InformationWeek also did an article on the still not yet released Yankee Group report about the email market. It contains some additional insights and some nice quotes by Yankee analyst Laura DiDio.
… “Some say, ‘We don’t need all the functionality in Exchange,’ but you’re not going to find unified messaging or integrated security or voice access for just as cheap in Linux,” DiDio says. “You may need three to five packages or build something customized” to get the kind of functionality you find in Exchange. DiDio cites a 5,000-end user New York City media company that will stick with Exchange because it estimates higher costs to support and make feature-ready an open source e-mail platform.
Even if Microsoft loses a significant portion of its existing Exchange customers to open source, there’s a chance it could maintain or even grow its market share with new potential customers coming online all the time in the developing world and a continuing migration away from legacy systems from Novell and IBM. “The pie is not static,” DiDio says. …
Source: InformationWeek.com
This puts things in a slightly different perspective already. The ” legacy systems from Novell and IBM” will loose marketshare to Exchange due to the continuing migration. Thanks for clarifying Laura 😉
I find the quote from the ex-Exchange shop just as important:
“We wouldn’t switch back to Exchange for any amount of money.”
Peter,
This blog puts a different spin on things.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=343
Swings and roundabouts.
opps, didn’t finish the above post..
If you read the comments posted at the link you get plently of real-world views, rather than the rather clinical reports from these ‘reports’.
@Ed,
I know you do … Anyways I think Laura DiDo is pretty explicit about IBM isn’t she. Wonder if she will be on IBM’s FUD or black list as well alongside Radicati and Gartner
@Garry,
I know that post; that’s what’s got it all started I think.
Well let’s wait until the report is out. Maybe there’s more on the “legacy stuff”
Peter,
Laura Didio is already widely regarded as an MS shill in the open-source world. She shows a surprising lack of balance and fairness in her reporting and analysis.
If her name seems familiar, then it’s because she’s one of the reporters/analysts that was intensely, unwaveringly pro-SCO in the IBM/SCO lawsuit. She happily repeated anything SCO said without doing much research or getting alternate opinions before reporting.
I don’t know if IBM operate a “media blacklist”, but she’d be one of the strongest candidates for an appearance on it if they did.
Her credibility with me – and many others – is zero, and will remain so for as long as she purposefully parrots her preferred opinion whilst ignoring evidence that contradicts it.
Example: “Some say, ‘We don’t need all the functionality in Exchange,’ but you’re not going to find unified messaging or integrated security or voice access for just as cheap in Linux,”
– Yes, they may not find that functionality. But maybe those are the features they didn’t need? Is she even listening at this point? Apparently not, but never mind, because she has her own opinion which is far more important than those of the people she was paid to study… (Even if it is contradictory.)
(Wikipedia on Laura Didio: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_DiDio)
Philip,
Thank for the clarification. Where I persoanlly get lost is which analyst does the IBM / Lotus crwod still view as objective ?
I get the feeling that every analyst who is slight positive abot Microsoft or tells the truth about IBM gets sort of banned or his / her opinion gets questioned to say the least …
Ed Brill posted about Laura’s recent (still to be released) report after a piece appeared on the blog of Mary Jo Foley. It seemed very negative about Microsoft, hence the post by Ed.
Based on this article the tide is turning a bit, and so are the opinions ?
I stick with my approach I post the opinion of all analysts “good” or “bad” (yes even Radicati who can do no good at all in the opinion of some) and leave it up to the readers to decide.
The analysts are part of our market if we like it or not …. again I have no problem with them at all.
I have no idea which analysts/reporters IBM favours.
However, there are some that they evidently would have reason to dislike, and there’s considerable cross-over between the ones IBM would rather retired and the ones the OSS community would like to see retire. 🙂
The interesting coincidence is that not only do these patricular reporters/analysts cover OSS/IBM negatively, but they also cover Microsoft glowingly. I have no reason for that, but I do find it noteworthy…
I’m afraid I’m somewhat out of the news loop at the moment, in the process of catching up on the last month – so I can’t comment much on what’s going on over at Ed’s blog (or much of elsewhere really). Opinion comes and goes, though – with the recent “high” from LotusSphere, I suppose things can only go downhill until the release of R8.
As for analysts – I think the major change in recent years has to have been that they now get a lot more questions after they publish. They may be a part of the market, but their ivory towers are no match for modern scaling towers. 🙂
Philip,
I did notice another major change in recent years http://www.peterdehaas.net/2007/01/microsoft_vs_ib.html maybe what you refer to are the wrong questions to the right conclusion (at least when it comes to IBM);-)
I tend to agree however that some analysts are MS biased, but certainly not all of them. IBM postition and that of its following is far to opportunistic if you ask me, hence the fact that they spit on almost all analsysts who write something positive about Microsoft. I have been referring to ‘ the trend’ often in recent months. ‘ The trend’ being the heavy losses of IBM vs the big gains of Microsoft in almost all aspects of the Communication & Collaboration market. You can call me arrigant when claiming this, but hey, I do have market analsysis to back this up 😀
“Heavy losses”? Man would I be in trouble if that were true.
