scribblings about earning influence in the era of social web

Microsoft FUD: 2nd in Series: Nice Work If You Can Get It

Posted on Nov 17th, 2010 in IBM, Lotus Knows, Microsoft, Technology News | 2 comments
Email

This is second in series of guest posts by Joel Waterman, Program Director at Lotus.

Nice Work If You Can Get It
Licensing. Almost laughable.

Almost laughable is MS claim about licensing costs. I said ‘almost’ because unfortunately, for us, MS licensing policies are devilishly clever. They link everything to everything so customers end up so confused that they are paying for what they don’t need or already own. Nice work if you can get it – I can hear Sinatra sing it now.  Don’t believe Microsoft.  Understand the detail of their licensing conditions.   A CRN Article compared Notes 8.5 with Exchange 2010. It concludes: “By the time an enterprise has purchased Exchange and the CALs for it, plus the Windows Server license and CALs for Windows Server, costs begin to snowball. The edge in pricing, when all is factored in, goes to Lotus. You simply get more bang for your buck.“
Reference: http://tinyurl.com/y8msznp

Exchange requires OCS for Unified Communications. In order to get a full function OCS environment, you need the following: 4 clients on every desktop (Office Communicator , Screen Sharing Client, Live Meetings, Persistent Chat). All are installed, maintained and versioned separately;  OCS Standard CAL, OCS E-Cal, OCS Server, SQL Server, Active Directory, 64 bit hw, Windows desktops, Windows Server… And whilst we are on the subject of OCS and telephony. Try to unify telephony into OCS…. imagine you’re a bank and you have 1,000 branches with a PBX is each one. With OCS you would need to deploy mediation servers, in pairs, in each branch (more mediation servers could be needed depending on call volume). OCS doesn’t have a PBX abstraction mechanism that you can centralize. Lotus Sametime Unified Telephony does. The instant messaging and telephony features can be integrated into the Lotus Notes client. To do the same a MS customer needs to install two separate clients, Outlook and Office Communicator.

I can go on about licensing. Let’s see if we can quote you some Notes customers. “We would probably have to buy eight different products and combine them to do all the things that we do with Lotus Notes and Domino.” says Troy Fulkerson, Director of Information Technology, Kentucky Baptist Convention. Or “Moving to IBM Lotus Notes and Domino from Microsoft Exchange and Outlook reduced software licensing costs by about 50%.” according to Dr. Tariq Marikar, Director, Product Development & CIO, Suntel Ltd. Lastly, “By choosing IBM, we don’t need a full-time IT person running around to make sure our servers are up and working properly.”, you got that right Gregers Bisgaard, sales manager, Simi A/S. People. Don’t believe Microsoft. Watch this; www.youtube.com/watch?v=H72yHHdFCIA

ROI. TCO.

Forrester concludes in a report that Notes can provide a 3 year risk adjusted ROI of 147%. See http://tinyurl.com/yzs3p5d. Whilst we are on the topic of TCO…we support scalable hardware platforms such as Power7 so customer need fewer servers and can lower operating costs. We also support cheap and scalable operating systems such as Linux – we have many customers that use only 4 Intel servers to provide email to +/- 40.000 users. Find out how you can potentially save 40% on your enterprise agreement by going to Project Liberate; see http://tinyurl.com/7oxevs

Before I forget. Check the Applicable guys. They did extensive research and concluded that IBM is up to 52% cheaper than MS. 52%! That’s a lot. You can do something useful with your savings. http://www.applicable.com Sept, 2009

Email

What is IBM’s Small Business Developer Kit?

Posted on Dec 2nd, 2008 in IBM, linux, Lotus Foundations | 0 comments
Email

The Smart Business Developers’ Kit is now available for download to Business Partners that are interested in packaging their Domino/Notes based applications for deployment into Lotus Foundations Start.

IBM Lotus Foundations offers the capability to run a range of software applications to address business challenges. The IBM Smart Business Developers’ Kit V1.0 is now generally available, to enable independent software vendors (ISVs) to easily package and sell Lotus Domino applications to small- and medium-sized businesses. This opens new markets for the developers and give SMB customers a host of new Domino applications to better run their businesses.

What is the IBM Smart Business Developers’ Kit?

The IBM Smart Business Developers’ Kit provides tools to package existing applications and deploy them to IBM Lotus Foundations Start. Business partners that use the Developers’ Kit can simply point to an existing application on a Domino server and the tool will combine the necessary files into a "single-click" installation package. The applications can be deployed into environments as separate packages or preloaded by the business partner, an important feature since many smaller companies don’t have on-site IT support.

The Developers’ Kit uses a four-step approach. The four steps are as follows:

  • Prepare your Application
  • Package your Application
  • Test your Application
  • Distribute your Application

    • Where can I download the IBM Smart Business Developers’ Kit?

    The Developers’ Kit is available for download by IBM PartnerWorld members with a member level access. Thus, a PartnerWorld user id and password is required to access the Developers’ Kit download.

    Download the Developers’ Kit: https://www.ibm.com/services/forms/preLogin.do?lang=en_US&source=swg-smbdtkt

    For information on the IBM PartnerWorld program, proceed to the IBM PartnerWorld home page, http://www.ibm.com/partnerworld. To apply for an IBM PartnerWorld membership select the Join PartnerWorld link within the membership section.

    Email

    Blog by Bilal Jaffery. Copyright © Bilal.ca 2011