Unfortunatly I will not make it to attend DNUG this time. I guess this will be an interesting conference, and I wonder what Lotus executives will have to say about what is happening in Lotus land.
I guess IBM will announce to do things different. Regarding marketing we see some serious efforts made with the Smart Work campaign.
Still I think most of the non IBM / Lotus customers do not get the story. Maybe we will hear more about this tomorrow in Düsseldorf.
What we definetly will here about tomorrow is a special promotion for Lotus products with a significant 25% discount on new licences and reinstatements. Reduced prices will be available for a few months. IBM hopes to win back lost Lotus customers back into maintenance mode – and to win new customers from the dark site who are facing yet another large renewal bill for evil products like Exchange in Micrsofts fiscal Q4.
From my perspective there are two kinds of customers in the first category: The customers who discontinued maintenance will not reinstate, because they are happy with the pre-Notes 8 releases and they want to avoid upgrade of clients. Marketing will have to do a good job to convince these customers.
The second kind of customers are very happy about Notes 8, but they have maintenance and will not buy new licenses – because they simply don´t need to because business does not grow in these times.
In the second category it will be a hard sell too. License costs are only a small part of the budget for choosing a new messaging and collaboration infrastructure. But in some cases it might help.
In Germany we call this „Abwrackprämie“ – a scrappage program for MS licences. Maybe 25% discount is real good argument 😉
It’s an interesting problem.
Despite the advanced of R8, we find that a lot of our clients as quite happy with Notes 7, and many do not see a compelling case to upgrade, preferring instead to invest in eProductivity to achieve measurable end-user benefits.
I know that’s been the case for me.
@Eric – Hopefully R8 / eProductivity isn’t an either/or proposition?
It’s great that your R7 clients invest further in eProductivity. In my opinion, it actually means they are „getting it“ – both Notes/Domino and eProductivity from a benefit perspective.
I’m quite sure the drivers that move companies to upgrade are different than those that make companies invest in eProductivity. R7 installations aren’t under pressure from ending support, like R6.5 are, and might not see as much added value either.
Choosing to add value at a smaller investment, might very well be the better deal, given the state of the world finances at the moment.
I know there are other companies, who – with R8 – are finally really „getting it“, when it comes to the value they can get with Sametime, Quickr Connectors and Productivity tools in the Notes 8 client framework.
Maybe one day, they’ll even get eProductivity :o)