@Ed,
Well that all depends on the strategy of your company Ed. Lotus Smartsuite, OS/2, the MCA bus were all very good technologies that are /were supported until the end
But seriously, heavy may not be the term and yes it depends on the analyst whether or not the gap is small or large. But its getting bigger, but maybe not enough to start polishing your resumé 😉
But don’t you see the trend Ed, in all these analyst reports / articles ? Are you really still pushing this away by merely a credibility discussion ? You and other IBM people are no longer touting the marketshare slides that you were let’s say 3 years ago. Changing the discussion doesn’t make it go away …
Peter, at the moment it’s not the lead story because the credible market share reports — IDC and Gartner Dataquest — are only published once a year, and their last reports are from June/July 2006. IBM generally restricts the marketing use of third-party reports that are more than six months old, a practice which others should consider emulating.
Microsoft licensed the last IDC report for distribution, and it is published on the Exchange website. It shows the market as 52/39 for MS. I’m not satisfied with 39%, but in most market segments, vendors would jealously covet a 39% share. The IDC trend line shows a very small decrease for IBM over the last three years, less than 3% change per annum. So is that a “heavy loss”? No, actually, they’ve shown that IBM is GROWING over that time, just not at the same rate as others.
Every other indicator shows that the Notes business is resurgent. IBM reported year-to-year revenue growth for Lotus every fiscal quarter in 2006, specifically calling out 30% Y2Y growth for Notes in Q4 2006. We reported 2500 new customers for Notes/Domino during 2006. Lotusphere had more than 7000 attendees, a post-9/11 record. Most Lotusphere Comes to You events have drawn much larger crowds than prior years.
I have absolutely no intention of seeing the Notes business go the way of those other products. They were never market share contenders, much less leaders, so the comparison (which MS people and critics love to make) is faulty. A growing business has nothing to apologise for.
Besides, if it were that obvious, why would MS be making so many generous offers to IBM customers under the “Notes Compete” program?
Ed,
The 30% YoY is for Lotus Software in general, not Notes specific if I recall correctly. Nevertheless no one says the Lotus business isn’t growing or reviving as you may say. It is just not outpacing the competition looking at the ‘once a year’ published market figures.
It seems almost all postive press comes from you, which is understandable. Let’s see what the analysts have to say in the coming months. Maybe Gartner Group will change it’s mind once again 😉
I will look into those IDC figures because I don’t quite onderstand how a ” small 3% decline” is not loosing marketshare. You should compare it to the main competition I would say that the real relative discussion.
Not sure what ‘generous offers’ you are referring to. It is true Microsoft has a similar program as IBM does to turn clients over. Nothing special about that.
My personal experience is that clients don’t need that much convincing anymore. Have you seen the Tesco casestudy ? another nice win for Microsoft. What large wins has IBM to show for as part of those 2500 wins ? They are certainly not 2500 MS turnovers 😉
The 30% was specific to Notes, as announced at Lotusphere.
And as for all positive press — well, recent reports from Burton, Forrester, Osterman, Ferris, and Redmonk cover Notes/Domino futures as well as the Lotus brand, and all are postiive. It doesn’t come from me, Peter.
On the other side, I haven’t seen you mention the Gartner report about Outlook 2007 that just came out:
http://gartner.com/DisplayDocument?ref=g_search&id=503211&subref=simplesearch so not all from Gartner is positive.
I’ve seen the Tesco case study and of course I’m disappointed in that decision. But I’m pleased with the conversations underway right now around the gargantuan hurdles to get to Exchange 2007, the lack of new value there, and the general interest MS customers seem to have at the moment to consider alternatives. You aren’t the only ones who can play offense.
Ed,
On the 30%. This was only mentioned verbally at LS I think by Mike Rhodin. He must know I think. However, the official IBM financial statements only make mention of a FY06 Q4 YoY growth of 30% for Lotus (that more than Notes/Domino I always thought, or are all the other pieces in this family no longer sold ?).
FY06-Q1 : 0%
FY06-Q2 : 6%
FY06-Q3 : 8%
FY06-Q4 : 30% (http://www.ibm.com/investor/sharedv2/auditorium.phtml?/investor/4q06/webcastini
slide 13
That’s a CAGR of around 11% Which is very good I would say.
Anyway I think it is important to know where these types of figures come from. I had hoped you could be more specific as to what other revenue is part of the Lotus family, because that could also have contrinuted to the 30%
“Thanks” for sharing the Gartner link. Had not seen that, I will get the report tomorrow when I’m back in the office. You’re right its not all positive and that’s the way it should be. This keeps Gartner in the “good corner” doesn’t it.
I did notice some press and your blogpost around this topic. I expect a formal comment from Microsoft around this if and when necessary.
you’re right, the 30% Q4 growth [i]for Notes specifically[/i] wasn’t included in the official financial statements. So what? It was said by Ken Bisconti and Mike Rhodin, both IBM executives who are legally obligated to accurately report any public financial disclosure. It’s recorded for posterity in the keynote video from Lotusphere
As it happens, that 30% for Notes and Domino matches the 30% growth of the Lotus brand portfolio in Q4 2006 — which may be why there’s some confusion on it. The rest of the Lotus portfolio (which includes market-leading products like Lotus Sametime and WebSphere Portal) also had a good Q4, but those product-specific financials have not been publicly disclosed.
Ed,
Who am I to question Mike Rhodin, as I said he must know.
Just thought if the Lotus division grew 30% in Q4 as a whole how does the performance of LN/D relate to the performance of SameTime, Workplace, WS Portal, etc. Figures can easily be misinterpreted
On the other hand also microsoft does not report its figures in that level of detail