Project Vulcan: The Missing Ingredient
There are a lot of positive things to say
about the the Lotus vision on the path of Project Vulcan. It's definitely
atypical for an established software company to leap right to user experience
with an overall product vision. Certainly the Lotus of 7 years ago
regaled us with block product slides and API diagrams. It's quite
stunning that when Lotus wants to talk about the vision of 2011 through
2015, they do it with sample UIs and mentions of standards like HTML5 and
OpenID, rather than stacks of logic layers and theoretical product lines.
As Alistair Rennie pointed out last week, Vulcan is not itself a product. Nor is it particularly revolutionary. It's really an iterative vision that is more about where Lotus plans to go over the next few years, than about some arbitrary big release. That's an important distinction to bear in mind over the coming months.
We're not going to see a universal inbox in Notes 8.5.2. Nor will we see an HTML5-compatible email client that renders presentations and threads inline. We shouldn't get to the summer and wonder "what happened to the vision?" because it's certainly a longer timeframe than 6 months.
However, as we look towards our green-blooded future, I wonder if the vision is truly everything we need. We saw compelling user experiences; we heard a lot about hybrid models between cloud, private, and on-premises solutions; and we heard about proliferations of open standards like OAuth, CSS3 and HTML5. But I believe there is a great aspect of modern software missing from the grand vision.
That aspect is a marketplace. Or more colloquially, a Lotus App Store.
Click through for more...
As Alistair Rennie pointed out last week, Vulcan is not itself a product. Nor is it particularly revolutionary. It's really an iterative vision that is more about where Lotus plans to go over the next few years, than about some arbitrary big release. That's an important distinction to bear in mind over the coming months.
We're not going to see a universal inbox in Notes 8.5.2. Nor will we see an HTML5-compatible email client that renders presentations and threads inline. We shouldn't get to the summer and wonder "what happened to the vision?" because it's certainly a longer timeframe than 6 months.
However, as we look towards our green-blooded future, I wonder if the vision is truly everything we need. We saw compelling user experiences; we heard a lot about hybrid models between cloud, private, and on-premises solutions; and we heard about proliferations of open standards like OAuth, CSS3 and HTML5. But I believe there is a great aspect of modern software missing from the grand vision.
That aspect is a marketplace. Or more colloquially, a Lotus App Store.
Click through for more...
Now when I say Lotus Store, I don't mean
a "solutions catalog." It can't be merely a directory,
but an active marketplace in which we can buy & sell software. This
experience must be integrated to work as simply as the Widget Catalog does.
It must be a direct-to-user channel for partners and ISVs of all
sizes to offer both business and entertainment applications both for free
and for a fee.
Am I saying that it needs to work like the iPhone App Store? Indeed, I am. Why? Let's start with ROI. There are presently about 34 million iPhones and 24 million iPod Touches. As of Jan 15, there are over 133,000 apps in the store from 28,000 different developers, resulting in over 3 BILLION downloads. Analysts estimate that the store generated $250 million in revenues for Apple in December ALONE. That makes the store a $3 billion revenue stream. While this is great for Apple, putting nearly a billion dollars in their coffers each year, think about what a vibrant developer market that also generates. $2.1 billion goes back to the developers who wrote the application, meaning an AVERAGE of $75,000 per developer or about $15,000 per application. Any readers here feel like they could put together a few Notes plugins for $75,000?
According to the numbers we see from IBM, there should be somewhere around double the number of Notes clients in the world. So take all the above figures and simply multiply by two. A successful Lotus Store could mean $2 billion a year for Lotus. And of course it means over $4 billion going back to developers.
Of course, Apple has accomplished all of this through their iPhone SDK, which is less than two years old, and in Jan of 2008 had exactly ZERO 3rd party developers. Notes has APIs with a 20 year history and tens of thousands of existing developers already producing applications. So it's quite reasonable to expect an even faster ramp-up time for a Lotus Store.
And that's just for Notes. Throw Sametime, Connections, Quickr and LotusLive seats into the mix, and the financial opportunities are dizzying.
But even if it weren't an opportunity for Lotus to literally double their business, it's still necessary. Why? Because of the enormous value gained by USERS when they have that many tools at their fingertips. Financial transactions aren't a one-way street. When someone buys something at the Apple App Store, they do so because they want the features provided by that application, and they are better off with it than with the money they gave up to buy it. Spending an average of $4.37 per month, each iPhone user makes their device that much more valuable to them.
So it would be with a Lotus Store. Each time a user buys a piece of software to run in a Notes client, the Notes client gets more valuable to them. They are less likely to abandon the platform. They are more likely to look for new solutions that integrate with their existing application investments. And they're more likely to communicate their success with the client to colleagues. Again, this same effect would exist with all the rest of the Lotus portfolio. Applications make platforms sticky.
