What can change in a week. Last week in Zürich Scott Souder said IBM Verse Freemium will not be a crippled version. So much for that. Nice move from IBM to stab Scott in the back. Now it is a preview version that is so useless, that IBM might what to turn that server of again. That would save a few bucks in electricity.
IBM Verse Support Forum (thank’s to Karl-Henry Martinsson)
IBM really does not get it (… again). Somehow Vowes comment about the Village Idiot comes to mind.
Let’s recapitulate what IBM wants to achieve with Verse:
Take on Gmail
With what? A preview version? 24 mails in 24 hours? 500 MB quota? An unfinished product? No migration tool? No signature? 500 MB files? Oh, you say, that is only for the „Enterprise“ version, not for freemium – ups sorry – preview? And with what they want to convince people to move? With a preview version that isn’t even powerful enough to show the really cool bits?
IBM you just made Google very happy. But I doubt, that they ever took you very serious.
500’000’000 users
OK, I suppose somehow the zeros got multiplied due to the bad acoustics in Zürich. 5’000’000 users would be less unrealistic target, but a failure. With this preview version IBM will not even get those.
And than we have that:
Jeff Schick says that mail would be CO-HOSTED in Europe. And where is the other server? I suppose, were it is convenient to read all the mails.
It is really depressing. Every time I think IBM might starts to understand a few things how the world works, they blow it in the end. Every time. Amazing.
Right, it’s over. They might move a few existing customers to Verse. A few million seats, that’s it. Just like any other small hoster. We can move on now. The revolution has never happened.