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The question now is different... will partners be good at selling it implementing great projects for their customers ?
And in more detail, who are the customers that may look at Lotus Connections and go trough a Pilot -> Implementation -> Cultural Evolution ?
This is the most challenging point. Having a great product is not enough, Lotus Connections prerequisites are not just technical, and you've been already told this, so moving from a presentation to a sale is not just something a "plain" commercial rep can do at your customer that for years has been buying software licenses (this story also applies to other scenarios, my favourite is Websphere Portal).
So, what are Connections real world requirements ?
1. A user population with a good number of actors
2. A number of leaders that create content that others will search, use or comment
3. An organization with a need to connect people in disparate locations
While point 3 is quite common the other two need more discussion.
In order for connection to provide value to the company you need people (a significant number) to use it and people to create the content (without content connections is useless).
My experience tells that even with a big number of people around the number of people who create useful content, or create content at all, is limited. So let's say your company counts 500 people, as a rule of thumb I would guess that a person for each 20 may be a blogger (but reality is worse) and you get just 25 blogs out of 500 people, little numbers. If we move to Dogear it's easier, in this case there's no creation of new content. People just have to share bookmarks using the specific bookmarklet. In the dogear case it's easier to have good numbers but the quality of content is linked to how people TAG and comment links. With Dogear the user generated content is actually the tagging and commenting which helps building the company share knowledge.
Finally Communities is a great way to identify people based on their shared interests, and with Connections 2.0 we get more tools for communities (the new forum or the Wikis integration), but still numbers are important in the community game.
What does this mean ? Connections & social networking is useful only if you've people using it (but this is no news) and in Lotus Connections I would say that Blogs, Dogear and Communities can be relevant only to companies with a number of people.
But hey ... IBM wants to sell the product (they have the product, looking for customers) and this "prerequisite" risk to limit the number of actual sales they can do. Also this limits the number of IBM/Lotus business partners looking into connections.
Here comes what I've been discussing with some friends (Enzo Stanzione, Bruce Elgort, Neil Burston and others) or ... how can I take lotus connections to ALL Lotus Business Partners and ALL Lotus/Non lotus customer ?
The answer is easy: change the perspective. As I already explained in order to have results using Blogs, Communities and Dogear you need content that people must create, right ? Good this leave us with the other pieces of the Connections puzzle: Profiles, Activities and of course the new Hemepage (and it's GREAT search feature).
With Profiles and Activities you don't need a lot of users, both of them work for a single person and can work even if the numbers are smaller.
Just think about a 100 person organization spread in different locations. They would not have big advantage using Blogs / Dogear / Communities because the quantity of content they can create is limited and the resources required to run those are higher.
Those 100 person can still take advantage of Profiles & Activities because both tools can work for them. I can use profiles to surface my corporate directory and for sure I can use Activities to do my every day work. If the company is running Domino/Notes they can also use the Notes 8.0 plugin for Activities to have better experience and any domino application could be easily integrated with Activities.
Also even using only Profiles & Activities the homepage can find it's way in. The search engine feature and the iWidgets dashboard becomes a useful intranet tool even for smaller companies.
So I see two different scenarios ahead:
Connections for big Companies
- Proposed to companies with many users (let's say > 1000 just as an example)
- Using all the components (Homepage, Profiles, Communities, Blogs, Dogear, Activities)
- Proposed by a few partners that can/want to invest in the social tools maket with technical and consultancy services.
- Requiring a lot of hardware resources (6 databases, multiple application servers and maybe clustering)
Connections for SME
- Proposed to any customer whatever the size (being it a Lotus or non Lotus shop)
- Provided by smaller IBM business partners with Domino/Notes skills without the "full" commitment to Connections (they wouldn't anyway sell Connections due to their customers' size)
- Sell the Activities component and possibly the Profiles Module and integrate Activites with the notes client and other Domino/Non domino applications (think of Quickr, CRM etc.)
