George ( george@balcanicsoft.com )

Those who clearly understand where we’re coming from, can also clearly see that we have no dog in this fight (or most of the others we cover). In fact, if you watch our Newsbytes, you’ll see that we, not Google, often publish INTERESTING good news for competitive products. (Let me know when you find a… personal… Lotus blog that runs non-paid good news for Microsoft, or vice versa.)

But we really get our jollies from covering controversial topics in communications, security and file transfer. Hence, the “battles” in “Email Battles.”

Now. As to the speciousness of our OS/2 comments… Here, we’ll simply have to agree to disagree. As a humble supporter of anybody and everybody’s messaging, we watched major IBM blunders in earlier games, and the scoreboard’s not looking too hot this time. Millions of users aren’t always enough to sway management prerogatives (read that “Lenovo”). Sometimes the view is better from the bleachers.

And finally… Your gracious comments concerning our use of your materials were much appreciated. As my own work is broadly replicated across the net, those who base their entire marketing defense on ephemeral allegations of copyright violations flat wear me out. It’s like the “who stole collaboration” argument. Win the rants amongst the homeboys, lose the war.

Like you, Richard, I hope the very best solutions come out on top. Unfortunately, I can’t for the life of me remember the last time that happened.

(By the way, I beat you. Added PowerOftheSchwartz.com to my RSS aggregator a few days ago. And I hope to rip you off again… Those numbered comments of yours are, as the kids say, too kewl;)

But re OS/2 my point is that IBM was out of the fight (in your wording, which I think is right on the money, they were outmaneouvered) before the first round was fought. That’s not the case here.

When IBM let OS/2 die, it wasn’t the case that they were abandoning 100 million users and 40-plus percent of the market, along with leaving mulitple quarters increasing revenue stream to withher and die. That’s would be the situation if IBM walked away from Notes and Domino. Clearly they’re not about to do that, and that’s why it’s a bad analogy. And I do stand by the word “specious”. The OS/2 thing has a strong ring of truth to those with limited understanding of what happened in the 90s, but beneath the ring of truth is a bad analogy.

Finally, I don’t think it’s unfair at all that Microsoft and others shifted the term “collaboration” away from IBM’s strengths, and I said that IBM could have done more to deal with that. I’m glad you consider your site to be balanced on things like this. Despite being rather firmly in the Lotus camp for many years, I believe I’m still very much capable of seeing and appreciating the balanced point of view. Your site was not on my radar screen until now. Now it is.

We flashed OS/2 to filter out the younguns. Having said that, OS/2 pitted the IBM elephant against the Microsoft mouse. The mouse outmanuevered the elephant. Now you point out that Microsoft has caught up in and possibly surpassed IBM in messaging, and made strides in collaboration. But the good news is that Microsoft isn’t competing fairly. It has the audacity to have redefined the market away from IBM’s strengths!

And here’s even worse news… The mouse ain’t a mouse anymore. So which part of the OS/2 comparison is specious?

If you spend some time on Email Battles, you’ll find no animus targeting IBM or Lotus. Instead, you may well conclude that we despise Microsoft. That would make you wrong twice.

Among other things, we think the Lotus cross-platform approach is nothing short of brilliant in the long run. We’re mildly surprised that Redmond hasn’t yet caught this wave.

Now, let me say that from my point of view, IBM has always fought and is still fighting aggressively in the messaging and collaboration space. Anyone who says otherwise isn’t watching them carefully enough and/or doesn’t have their FUD filter tuning out enough of what Redmond (and known Lotus-hater Forbes) says. And they’re fighting far more effectively now than they were a few years ago.

The comparison to OS/2 is a bit specious. IBM never gave OS/2 a fighting chance, and it held the market lead for about 2 seconds at best. Notes and Domino, on the other hand, didn’t just lead the collaboration market for years… it defined the collaboration market. Microsoft has caught up in messaging, and surpassed according to the statistics — and they have made some strides in collaboration — but look closely: One of the reasons Microsoft has been able to make gains in collaboration is that collaboration doesn’t mean what it did when Lotus defined it in the 90s! To some extent, one can say that Microsoft and other players, have deliberately redefined collaboration away from IBM’s strenghts. The market had something to do with that, too, however — and IBM could probably have done more to control market perceptions of collaboration, but that’s all water under the bridge. It’s an interesting market, and in all likelihood it will remain interesting for quite some time. It would be even more interesting IMHO if everyone concentrated a little more on out-innovating instead of out-marketing the competition.

Most of the industry is waiting to see whether IBM will fight for its turf, or do the OS/2 flop and retreat from the field.

For collaborative alternatives to Exchange 5.5, see: Wolves Circle As Exchange Nears Death (http://www.emailbattles.com/archive/battles/email_aacbghdadd_i/).

If we missed any apps that fit the article’s criteria for Exchange 5.5 migration, please share in the “Wolves” article’s comments, along with the appropriate links.

c’mon now Bill. If you quote “some user poll ou there”at least do it acuratly. the figure is 25% and yes this was March 2005. This is just one source, I do not have other figures on this as I have stated endless number of times already.

As for the copyright discussion. This article quoted the right sources and does not violate it I would say.
This is a thin line discussion as aslo Ed raised on his blog recently