they do not have any lock-in, other than force of habit. Yahoo! used to have that force of habit lock-in. It isn’t that strong. People switched to Google as their search engine of choice pretty quickly.
Instead of trying to deceive its users into a lock-in, Google competes for your business ever single day. If all those Splogs out there suddenly started showing up at the top of Google results, you would switch pretty quickly.
To me, that is an honest and open approach to business. And it is very different from the “We can’t ever move off of Lotus Notes because we wrote 100,000 lines of code and our sunk costs are too big” way of thinking that IBM is following.
Where are the elephant hunters?
In a great article from October 8, Vinnie Mirchandani asks Where are the elephant hunters?
Vinnie talks about hearing a person in Oracle’s Analyst Relations department brag that “she punishes industry analysts who don’t toe the line.” Vinnie follows up with “I guess punishment means lack of access to executives and lowered fees.”
Vinnie finishes up by saying
What’s my point? Our industry has been lobbied, bullied, pretexted by the bigger vendors. If you think the products and services of these vendors are innovative, by all means support them. If you think the top 10 global tech/telco vendors deserve to make $ 500 billion a year while Office 2.0, VoIP, open source and other start up vendors scratch for $ 10,000 budgets, keep your peace.
If not, speak up with your blogs, your budgets, letters to Congress - because few industry gurus and watchers appear to be doing that for you.
Leading an Elephant to Greener Pastures
My comments above are the most constructive way I can think of to not hunt the elephant that is IBM’s Lotus Notes / Domino, but instead to try and lead it to greener pastures.
Why should IBM reconsider using Eclipse for Hanover and instead go with a Flock strategy? Because with Eclipse, IBM is locked into their own sandbox, while every single other Enterprise Web 2.0 start-up, big players like SalesForce.com and huge players like Microsoft and Google are all competing and co-operating to provide interoperable next generation collaboration solutions on the web.
If you want something that is web based, you have 10,000 vendors to choose from. If you want something on Lotus Notes, well, you have a far smaller pool of vendors.
There are over 1 Billion people who are “online” today. IBM claims to have 120 million Lotus Notes seats. So, IBM only has 12% of the market. If you are a new vendor, which platform would you choose?
Inevitably, for example, some Domino fan, is going to say “but we can do the Web to”. They are right. So why is IBM forcing their developers to build everything for two clients: Eclipse first, and a browser second?
The Threat to that Domino Fan Base
JouniPeikko is a fan of Lotus Notes. He thinks I’m nuts. I think his pictures of MoominWorld rock. MoominWorld was recently elected as Finland’s domestic travel destination of the year.
After taking exception to one of my earlier posts about Notes, he makes a really interesting point:
Like or dislike Notes, it has to be admitted that IBM has found an best marketing strategy ever on Notes. They can forget marketing for years. Passionate Notes “doers” keep the sales figures stable.
The doers are the Domino developers. Most Domino developers have a wide range of skills, and they can use those skills on a wide range of platforms. That being said, right now, the job market does not look great for people with only Domino skills. Last Sunday, I decided to take a look on Dice.com, and see how many jobs there were out there for Lotus Notes admins and Domino developers. Here’s what I got:
Some people are going to say that Lotus Notes /Domino does Java, so the job listings are skewed. But, if you were going to hire someone to do Java development on Domino, wouldn’t you also include the word “Domino” in your job ad? One of the things I found interesting is that there were more jobs that mentioned the word “Ruby” than mentioned the word “Domino”.
IBM is Listening
On Friday of last week, I received a call from IBM, wanting to talk to me about this blog and some of my recent posts. I am impressed that they reached out to me, although I am still not sure how they got my phone number. I am also looking forward to being able to speak with the internal team directly.
IBM is doing some very cool stuff
IBM is certainly doing some very interesting Web 2.0 things. I wrote about two of them back in July: The Next Xerox PARC … Maybe. The things that impressed me included Dogear and the Activity Project.
Maybe the cool Web 2.0 kids at IBM can have a word with the Lotus Notes / Domino / Eclipse folks. Tell them about Flock.
Why on earth choose Flock over adopting Firefox/Mozilla itself? Flock offers no additional integration tools at all that Firefox does not have in some form, and may even be a higher liability code base due to what may have been added in, or stripped out.
Why buy the cow when you can …..
Hi Jevon,
That’s a good point. I wonder how much it would cost IBM to buy the Firefox team?
- Rod
My point was: don’t buy anybody.
The Firefox/Mozilla codebase seems to be a responsible and thoughtful one. Safe to say, IBM probably has some crack Firefox developers already in it’s ranks.
Take the 35million$ or whatever Shasta Ventures would demand for an exit, and use that to build up your team internally.
Or just poach the Flock developers, and avoid getting the fat up top.
I don’t intend to sound like I am just spouting off a silly idea (do I?), but if IBM decided to take leadership with Firefox it would not be a horrible process for them.
IBM does a deal with motorola, and we get Firefox on our new Razrs, etc so that developers building XUL apps can quickly go mobile with them (we are doing this now, but it’s a little tougher).
As for Lotus, I’m not sure exactly what IBM should do. The more open they can be, and the faster, the greater chance they have of vendors like us (firestoker) embracing them as much as possible. That gives them ongoing staying power, even if they do have to think about lowering their up front licensing model a bit, they could make that up by participating in, and owning, they HUGE ecosystem of installed seats.
flock is not a platform. mozilla is a platform but requires skills (non-Java) that many people simply don’t have (where is XUL on that dice.com chart?)
Eclipse solves both of these problems.
Using Eclipse doesn’t “lock” you into anything anymore than using Mozilla or Firefox. Choosing an OSS Platform is the important thing that should be taken from all this. (even tho eclipse came from ibm)
IBM is doing some cool stuff. I saw a demo of “Koala” at Mashup Camp a few months back, which is for collaborative development of executable processes. I’ve been writing and speaking about Web 2.0 and BPM lately, and I think that collaboration on process design is one of the areas that will be impacted.
Between Dogear and Koala, I’m starting to change my view of IBM as a stodgy old company that doesn’t innovate any more. :)
“So why is IBM forcing their developers to build everything for two clients: Eclipse first, and a browser second?”
Who’s being forced? You pick the target platform that addresses your needs as a developer. The rich client does a ton of stuff that a browser can’t pull off.
This ain’t rocket surgery, Rod.
Why not buy Firefox? A number of us have been experiencing real performance problems. To your point about Notes, I met with one of IBM’s house publishers this week. The word is that demand for Notes is DEFINITELY on the slide as referenced by the amount of Notes related titles they’re being asked to produce. They are a long time supplier to IBM and they’ve lost none of the portfolio so it’s safe to assume they know what they’re talking about.
Rod,
I wonder how you feel qualified to preach strategy to IBM ?What success have you had in designing infrastructure or platforms that are used by millions of users?
I don’t like to come down too hard on anyone. But you don’t seem to even have a basic understanding of the Eclipse platform. How does your web browser based application work when you are disconnected from the corporate intranet?
You wrote:
“could add features to the browser that would integrate security with the Domino platform, and even allow extra windows with Java applications.”
It seems from these comments that you have limited or no knowledge of Lotus Notes, web browsers or Java.
You then go on to say “Google doesn’t have any lock-in”. This can only be true in the sense that a product like Coca Cola doesn’t have any lock in. Yep, they spend all those millions without gaining one ounce of lock-in. Do you really think that Google is rolling out services like Gmail, Blogger and Docs and Spreadsheets without any lock-in? If so then can I suggest that you take a Marketing 101 course.
I don’t have time to pick every line in your article apart so I’ll just do one more.
You wrote:
“There are over 1 Billion people who are “online” today. IBM claims to have 120 million Lotus Notes seats. So, IBM only has 12% of the market. If you are a new vendor, which platform would you choose? ”
There may be 1 billion people online but they are not all using the same applications or going to the same web sites. Are you familiar with the concept of comparing apples to apples? Comparing Lotus Notes to the internet again shows a lack of understanding of each platform. Why don’t you compare sales of iPods to Lotus Notes, or iPods to the internet. They are both equally as pointless.
Rod, I’ve come to the conclusion that you don’t really believe what you’re writing but you’re just trying to wind us up. I hope so for your sake.
IBM’s use of Eclipse means that they get to keep their core codebase and they get to sell it on multiple operating systems with minimal additional effort. That’s good because it doesn’t lock in its customers to a particular operating system.
Having Sametime and the next version of Notes in Eclipse will likely allow faster development of plugins by IBM and other third parties to further advance those products. That must be good for IBM’s customers too.
Giving customers the ability to write applications for the Notes client, web browsers or both is good too. Why force your customers down a particular route? Give them the choice. You don’t see Microsoft only supporting .NET applications via a browser. There is a massive market inside the firewall for applications that don’t require a web browser.
And why would IBM want to write a completely new client based on a browser? Why? You’ve got me. Remember that every time IBM release a new version of Lotus Notes it is compatible with the previous versions. Applications still run. If you enhanced the “browser” to become a Notes client then you have a new Notes client plus your old clients to support. Customers would still have to develop applications for web browsers and your new client.
As for job applications, please remember that you could upgrade from Domino 6 to 7 in less than an hour. Even I can do it. Try upgrading Exchange. Pick any version. It takes longer. You need more staff. Finding staff for a new technology is going to be harder because there are less people around with the skills so you advertise longer and pay more. Jobs in Lotus Notes and Domino (which incidently could be linked together) are more scarce than others you mentioned but I’ve never been out of work.
I don’t think IBM will be taking your new strategy on board. I think I’d prefer them to take their chances with an elephant gun than to be led down your particular garden path.
But you’re probably just having a laugh anyway, aren’t you? Are you getting more traffic? Yeah I thought so.
Thank you everyone for the comments
Jevon - Build a team from within IBM or buy the Firefox or Flock team. You are right that people could make good arguments for either strategy. Thanks for your comment and for explaining your take on what motivates vendors. I’m looking forward to seeing what you guys are building at firestoker.
Lukin - Flock is an extension of Mozilla that helps people use web based applications to colloborate. If you can write a Java application, you should be able to write JSP or J2EE powered web pages. Learn a little AJAX and your applications could potentially get up to the level of a Zoho, Writely, or Joyent. The point is that the developers on an IBM open web client platform would only have to write web based applications instead of some customized extension on top of Eclipse. There are 100X more people writing web based applications thank there are people writing extensions to Eclipse.
Sandy - thank you very much to the link to your podcast. Very cool. I recommend it highly to everyone: Sandy Kemsley: Web 2.0 and Business Process Management. Do you have a link to information about Koala?
Nathan - If I may, I would like to ask you about your assertion that there are things that the rich client can do that can’t be done on the browser. While I agree that there are certain things like photo editing and video games that are best done in a rich client, those things are not really the main purpose of a rich client like Eclipse. So, what things can be done in Eclipse that could not be done using Web 2.0 techniques?
Ethan - Thank you for the comment. You are right that I do not yet have some massive success story behind me to back up my comments. However, credentials do not win arguments. And, all the credentials in the world do not necessarily change end user behavior. People didn’t start using Google based on the credentials of the founders. Instead, they looked directly at the product.
Let me explain the IBM Mozilla Rich Client Idea another way. One tab would could display rich local Java applications, just like Eclipse has. The other tabs could be regular web pages.
The most interesting thing for me about your comment was your assertion that Comparing Lotus Notes to the internet again shows a lack of understanding of each platform.
Today, with blogs, wikis, and web based mash-up engines, you can do everything that you could ever do on Lotus Notes. There is more secure commerce done on the web than there is on Lotus Notes. There are more people collaborating on the Web than there is on Lotus Notes. And the new class of work-flow engines displayed at the Office 2.0 conference proved to me that even that differentiating factor has now gone away.
The only thing left, is your question about “what do you do when you are not plugged in“? That’s the idea behind the IBM Mozilla Rich Client suggestion. IBM can create extensions to Mozilla that stores certain web pages locally, that runs certain work flows locally.
Rob - I think that 2 or 3 years ago, you would have been right when you said There is a massive market inside the firewall for applications that don’t require a web browser.
My point in writing this blog, and in writing white papers like The next phase in productivity tools: Web Office, is to tell people that Web 2.0 approaches to building applications is quickly killing that market for desk-top applications.
Look around at all the cool Web 2.0 companies that are out there, and then try and find one single desk-top client company that has made it big in the last couple of years. The only one I can think of is Skype. Please do let me know if you can think of more.
You are correct that my traffic has gone up a bit. There was a spike right after my first post about Notes, but it has settled down to an increase of about 15%. However, right now, there aren’t even Google Ad Words on my site. All this is doing is sending more comments my way. But that is very cool, and one of the reasons why I right the blog. Good open discussion is the best way for anyone to learn… especially me :)