Want proof? Watch any iPhone ad from the last 6 months in the US. Have you noticed what they don't advertise anymore? That it's a phone. Who cares? Everybody has cell phones. Cool phones can be had for the price of a cup of coffee. What Apple spends millions upon millions in prime time advertising on these days is that the iPhone is a PLATFORM, and once you have one, you can choose from 133,000 different apps in the store.
How many years has the Lotus community tried to steer the conversation about the Notes client away from email and towards applications? 10? 15? 20? And still we haven't been able to do it. Apple did it in two years, and nobody in the smartphone market even talks about actual voice communication anymore. Consider: people flock towards the iPhone in the US market in spite of the fact that everyone knows it's the WORST CELL PHONE around because AT&T's coverage is so bad! People put up with dropped calls and no signal because there is so much value in the applications on the device! Ah, how we've dreamed of doing that in the email space for the last two decades!
Of course, many readers are lining up all their reasons right now as to why a Lotus Store wouldn't work. Let's take a look at the most common claims...
As an administrator, I don't want to let users dirty my infrastructure with their own applications. I would block this feature.
Seriously? You would deny your users additional value that makes your Notes deployment create better business outcomes, because you're worried that people might start to use their Notes clients too much? I bet you're the kind of admin that puts 200MB quotas on email without any automated archiving and disallows full-text indexing on servers. You probably don't want to implement DAOS because you don't want to set up a transaction log. Frankly, I hope you get outsourced to a SaaS solution in all haste. You'll probably whine that it was Lotus' fault because they didn't do TV ads in your local market, but deep down, you'll know it was because you deserved it.
Apple's AppStore is a consumer market place, and individuals buy the applications. Notes apps are enterprise-centric.
They are TODAY. Perhaps your vision of what the platform can be should evolve to look past the day after tomorrow.
But Notes apps get their value by being deployed to a Domino infrastructure, and most users don't have the right to do that.
Really? TwitNotes, LinkedIn, TripIt, FeedReader, Activities... these all need to be deployed to a Domino infrastructure?
Okay, but what about the various CRM or Project management apps that are built from templates? People share information via replication and that has to aggregate on to a Domino server.
Fine. There is a category of apps that would need to involve Domino administration support to achieve maximum value. Of course, the ISVs that produce these apps could bypass that requirement by offering the data sharing options in the cloud.
Right! And that means integrating the infrastructure!
No it doesn't. Vulcan includes OAuth. We can proxy authentication between infrastructures easily.
Hrmmm.... good point.
Fox alpha.
So how would ISVs manage licensing if individual users are making the purchasing decisions?
I imagine the same way ISVs with individual users handle them on every other platform, by structuring their licensing to allow for individual credit-card purchases.
But what about enterprise applications?
Just because the Lotus Store would need to include an individual stand-alone purchase model doesn't mean that's the ONLY thing it has to support. On the other hand, enterprise application vendors already have established channels, so they (we) know how to reach enterprise customers. The point here is to create a new market, not necessarily to extend one that already exists.
So you're just going to write off all the existing ISVs?
Seriously, now you're just getting tedious. If Elguji wants to come up with a way for someone to drag & drop IdeaJam so that it auto-deploys into a cloud-based infrastructure for sharing, I'm sure they're capable of it. But they might not even need to if they simply abstracted the individual user experience into a local template or plugin, and then maintained the data in a multi-tenant environment. If people are willing to drop $10 in order to set up their own Ideaspace at ideajam.net, then they could invite/allow participants just like any other multi-tenant environment. Bruce and Matt are smart enough to know that this wouldn't be a major technical hurdle.
That seems like a lot of investment, though, doesn't it?
What part of "averaging $75,000 per developer" did you not understand?
So what happens when some IT department refuses to allow users access to the Store?
It's probably unavoidable that Lotus would have to add a policy switch to hide/show the Lotus Store. If I were them, I'd make this switch as coarse as possible. Either people can see the Store or they can't. The day I had decent deployment figures into enterprise customers, I'd run a full page ad in the WSJ saying "Lotus Knows how to maximize the value of your client" and show a picture of the store with a bunch of cool business app icons on it. Then let the CFO walk into the IT director's office with the paper and point to it and ask "how come I don't have THIS!??!"
Okay, you've convinced me. But it doesn't matter because IBM won't ever do it. They won't be the clearing house.
Maybe. But a year ago, you wouldn't have believed that IBM would do product-specific end-user marketing for the Lotus brand, would you? Would you have thought that Lotus would describe their strategic vision in terms of UI screen shots? Of course not. So let's not base things on the assumptions of what IBM would be willing to do, and instead focus on what the real value of having a Lotus store would be. LotusLive would be an ideal vehicle for the Lotus Store, and would have the ancillary effect of exposing more users to the LotusLive offering.
Perhaps after all of this you still don't agree. Feel free to comment on what you think I might be missing. But please start by looking at the opportunity, because even if Lotus can only be a fraction as successful as a company like Apple, a proper Lotus Store would mean hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenues for Lotus, and billions of dollars of value for Lotus customers and ISVs.
Am I saying that it needs to work like the iPhone App Store? Indeed, I am. Why? Let's start with ROI. There are presently about 34 million iPhones and 24 million iPod Touches. As of Jan 15, there are over 133,000 apps in the store from 28,000 different developers, resulting in over 3 BILLION downloads. Analysts estimate that the store generated $250 million in revenues for Apple in December ALONE. That makes the store a $3 billion revenue stream. While this is great for Apple, putting nearly a billion dollars in their coffers each year, think about what a vibrant developer market that also generates. $2.1 billion goes back to the developers who wrote the application, meaning an AVERAGE of $75,000 per developer or about $15,000 per application. Any readers here feel like they could put together a few Notes plugins for $75,000?
According to the numbers we see from IBM, there should be somewhere around double the number of Notes clients in the world. So take all the above figures and simply multiply by two. A successful Lotus Store could mean $2 billion a year for Lotus. And of course it means over $4 billion going back to developers.
Of course, Apple has accomplished all of this through their iPhone SDK, which is less than two years old, and in Jan of 2008 had exactly ZERO 3rd party developers. Notes has APIs with a 20 year history and tens of thousands of existing developers already producing applications. So it's quite reasonable to expect an even faster ramp-up time for a Lotus Store.
And that's just for Notes. Throw Sametime, Connections, Quickr and LotusLive seats into the mix, and the financial opportunities are dizzying.
But even if it weren't an opportunity for Lotus to literally double their business, it's still necessary. Why? Because of the enormous value gained by USERS when they have that many tools at their fingertips. Financial transactions aren't a one-way street. When someone buys something at the Apple App Store, they do so because they want the features provided by that application, and they are better off with it than with the money they gave up to buy it. Spending an average of $4.37 per month, each iPhone user makes their device that much more valuable to them.
So it would be with a Lotus Store. Each time a user buys a piece of software to run in a Notes client, the Notes client gets more valuable to them. They are less likely to abandon the platform. They are more likely to look for new solutions that integrate with their existing application investments. And they're more likely to communicate their success with the client to colleagues. Again, this same effect would exist with all the rest of the Lotus portfolio. Applications make platforms sticky.
Want proof? Watch any iPhone ad from the last 6 months in the US. Have you noticed what they don't advertise anymore? That it's a phone. Who cares? Everybody has cell phones. Cool phones can be had for the price of a cup of coffee. What Apple spends millions upon millions in prime time advertising on these days is that the iPhone is a PLATFORM, and once you have one, you can choose from 133,000 different apps in the store.
How many years has the Lotus community tried to steer the conversation about the Notes client away from email and towards applications? 10? 15? 20? And still we haven't been able to do it. Apple did it in two years, and nobody in the smartphone market even talks about actual voice communication anymore. Consider: people flock towards the iPhone in the US market in spite of the fact that everyone knows it's the WORST CELL PHONE around because AT&T's coverage is so bad! People put up with dropped calls and no signal because there is so much value in the applications on the device! Ah, how we've dreamed of doing that in the email space for the last two decades!
Of course, many readers are lining up all their reasons right now as to why a Lotus Store wouldn't work. Let's take a look at the most common claims...
As an administrator, I don't want to let users dirty my infrastructure with their own applications. I would block this feature.
Seriously? You would deny your users additional value that makes your Notes deployment create better business outcomes, because you're worried that people might start to use their Notes clients too much? I bet you're the kind of admin that puts 200MB quotas on email without any automated archiving and disallows full-text indexing on servers. You probably don't want to implement DAOS because you don't want to set up a transaction log. Frankly, I hope you get outsourced to a SaaS solution in all haste. You'll probably whine that it was Lotus' fault because they didn't do TV ads in your local market, but deep down, you'll know it was because you deserved it.
Apple's AppStore is a consumer market place, and individuals buy the applications. Notes apps are enterprise-centric.
They are TODAY. Perhaps your vision of what the platform can be should evolve to look past the day after tomorrow.
But Notes apps get their value by being deployed to a Domino infrastructure, and most users don't have the right to do that.
Really? TwitNotes, LinkedIn, TripIt, FeedReader, Activities... these all need to be deployed to a Domino infrastructure?
Okay, but what about the various CRM or Project management apps that are built from templates? People share information via replication and that has to aggregate on to a Domino server.
Fine. There is a category of apps that would need to involve Domino administration support to achieve maximum value. Of course, the ISVs that produce these apps could bypass that requirement by offering the data sharing options in the cloud.
Right! And that means integrating the infrastructure!
No it doesn't. Vulcan includes OAuth. We can proxy authentication between infrastructures easily.
Hrmmm.... good point.
Fox alpha.
So how would ISVs manage licensing if individual users are making the purchasing decisions?
