And Jeff said … another 20 years of Collaboration tools

Sorry about that, to all the FUD providers out there. Yesterday during the announcement web-cast Jeff told the world, that in 20 years there will still be some kind of collaboration tools from IBM. End of message. Notes/Domino isn’t going away, but since 20 years ago nobody knew what Notes would look like today, we just have to wait another 20 years, what it will be.

What was also interesting, for the first time, IBM said: „We have over 50’000 organisations running Notes/Domino today.“ Normally the numbers are either useless, for example the total number of seats sold until today, or they were half official or you found them somewhere, as if they were not important. Today they say it loud a clear and call the competition names. Amazing. Did they get new marketing guys? No, sorry the question is wrong. Does IBM have a marketing department now? Do I have to change my view of IBMs cash cow marketing regarding Notes? Boy, that would make me happy.
While 50’000 organisations must be a lot less than Microsoft has, it is on the way up, as far as I can see. But, the number is also relatively meaningless, because it does not give us anything to compare it with. Look at it from this side, if all the companies in Switzerland had their own mail server, with 50’000 organisations, IBM would have 14% market share. On a worldwide scale, 50’000 is nothing. But who cares. IBM was always about the biggies and only because Lotus had also small companies as customers, IBM had suddenly a bunch of SMB to deal with. By now, they should have been gone, as have the small partners and IBM can focus on their marketing schema, sending IBM reps to important CIO’s. OK, sorry, that was sarcastic. But until now, I can not make the feeling go away, that IBM has turned it’s back towards companies smaller than 5000 seats.
Otherwise, I get the impression, that something inside IBM has changed regarding Notes/Domino.