Blogger: Bill Pray
IBM's launch of LotusLive at Lotusphere reminded me of the often used skit by marketing departments from Saturday Night Live. Maybe Dan Ackroyd's appearance on stage during the opening keynote as an IBM pitch man was more appropriate than we suspected. So, what is LotusLive?
Is it for enterprises or small / medium businesses?
Is it only for those who want to go completely cloud-based or is it an extension of on-premise premise services?
Does it have e-mail or is that Lotus Notes Hosted Messaging?
Is it a channel strategy or direct sale from IBM?
Based on what I heard, the answer is that LotusLive is both to all of the above questions.
IBM would probably argue that these are not either/or questions and I would agree. The problem is not whether they are either/or questions but whether or not LotusLive is really both.
In the case of LotusLive, the demonstrations and information provided made it questionable whether or not it is ready for the enterprise. The integration between on-premise and LotusLive services are still limited. While e-mail will eventually be delivered, it is not yet an integrated component. There are many details still to be answered around security and compliance.
The reason marketing departments use the SNL skit example is to emphasize that different messages have different audiences, channels, and packaging. While I don't doubt that IBM will be clearing up questions about LotusLive over the next several months, I don't think that "It's the greatest shine I have ever tasted" resonated.
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