I imagine the same way ISVs with individual users handle them on every other platform, by structuring their licensing to allow for individual credit-card purchases.
But what about enterprise applications?
Just because the Lotus Store would need to include an individual stand-alone purchase model doesn't mean that's the ONLY thing it has to support. On the other hand, enterprise application vendors already have established channels, so they (we) know how to reach enterprise customers. The point here is to create a new market, not necessarily to extend one that already exists.
So you're just going to write off all the existing ISVs?
Seriously, now you're just getting tedious. If Elguji wants to come up with a way for someone to drag & drop IdeaJam so that it auto-deploys into a cloud-based infrastructure for sharing, I'm sure they're capable of it. But they might not even need to if they simply abstracted the individual user experience into a local template or plugin, and then maintained the data in a multi-tenant environment. If people are willing to drop $10 in order to set up their own Ideaspace at ideajam.net, then they could invite/allow participants just like any other multi-tenant environment. Bruce and Matt are smart enough to know that this wouldn't be a major technical hurdle.
That seems like a lot of investment, though, doesn't it?
What part of "averaging $75,000 per developer" did you not understand?
So what happens when some IT department refuses to allow users access to the Store?
It's probably unavoidable that Lotus would have to add a policy switch to hide/show the Lotus Store. If I were them, I'd make this switch as coarse as possible. Either people can see the Store or they can't. The day I had decent deployment figures into enterprise customers, I'd run a full page ad in the WSJ saying "Lotus Knows how to maximize the value of your client" and show a picture of the store with a bunch of cool business app icons on it. Then let the CFO walk into the IT director's office with the paper and point to it and ask "how come I don't have THIS!??!"
Okay, you've convinced me. But it doesn't matter because IBM won't ever do it. They won't be the clearing house.
Maybe. But a year ago, you wouldn't have believed that IBM would do product-specific end-user marketing for the Lotus brand, would you? Would you have thought that Lotus would describe their strategic vision in terms of UI screen shots? Of course not. So let's not base things on the assumptions of what IBM would be willing to do, and instead focus on what the real value of having a Lotus store would be. LotusLive would be an ideal vehicle for the Lotus Store, and would have the ancillary effect of exposing more users to the LotusLive offering.
Perhaps after all of this you still don't agree. Feel free to comment on what you think I might be missing. But please start by looking at the opportunity, because even if Lotus can only be a fraction as successful as a company like Apple, a proper Lotus Store would mean hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenues for Lotus, and billions of dollars of value for Lotus customers and ISVs.
Comments
Posted by Devin Olson At 08:33:14 PM On 01/24/2010 | - Website - |
It's a pretty big vision for something that currently amounts to a gleam in a PM's eye and a few storyboard mock-ups. I've postulated that an Ap-store model for consumer PC apps is long overdue, but I'm not sure I agree with you that such a thing is likely to succeed in an IT controlled Notes infrastructure. Also, IBM is notoriously bad at doing business of any kind at the consumer level.
There is, however, nothing to stop you (as Group) from creating such a thing to see if you can get enough buy in on it.
Posted by Andrew Pollack At 09:02:12 PM On 01/24/2010 | - Website - |
I've wondered, with IBM getting more involved with OpenNTF, if something like a user-exposed App Store could be a possibility.
The barriers seemed unsurmountable with the traditional Big Blue -- they just didn't seem to know how to play the game. The administrative concerns were obviously #1, the complexity of the UI and cohesiveness of products another, and the fact that IBM didn't really care about you unless you had 1000+ seats made the entire concept of an App Store something out-of-their-element.
But what I saw at LS (from the sidelines -- unfortunately I couldn't be there in person) was surprising, and made me think that there is a REAL chance of something like that happening.
Hopefully they're not too late. It's all about the apps. People get drawn in to any platform for various reasons, but until there's an app involved, they can get out without too much hassle. "Applications make platforms sticky" is the truth. How many Google Apps are being deployed each day? Each line of new code makes it that much harder to move.
But in comparing with the iPhone, don't forget another piece of the package contributing to Apple's success -- the hardware. They were first to market with a slick UX, which is what got people in the door.
Notes/Vulcan/whatever from Lotus won't have that piece (though a mobile Vulcan platform might come close) so a better comparison might be Facebook apps. I haven't looked at those numbers though, and there's obviously more of an entertainment-oriented slant on their apps, but that removes the first-to-market hardware piece from the equation.
Posted by Erik Brooks At 09:11:18 PM On 01/24/2010 | - Website - |
Posted by Erik Brooks At 09:13:39 PM On 01/24/2010 | - Website - |
Posted by Peter Presnell At 09:22:40 PM On 01/24/2010 | - Website - |
@2 - Yes, it's true that IBM would have to break through to the idea that they can't sell individual units. I wish I could figure out why they have such an institutional block on this. But if anyone could break through that, it's the combination of Rhodin, Picciano, Rennie and Poulley.
There would be a nice side effect of a past negative, y'know. If the Lotus Store were on by default, and admins could turn it off via policy, Lotus would probably be helped out by all the lazy admins who don't bother to set up policies.
@3 - I agree that it's hard to claim too close a parallel to Apple's success. I use the high water mark to give an idea of potential, but certainly Facebook apps and Steam might make better examples of what the real results would be. Facebook wouldn't be what we know today if not for Mafia Wars and Farmville. So it's big for the platform and big for the users, even if it only generates revenues in the tens of millions.
@4 - The fact that the iPhone is a consumer device just means that individuals would make the purchasing decisions. Why would that be any different if you could drag an icon to your sidebar and get charged 99 cents to put a sudoku plugin in your Notes client? Have some vision here.... the fact that there aren't a lot of individually targeted apps today is due more to the lack of channel than the lack of opportunity.
Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 09:45:56 PM On 01/24/2010 | - Website - |
Posted by Adam Gartenberg At 09:55:38 PM On 01/24/2010 | - Website - |
IBM Travelstar, Deskstar, and Reliastar drives were the best in the industry for a long time. They could sell them in lots of thousands to Dell et al. profitably. They couldn't succeed in selling them to consumers profitably. The company, as an institution, just doesn't work well that way.
The Thinkpad was (maybe still is) the best PC laptop on the market. Lenovo sells them at a great success. IBM lost money on them to consumers.
IBM is about the big consultative sale of massive systems with a big sales cycle that carry the huge teams behind each sale as part of the overhead. App stores just don't fit their model at all.
Posted by Andrew Pollack At 09:59:28 PM On 01/24/2010 | - Website - |
The bigger issue that I am having a hard time wrapping my head around is: how is IBM going to attract NEW developers to the fold when there are already proven platforms like AIR out there? If the future is the cloud, web services, html5, css3, etc. then the client could just as easily be created in Google Gears or any other back-end agnostic UI development tool.
There are many challenges ahead, not the least of which is making the Vulcan dream come alive without bloating the already obese Notes client any further.
Posted by Brent Henry At 10:06:42 PM On 01/24/2010 | - Website - |
In about 1/10th the amount of time it took me to figure out how to re-factor "show single category" using Xpages I was able to create a live text widget. The widget recognizes any persons name anywhere in any Lotus Notes database and allows them to search our external cloud based CRM for the name with one click.
Have you received an email from a customer and want to quickly check their info? One click.
Want to update all you social networks from within your familiar email interface? One click.
Are widgets hard to install? Drag and drop. Never mind the admin can push it down to you. No Clicks.
Hard to implement? No.
Sexy development involved? No.
Major end user impact? Yes.
Productivity increased? Yes.
Would I have bought it from the Lotus App Store? In a heartbeat.
Elijah
Posted by Elijah Lapson At 10:19:10 PM On 01/24/2010 | - Website - |
Bring it on . . .
Posted by John Stockbridge At 10:20:05 PM On 01/24/2010 | - Website - |
Posted by Dan Sickles At 10:57:57 PM On 01/24/2010 | - Website - |
However, I am not convinced that an Lotus App Store is necessarily THE missing ingredient for Vulcan.
If I understand it, Vulcan is not just about the applications, but also the integration of back-end services such as analytics to filter what gets presented in what context to each user, normalization of data so that the same type of data input/output can be synchronized to multiple back-end systems (e.g. Sales Management, Cognos, Order Processing, HR & Payroll applications etc.).
I really don't see the integration of what the user sees on the glass with the complexity and differences with back-end systems, as something that will be purchased through the Lotus App Store after someone presents their credit card. If it was this simple as that, then entire Systems Integration Industry and Services arms of Vendors would be out of work.
Part of the appeal of Vulcan is that it will allow a mixture of current and future technologies from a mixture of internal, private cloud and public cloud systems into a single user oriented desktop. This is also a way for all of the different Lotus software products to be integrated along with internally developed application, public cloud solutions and third-party application solutions into a single cohesive desktop environment. Whether it be in the Notes Rich Client or a Web browser or a mobile applicance, the user will see a single collaborative platform at the glass.
Posted by Ian Randall At 11:06:31 PM On 01/24/2010 | - Website - |
Posted by Richard Schwartz At 11:09:08 PM On 01/24/2010 | - Website - |
@8 - I'm not sure, but I believe IBM might be the largest manufacturer of retail point-of-sale systems in the US. Is this really any different? They're acting as a transaction processing channel between Lotus customers and ISVs. How is that different than acting as the transaction processing channel between a big box retailer and a consumer? Maybe because they are the distribution channel to, but IBM is already a pretty big distribution channel for a lot of software.
Maybe the retail POS team needs to take the reins here.
