Sanity Check

Salvaging Lotus Notes' reputation is an ongoing battle. A few weeks ago, I was in  the board room of a prospective customer selling Lotus Notes (Foundations actually) and I was challenged to update their IT Director, who had ancient experience with Notes about 12 years ago (R4, R5?),  on how Lotus Notes has not stood still but has evolved, especially in the last few years to to embrace open source technology like Eclipse. I knew this org leveraged Linux  in their Data center so knew that focusing on how Notes leverages Open Source projects as large as Eclipse and Linux would be the right play. The proof of concept was my demonstrations of modern Notes applications. An added bonus was the fact that applications can be built once using XPages to run in the client, browser, and even Blackberry. Since I approached them positively, without being defensive, and showed a true current and future value propositions,  I believe talks with them will be ongoing after their upcoming strategy sessions. Another situation: This last weekend, I had breakfast with a very experienced Java Developer from a US Investment firm who remarked, "Oh Lotus Notes...I recall that clunky interface. You had to click on squares to launch things". I countered, focusing on the evolution of Notes, especially its leveraging of Java Server Face technology (aka XPages) as well as the port into Eclipse for both the Client and Designer. Seeing his iPhone, I added that clicking on squares to launch applications seems to be exactly the interface he appreciates on his iPhone. Even the old tabbed interface, rather than the windowed interface, appears to be in vogue for many successful applications today, especially web browsers. So there! His objections were rightly countered and since I did it respectfully and targeted what was important in his world, I know that he will not so quickly dismiss Lotus Notes as an option if it comes up through a company acquisition or future change of his CIO or IT Director.
 
So, my point is that Lotus Notes reputation can be salvaged if you focus on how Notes has not stood still, but has evolved to meet and exceed modern infrastructure requirements. But it seems that so often we have some hump to get over due to the very fact that Notes is 20 years old (or  young if you're a glass half full type) and people simply assume, without actual knowledge, that Lotus Notes has become legacy software.

In marketing, old recognized brands are both a value and a curse. You can probably think of brands have made a break with the past by consciously rebranding themselves (e.g. Kentucky Fried Chicken>>KFC). The last time someone called me in an attempt to rope me into the Amway MLM scheme, they used every brand name except Amway because they knew that would throw up too many red flags. I am not suggesting Lotus Notes has to rebrand in order to hide past sins, but a fresh incremental brand name might be useful. Perhaps that is what the Workplace branding was all about, though it failed for other reasons. Successful rebranding needs to preserve the best of the past and associate it with a positive direction. In a way, when a product evolves as much as Notes has, especially as we're on the cusp of a major expansion of capabilities with XPages, there comes a point where a product has metamorphosed to the point where you no longer refer to the creature  as a caterpillar, but as a butterfly.

I am thinking that Lotus Expediter Collaborative Development Plafform (the long fully descriptive name), or just Lotus Expediter for short is a catchy rebranding option. I can live without referencing the term "Notes" personally as the XPage multi-client, develop-once-play-anywhere applications is a very appealing paradigm, especially done in the JSF framework. Putting the primary emphasis on Lotus Expediter as a collaborative development platform which also happens to offer an out of the box bleeding edge email experience on the front end with a technically superior back end (think DAOS) would sell and also  be resistant against the smear campaigns by large competitors who succeed, not through innovation, but by pigeon-holing Notes in customer's minds as a legacy email application. So, though I can overcome FUD with targeted current facts today, it would be nice to make an end run around the "Notes" legacy baggage and sell the benefits of this metamorphosed product which has a bright future, solid direction, and rooted on the most successful concepts of Lotus Notes from the past.

Before switching to an IT, I worked for a number of years in the Marketing Department as a Photofinishing Services Category Manager and also as a Business Analyst for a leading Canadian Retailer. With that background, now creeping to the bottom of my resume, once in a while, to the chagrin of many, I put my marketing hat back, issue some quick commentary about what my company or another company should do, then retreat to my safe IT world where the forces are reasonably controllable by coding or configuration settings.

So, here we go again, except this is not directed at a company (IBM Lotus) alone, but also at the Lotus Community.

2008 was an interesting year to read the comment threads on websites that post articles about Lotus' moves in the marketplace (Notes 8, Symphony, IBM's Open Desktop, etc.). I am referring to sites that generically cover IT news whose readers are not primarily "yellow". The old canards still come up in comments, like "Lotus Notes..people still use that?" and other enlightening displays of ignorance. Mind you, when articles about Vista are posted, the comments can be just as acerbic.

The question I'd like to pose to the community is this: How will you participate to make our strongest skeptics into believers? That is, for those who so boldly pontificate behind the keyboard without a current understanding of the product they are bashing, how do you enlighten them to at least to the possibility that Notes Domino has enough business benefit that it could be even considered strategically advantageous?

Answer: You need to get out there, onto the highways and byways where people travel, and and repeat the strengths of Notes again and again and again. The fact is, even mistruths, repeated often enough, are believed (MS are experts here). Even better, when you can show true and tangible benefits, AND repeat them often enough, you're on your way to transforming perceptions. Its simply a matter of volume. If a former Notes user, who had a problem with some old weakness of Notes, like say HTML formatting, doesn't hear anything about Notes for several years, and then suddenly there's some out-of-the-blue article on Notes, he'll of course not be too impressed, and may even dump a negative comment. However, if he sees dozens of articles, in different blogs, ezines, and other media he reads, some of those messages begin to get through and over time he may even think, "Hey, maybe Notes its worth another look."

In former years, we, as a community, and IBM as a company, made few attempts to make plays in media where Notes was not necessarily dominant.  And when we made an attempt and got the old "Notes sucks" type of responses, we were outraged and retreated, grumbling about those Nimrod trolls. 2008 was an improvement with the new confidence in Notes 8, and 2009 with the release of Notes Domino 8.5 there is a real opportunity to break out of our insular community where we preach to the choir and have more "missionaries", so to speak. Only long, sustained, repeating, enduring effort to communicate clearly to our skeptics is required for any noticeable change over time. Quick hits without any frequency don't really do much, in fact in a way they can hurt. For example, maybe a young IT decision-maker doesn't know anything about Lotus Notes and they read a dozen negative comments and not much rebuttal. Of course they could become inclined to believe them, especially if there are common slogans repeated. But when one reads mindless, often emotional troll comments, and then intelligent, clear testimonies in a comment thread, the neutral reader knows which ones have legitimacy.

So to summarize:

Strategy A. There needs to be more articles put out in mainstream publications that clearly and succinctly bring out the feature/benefits of Notes Domino. Use of graphics, interviews, case study examples, and convincing arguments need to communicate the essential benefits of Notes. Emphasize that, as the world has evolved, so has Notes, especially of late. The frequency of these releases needs to be high enough so that the average IT professional will run across 4-6 Lotus articles a year minimum, which itself goes a long ways to demonstrate the legitimacy of the product.

Strategy B. The Lotus community needs to get involved in commenting on these articles in a genuine, non-defensive manner. Rebut the argument not the person. Point out the true benefits you and your org, and your customers have experienced with Notes Domino and let those speak for themselves. Engage the trolls only on the concrete points they offer. Ignore the crude, nonspecific comments which any intelligent reader will bypass anyway.

And this should all begin with the 8.5 release. If a sustained effort is made, the needle should begin to move one year from now.