Can IBM Take On Google, Microsoft With iNotes? 171
CWmike writes to mention that IBM has launched LotusLive iNotes, a system designed to compete with GMail and Exchange that offers email, calendaring, and contact management. "Pricing starts at $3 per user per month, undercutting Google Apps Premier Edition, which costs $50 per user per year.
IBM is aiming the software at large enterprises that want to migrate an on-premise e-mail system to SaaS (software as a service), particularly for users who aren't tied to a desk, such as retail workers. It is also hoping to win business from smaller companies interested in on-demand software but with concerns about security and service outages, such as those suffered by Gmail in recent months. LotusLive iNotes is based on technology IBM purchased from the Hong Kong company Outblaze."
If LotusLive iNotes is in any way based on (Score:5, Insightful)
Lotus Notes, no way in hell will it succeed. Lotus Notes was pure crap, and I say that as an ex-Lotus employee.
Re:It's about Local Control (Score:3, Insightful)
Storing confidential data in the "cloud" (how I hate that term) is a ...
Lots of users say they hate using the term "the cloud", but they continue to use it anyway. Why not just say "other peoples servers"?
Bwahahhahahahahah (Score:5, Insightful)
. . .hah haha hah hah.
Oh that was good.
Lotus Notes, iNotes, and all over it's incarnations is the most convoluted and insane system I've ever used (and this is after 4 years of admining a 400+ user Lotus Domino server). I've often heard the joke that Emacs would be a great OS if only it included a decent text editor. I've never felt it applied since I actually like emacs for text editing, but boy does the same type of line apply to Notes: it'd be a great OS if only it included a decent email client.
Re:If LotusLive iNotes is in any way based on (Score:4, Insightful)
Google brings out Wave and IBM clones Gmail?
Re:If LotusLive iNotes is in any way based on (Score:3, Insightful)
Lotus 123 is pure crap, too. Long ago, before IBM got hold of it, it was a good, arguably the best, spreadsheet. But last year I started getting Lotus spreadsheets, so I had them get me a copy (I have to use Quattro and Excel as well). The damned peogram loaded a ton of crap, and had the ton of crap loaded on startup, even though I only use the spreadsheet portion and then only once every few months.
I had to do a lot of googling to find out how to make the crap stop starting at startup. It wanted to become a shell for Windows! A shell for a shell, what an amusing concept.
My mouse's scroll wheel doesn't even work in the damned thing. Of the three spreadsheets I have the extreme mispleasure of using, I hate Lotus' the most. Damn but I look forward to retirement!
Cell phones (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:If LotusLive iNotes is in any way based on (Score:3, Insightful)
Gmail:Exchange::iNotes:Lotus? (Score:3, Insightful)
What Gmail is to MS Exchange is what iNotes is to Lotus. It's a web interface for a lotus system.
Except that Gmail doesn't have the baggage of being associated with Microsoft or Lotus, and a name like "LotusLive iNotes" does. Even though they based it on Outblaze, if they put any Lotus back-end architecture into it since then, there's a good chance at it being a rolling failure waiting to happen. The luckiest thing that could happen to a LotusLive iNotes user is that it turns out the programmers have still kept it far away from any code from any other Lotus product whatsoever.
Re:If LotusLive iNotes is in any way based on (Score:3, Insightful)
Lotus Notes isn't an email program. It's an application development platform with multiple backend databases, networking interfaces plus a scripting language, a plugin system and a ton of other stuff. That it reads and writes email is just proof of JWZ's assertion.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes