off the Hook - 911s Chief Lotu...

Several years ago I convinced myself that one of the reasons for Microsoft's success in the business software world was at least partly due to its success in the consumer space. In other words, "everyone has it at home, so they want it at work." This seemed particularly apparent to me with Windows, Internet Explorer, and Outlook. You could argue that Microsoft Office also benefits by being adopted in so many academic institutions. This concept of consumer and academic adoption driving business adoption also seems to have influenced the rise of business instant messaging and business social networking over the past few years. It seems to me that in the absence of some key risk or differentiator in a business solution, the consumer solution has a substantial advantage in business adoption rates.

I won't pretend that I have done extensive analysis on these ideas, and they may be flawed logic. However, as argued by this guy 4-5 months ago here, here, and here, and more recently embraced by the IBM Lotus Marketing team as discussed in this podcast (*cough* credit  *cough*), software adoption in the business world seems to have at least some significant correlation with exposure to end users and decision makers in the consumer space. That is one of the reasons why this consumer email market share update and this article on the battle for email mindshare at colleges and universities concerned me a bit. With Microsoft owning the two largest consumer "cloud-based" email services and Google owning the third spot, and IBM nowhere to be seen, I can't help but wonder how much disadvantage those of us trying to make the case for an IBM solution face not just in selling it, but in facilitating successful end user adoption. Most of my readers know that Lotus Notes is about far more than just email, but consider this: If I am a key executive who uses Microsoft and Google software as a consumer, who are the first two companies I'm going to take a meeting with? Who has the inherent advantage? It's good to hear that Lotus is targeting some advertising at these audiences, but I also wonder if actually letting consumers get their hands on something branded as "Lotus" would amplify the effects. Thoughts?

http://bit.ly/1uVwt

I keep up with the ongoing "why doesn't Lotus advertise on TV" battles that periodically hit the blogosphere, but I was particularly inspired today by an idea that Alan Lepfosky floated wondering what it would be like to see Lotus Notes featured in the  "I'm a Mac" ads. I doubt it will ever happen, but I can envision a number of possibilities that could benefit Mac as much as Lotus in the business space:

PC: Who's that?
Mac: Who this? This is Lotus Notes.
PC: Oh, I can do email.
Mac: So can he, but he can also do instant messaging, document management, collaboration, and custom applications all in one package that runs on you or me. Plus, he comes with a free office suite that can create and save documents in all the any of the widely used formats. We're a pretty powerful combination for businesses.
PC: You do business?
Mac: Yep.
PC: I'm gonna need a lawyer.

(or something like that)