@9 - "how is IBM going to attract NEW developers to the fold when there are already proven platforms like AIR out there?" By pointing out that they have an install base of 100 million users in identifiable business demographics. What are the handful of things that you pretty much know for sure about a Notes user? They're employed. They use the software at their place of business. They have a built-in PKI. They're mostly likely on a laptop. These can be important insights. Hell, even just the fact that any plugin is able to discover an authenticated NAME for the user instead of "killshot245" could be a big deal in the right business model.
But they really don't have to attract NEW developers right away. The list of unique contributors to OpenNTF.org is about 1000 people, and not one of them expected to make a dime from their efforts. Imagine when you add the incentive to MAKE MONEY. There are tens if not hundreds of thousands of developers on the platform. We *already* outnumber iPhone developers!
@12 - I agree that real presence awareness would be required, which is why I took the time to describe one possible scenario at the end of the post. But really, that draw is why it would need to be INTEGRAL to the product. Not an install option, not an add-on, but something that appears in the sidebar right next to the RSS reader and the Sametime contact list. Just like the Widget Catalog does if you turn it on, except this should take extra effort to turn OFF.
If IBM can enable email recall by default, they can sure as hell display the Lotus Store by default.
Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 11:17:49 PM On 01/24/2010 | - Website - |
Not every application needs to be the all-singing, all-dancing corporate dashboard of the future. Sometimes good software can do something small and simple really really well, and people will gladly pay for that.
@14 - EXACTLY. We're far too used to thinking in terms of Notes 7 application models, where the success of the app is 100% based on the infrastructure that it's deployed to. But the leading stuff in the plugins space is leading precisely because it has NOTHING to do with Domino infrastructure. You can use the tool while having nothing whatsoever to do with the user's Domino mail servers.
However, the truly savvy ISVs will offer a way to bridge that gap too. "Dear CIO, we have noticed that over 1000 users from the Very Big Corporation of America have installed our SuperEZ Travel Booking plugin in your company. Perhaps you would prefer to implement our on-premises solution, which can offer better integration and save you money. Your users clearly already like it, and with the Domino-based solution, you can make sure that all travel is booked in accordance with your corporate policy and practices.
Signed,
The really smart guys at SuperEZ Travel Booking"
Everybody wins.
Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 11:27:50 PM On 01/24/2010 | - Website - |
It's a great idea and I hope they do it. But if they do it, they've got to do it right. If not, then they should stay far away, as it would just be a huge failure otherwise. Someone at the top would have to make an iron clad commitment to doing it right and stay the course no matter what.
Posted by John Vaughan At 11:33:35 PM On 01/24/2010 | - Website - |
I can't think of anyone more perfectly positioned and motivated to ram this through the IBM bureaucracy.
Of course, if he did it, it might need to be larger than Lotus. But not much larger.
But think about it... Mike heading up business software in general, Bob heading up software sales, Alistair heading up Lotus, and LotusLive having the cloud presence and desperately trying to figure out how to build a partner channel that it can make successful?
Methinks the stars are aligned on this one.
Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 11:45:19 PM On 01/24/2010 | - Website - |
I wasn't saying that a Lotus App Store wasn't a good thing, as I actually think that it is.
And it should be implemnented to make it easier for all users to source good solutions for all types of software that run in the Lotus platform. That includes making it easier to acquire software from Lotus AND Business Partners. The Lotus App Store should be a single place that anyone can go to obtain all software.
I was just saying that I don't agree that it's the critical missing ingredient from Vulcan.
Posted by Ian Randall At 01:27:12 AM On 01/25/2010 | - Website - |
TwitNotes, LinkedIn, TripIt, FeedReader. I am aware that those exist but never saw them live at a customer site (although it does not matter much what I see and what not).
There are a lot of app stores nowadays but a lot of them are not successful. It seems Apple has the advantage that no matter what they do they do people will follow them. I cannot say the same for IBM.
So am I against a Lotus App Store? Over the years I have learned that in a lot of cases you normally cannot convince someone that his idea will fail. In fact they will not stop until they tried (and in many cases burned their money and resources).
Posted by Henning Heinz At 05:57:53 AM On 01/25/2010 | - Website - |
today it costs too much information to search the internet what is available in the domino market.
especially for small, young, innovative companies such an appstore would be a great entrance in selling their products.
how many Iphone applications would have been sold without their appstore?
Posted by Patrick Kwinten At 07:17:25 AM On 01/25/2010 | - Website - |
@20 - Yeah, you're right. Corporate IT policies, delays in rollout cycles, and user resentment of old Notes versions means that everyone hates Notes. The Lotus Store wouldn't really have a customer base. IBM shouldn't bother. In fact, why bother with another release of Notes at all? Nobody likes it and even if they did, their admins wouldn't let them install it. IBM should just save a ton of money by re-tasking the 800 engineers working on the product to the Websphere middleware team. I hear they make lots of money.
Plus, we have the additional advantage that NOT doing something always succeeds! We don't even have to convince someone that it would fail. If we don't work on something, it won't happen, and we will definitely accomplish what we set out to do: NOTHING!