- Providing Blogs with other tools that are lighter than the Connections' blogs service (think... Domino Blog, Wordpress or other stuff)
- No communities, use directory/names groups.. not the same but with a limited number of people you won't miss it
- No dogear, if you really need it I'd look for "cheaper" stuff in terms of requirements/maintenance costs (thinking of Elguji LinkJam)
- Reduced hardware requirements and simplified management (Profiles is lightweight with few users, Activities is the "heavy" component here, Homepage is a nice addition, for sure it's less than half the requirements of a full Connections deployment)
The nice thing from IBM
The nice thing from IBM is that these scenarios is not just fictitious invention by me. It's already a possible reality, in fact if you look up the IBM Software Pricebook you'll find that Profiles and Activities are available as separate part numbers from the full Connections and makes the "SME" scenario possible as long as a partner wants to invest some time in learning how to do Activities / Profiles for their smaller customers.
The thing IBM could have done better
The weird thing, IMHO, is that after creating the single-product-partnumbers IBM never told anybody. I've read almost any IBM presentation, participated in Webcasts, looked for new information but I've NEVER heard IBM inviting smaller Business Partners to consider the Small-Medium-Enterprise scenario.
Also I think that if more and more partners adopts and sell Activites/Profiles it's a win for IBM (more sales), it's a win for Partners (the competition doesn't have an alternative) and it's a win for end-users (the more a product is adopted the more knowledge is available to solve & fix problems).
That's my point, what do you think ?
Would an IBM BP with Domino skill start looking into Connections if they can use it with their real customer (not every partner has customers with more than 1000 employees) ?
See you...
Comments (3)
Daniele Vistalli June 22nd, 2008 09:58:42
In recent times I sailed Looking for information on solutions similar to IBM lotus Connections 2.0. It may also be that has not found everything .. but in my opinion the solution proposed by IBM is without doubt the most simple to use. But I have no possibility of comparison with regard to price, you have already given you an idea very clear.
Implement a solution Connections 2.0 is undoubtedly a big leap in quality for a company, and how many times discussed with you, I think the problem is strictly cultural.
Using several solutions, while simple and effective means to assemble taking a little here and a little there. Connection, in my opinion, is an excellent integrated solution, modular and scalable.
And I'll tell you also, and I repeat, which is very simple to use, has a clean interface and is not dispersed to users.
The pricing do not see a big problem .. at least for now.
I agree with you Stuart, the pricing thing is weird (but still the price is/maybe right).
I avoided discussing the pricing to focus on the value that Activities and in some cases Profiles can bring to a customer. Also I think that if a partner "gets" the idea and the customer need profiles AND activities they should just by the full product and deploy what they need (Activities, Profiles, Homepage) just knowing they can also install Blogs/Communities/Dogear at a later time.
In both cases we get that "normal" BPs can offer to the customer what the customer needs for a reasonable price.
Makes sense Danielle, and is something that I've been thinking about too.
The separate pricing for Profiles and Activities has been around since the release of Connections 1.0. However, the pricing is a little curious. Effectively, EITHER Profiles or Activities on their own is 50% of the price of the whole Connections piece. Therefore, if the customer really does only need one of the modules and are unlikely to ever look at the other ones, then yes, it is a reasonably cost-effective approach - list price is roughly $55 per user.
However, if you need both Activities and Profiles, or else, say Acivities and DogEar, then you are prompted into buying the whole package at $110 per user. Now that's still a good deal IMHO, but as you say, does add to the complexity of the solution.
Now, regarding using Domino-based solutions for SMEs. Absolutely. DominoBlog is a great blogging platform - it could do with a little more in the way of management features, but is pretty much there. LinkJam will really solve the bookmarking need, DominoWiki is an excellent wiki solution, so the portfolio is coming together. Next step for me is an add on to the Domino Directory to add easy searching, self-management and tagging of people and groups. Shouldn't be too difficult to achieve...
Then we would really have a solution for those <100 person orgs.
Stuart