Leadership By Numbers

"Yellow is the new black." That's the mantra for those of us who gathered at Lotusphere '06 to celebrate the validation of our long term commitment to a technology that has had some marketing turbulence in recent years.

First there was the removal of the J2EE Garnet engine during the Lotusphere 2002 release of ND6, then the bewildering announcement of Next-Gen at Lotusphere 2003--it's not hard to appreciate why it's taken several years to rebuild trust and establish a convincing vision for Domino. In '04 I completely  skipped Lotusphere and was thinking hard about alternatives.

However, IBM/Lotus began a turnaround and Lotusphere '05 was the first inkling of a unified vision of Websphere Portal-Workplace-Domino. I was very impressed with everyone I spoke with, each one was on message. Lotusphere '06 made for even better--it was a terrific success for IBM. Workplace, Websphere Portal, Sametime 7.5 and Hannover were billboard-sized movie posters showing Lotus looking good and back in the game. Thank you Surjit for amping it up.

The hubris generated at Lotusphere created such excitement, that we all sang out about Sametime 7.5, drank the Kool-Aid, and I have to tell you, after such a dry spell it tasted like champagne to me.

Now, the party is over, but the message hasn't been forgotten. The theme has been carried to the Sickos web site, YellowIsTheNewBlack and NotesIsDead. IBM even has an anti-FUD site. It's always fun to run in the cool crowd.

And, yet, I have a hesitation.

The new Lotus products rely on the Eclipse platform, which is dramatically different from what current Domino developers use. I haven't read anyone talking about what it will take to upgrade the skills of Domino professionals into Eclipse. Let me start by asking the question, "just how many developers are needed to ensure the success of Sametime 7.5 and Hannover?" 

As you  think over your own estimate, don't use yourself as a reference for a normal admin or programmer, because you are not a typical bread-and-butter Domino professional. You are reading blogs, the notes.net forums, redbooks, yellowbooks, maybe going to user-groups and doing a great job staying on top of technology. You'll be ready for Eclipse, and you're probably already really excited about the new development platform.

I don't have accurate statistics relating the ratio of Notes accounts to developers, so I'll have to rely on my own experience. Administrators at larger installations seem to support about 1 full-time professional per 1,000 users (I'm not included help desk or support administrators in this count). Developers are all over the map, depending on the use of the Domino server. I know one large international site which has no full-time developers because Domino is only used for mail. I also know of several small non-profits which support a couple of programmers for only a hundred users. In either case, administrator or developer, I'm going to rough out an estimate of two Domino professionals per 1,000 accounts as my benchmark.

If we accept the latest count of Notes installed licenses as being approximately 125 million, then there are 125,000 administrators and 125,000 designers supporting Domino. That's 250,000 professionals (not including technical management or support staff) that are going to need orientation, training and many will require certification for the Eclipse platform.

When should these professionals be expected to be prepared on Eclipse? Because, that's a lot of people to move to a different development platform.

In the meantime, competitors will be aggressively making their sales pitch to the very same set of professionals. For instance, right now Microsoft is running a second shot campaign: fail a Microsoft exam and you will get a free, second chance at passing. Or, take a look at their own migration blog on Technet. Already the siren call is being made to LotusScript programmer to look at the free edition of Visual Studio Express (which has generated a lot of interest).

If that is too subtle of a point, BusinessWeek has written up Microsoft's latest marketing campaign:

Microsoft Corp. announced a $500 million marketing initiative Thursday aimed at competing with IBM Corp. for corporate spending on information technology.

In doing so, Microsoft continues on its traditional course of persuading businesses to spend money on desktop-bound software, even as rivals are emphasizing more Web-oriented applications that aren't as firmly tied to Microsoft's Windows operating system.

The $500 million, to be spent over a year to buy ads and expand its sales force, is the largest business-oriented marketing campaign ever for the company, said Jeff Raikes, president of the business division.

$500 million is a lot of advertising mindspace to position against one competitor. It's flattering to IBM, I'm sure, and I bet Larry Ellison or Scott McNealy are wondering why their companies don't rate the A list.

If you work on IBM products, this is going to be a challenging year, maybe even a make-or-break one. I'm just hoping that at next year's Lotusphere I'll be able to toast some of the '06 vintage.