Great idea. I'm sure it will enrich us all.
@22 - How many iphones would have been sold without their AppStore? It's the only thing Apple actively markets anymore. They don't even talk about the device being an MP3 player or a phone. Maybe they talk a little about it running a web browser, but every million-dollar prime time ad I see, people are playing games or flinging images from phone to phone.
Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 08:56:25 AM On 01/25/2010 | - Website - |
My point is that we will likely find a lot more success with the concept if we fit into the existing purchase model that many of our customers have, which is not one in which users spend out of their own pockets to enhance their work e-mail/collaboration system, or one in which it would be a royal pain to try to get reimbursed for a $10 purchase on the corporate card when going around the existing purchase processes.
While we should definitely allow for such purchases, *also* allowing a corp. IT department to purchase apps for optional download for their users (e.g., allowing them to go to lotusappstore.com/generalmotors to find pre-approved, pre-paid apps) would go a long way towards building awareness and usage of apps.
Posted by Adam Gartenberg At 09:25:18 AM On 01/25/2010 | - Website - |
Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 09:29:20 AM On 01/25/2010 | - Website - |
While I like the idea of an app store, the problem is even now, so few customers use the sidebar, even after repeated efforts in some cases.
That aside, in time this may change, as an admin I have no issue with widgets, but if/when they start causing support issues, that is a problem. And it will/does happen already today. But the chance to enhance a person's daily routine is worth it as long as we have control over widgets.
Posted by Keith Brooks At 09:41:37 AM On 01/25/2010 | - Website - |
2) I have never purchased an app from a store other than on the iPhone
3) Salesforce.com have tried this with the AppExchange with little success (a pure web play)
4) It's the combination of slick technology (iPhone) paired with a state-of-the-art App Store that have made the Apple store a success.
5) Beyond widgets how could we deal with classic enterprise apps?
6) I have never bought an app on Facebook nor anything on Facebook.
7) I can't see this working in Notes the way we know it but for Vulcan - yes.
8) Let's discuss on a podcast - say when.
Bruce
Posted by Bruce Elgort At 10:13:48 AM On 01/25/2010 | - Website - |
I never said IBM should do nothing but I do think IBM cannot build an App store and it would not work anyway (I tried to explain why I believe that). That is my opinion. It does not fit yours. Is this really a problem? I don't think so.
If I have to chose between doing nothing or building an App Store then I am all for the App Store too.
Or putting 800 people into the Websphere division? I never said that either but Websphere does not have an App Store and seems to be working well for IBM.
Maybe if Steve Mills retires (he must be near 60 so this is at least not completely impossible).
Posted by Henning Heinz At 11:24:02 AM On 01/25/2010 | - Website - |
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Posted by Chris Miller At 04:22:55 PM On 01/25/2010 | - Website - |
The designer is free if you don't hit a server, the client could be the same way. I have a lot of apps that I use that are on a server for backup only. I just helped an auditor that uses the notes client by itself and my CRM app.
Posted by Bruce Lill At 04:46:28 PM On 01/25/2010 | - Website - |
Good call. I've been saying the same thing. I've also been saying that worskpace should look like the new iTunes chicklets, too.
As an update site with the current design it's too cumbersome for a plugin. Just try to automate the OpenNTF winner (File Manager) as a plugin rather than a widget easily into an update site. Especially if your user-base is predominately Mac.
However, as a widget, it's gold. In the short term, widgets win hands down for deployment ease. You (as user or admin) create the widget, add it to a server catalog, set it to a category, e.g. MW (Mindwatering is ours), and then the policy takes care of the rest to push it down to the Standard clients. This would work now from any kind of download widget catalog where you can subscribe and purchase/unlock.
It would work for updatesites with some improvements. (e.g. delete one feature/plugin and not purge the whole site), a monthly subscription for various sites would also work. Pay $0 for OpenNTF's update site (in beta), pay $100/yr for level one, etc. If they only buy one year, it just means they don't get the next version. How is that different than Passport really? On the other hand, Lotus could use an update site, to upgrade all of us. Not bad to potentially upgrade 100% of your base in just a few days.
So when do we start?
Posted by Tripp Black At 11:35:07 PM On 01/25/2010 | - Website - |
Posted by Carl Tyler At 12:39:24 AM On 01/26/2010 | - Website - |
My reply was merely observing that all the reasons you offer aren't really reasons not to do a Lotus Store. They're reasons to not bother continuing to develop the Notes client.
@31 - I'd like to think the original post gives a 50-point bonus to the reader. But perhaps that's arrogant of me.
Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 01:16:19 AM On 01/26/2010 | - Website - |
Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 01:17:34 AM On 01/26/2010 | - Website - |
Posted by Mus At 08:52:27 AM On 01/26/2010 | - Website - |
@31/33 - After Lotus did the move to Eclipse I wondered why they didn't put the Notes client into an update site. It seemed like the next logical step to me, and would give them the opportunity to upgrade pieces instead of the whole thing. [n.b. I'm not suggesting they do that, merely saying they could.]
As an addendum to @34 above, I'm okay with users installing Notes apps as long as the company is behind the idea that these apps are not officially sanctioned or supported. You install it, you support it. If it breaks your Notes install IT will fix it, but only on the provision you don't reinstall the offending app. And let's not forget the compliance guidelines in some workplaces. That would have to be taken into consideration somehow.
Posted by Charles Robinson At 10:25:35 AM On 01/26/2010 | - Website - |
First I would like to say thanks for a thoughtful post, which has certainly sparked off a very lively conversation. I agree with your basic idea that it would be great for the vitality of the Notes/Domino market if there was an App Store in much the same way as the iPhone App Store or the Android Market.
However, you need to distinguish between the different types of application which might get distributed through the app store:
1 - Simple samples which show off the SDK (similar to the popular Flashlight Applications for Android and iPhone) - nobody wants to charge for these and OpenNTF is an excellent vehicle to publish them.
2 - Widgets whose value derives not from the widget itself but from the platforms for which they enable smoother integration (similar to the TripIT widget for Linked.in which is only valuable if you already use both TripIT and LinkedIN). There is not a single venue for hosting these right now, but since most of them will be free it should be easy for someone to build an index
3 - Applications that are useful to end-users, but not relevant to large enterprises. In general enlightened enterprises should allow deployment of such applications to be an end-user decision unless they contained malware. Building a catalog for such applications could be complex becuase you might want to consider billing and or approval of individual applications within an enterprise
4 - Applications which are relevant for large enterprises and where enterprises would want to buy a license for all of their desktops. The billing for such applications tend to be complex and negotiated ona cas-by-case basis.
As you can see it is complex.
IBM would love to see a successful Notes application store, but this could be a great opportunity for an enterprising start up since (unlike Apple) IBM does not insist on getting a cut in the revenue from all Notes applications
Brian
Posted by Brian O'Donovan At 12:03:35 PM On 01/26/2010 | - Website - |
Posted by Charles Robinson At 12:59:36 PM On 01/26/2010 | - Website - |
Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 01:09:33 PM On 01/26/2010 | - Website - |
Best topic in a long time... thanks for the chance to add my 2 cents.
After the Wave video came out last spring, my takeaway thought was that eventually we would have a Universal Inbox client (we chose the same words) that would handle multiple protocols and self-provisioning apps, and that sooner or later every vendor would push (or be dragged) in that direction. IBM sells seats. IBM has Notes as a solid foundation with an older collaboration technology (email) that won't die anytime soon, and a lot of goodwill and seats to go along with that foundation.
Their challenge is to survive transition from today's Notes and to make Notes/Vulcan the Universal Inbox of choice for the corporate world. The competition will be fierce. The Apple story rings true... if IBM wants to continue to be in the business of selling seats, compelling apps are a necessity.
Merits of the technical platform aside, if IBM doesn't set up an app store, I fear all will be lost to the competitor who gets there "the firstest with the mostest".
A new "arms race"?
Posted by Harris At 06:18:11 PM On 01/26/2010 | - Website - |
Lets face it, Notes/Domino is secure because of the infrastructure, yet when a user inside the environment starts using an application, there are API features that we don't want running wild in the environment, and the user may not comprehend the danger there.
Widgets and such, less of an issue as far as I know. I just think a control to limit certain types of App downloads would put Admins minds at ease.
I am ready to get this going. When do we start? IBM, while they probably should consider it, likely won't. It will be up to us or some other enterprising individual/group to get this done.
Posted by Mike Kinder At 11:18:50 PM On 02/02/2010 | - Website - |
I see tremendous potential for taking Notes to the next level in terms of plugin/extension creativity. Also, I think it will certainly help the partner ecosystem. "If company X writes this good of a sidebar plugin, maybe they can help us with that mission-critical XPages redesign we're working on?"
One of the first things that came to mind though is how the Lotus App Store should/would protect against malicious Eclipse plugins. We're talking about executing unknown Java code on logged-in desktops with authenticated Notes users on the corporate network - a malicious plugin could do all sorts of damage and/or spying.
Some customers restrict clients to only allow plugins which are signed with trusted certificates. Should IBM decide to vet all the Lotus App Store submissions, perhaps they could sign the artifacts with a certificate that Notes clients could trust.
But I'm raising concerns mainly about plugins as we know them today. Apps delivered to run in sandbox environments, like let's say HTML5, would not have such concerns.
Perhaps adoption of the Lotus App Store will be viral within organizations, starting with the power users and spreading from there until management takes notice. Save an executive from performing a repetitive task, and you will get noticed
Posted by Hunter Medney At 12:21:47 AM On 02/04/2010 | - Website - |