{"id":89670,"date":"2018-12-10T21:08:25","date_gmt":"2018-12-11T02:08:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rbachnet.wwwmi3-ss40.a2hosted.com\/index.php\/"},"modified":"2024-05-24T18:42:53","modified_gmt":"2024-05-24T22:42:53","slug":"please-take-notes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rbach.net\/index.php\/please-take-notes\/","title":{"rendered":"Please Take Lotus Notes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Please<\/a>In a move to free up some cash and make room for its $34 billion acquisition<\/a> of Red Hat Inc.<\/a> (RHT<\/a>),\u00a0IBM<\/a><\/strong> (IBM<\/a>) is selling<\/strong> off its enterprise software business for $1.8 billion<\/strong> to HCL Technologies<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"PleaseHCL Technologies<\/strong> is global services company valued at $8 billion. India-based<\/strong> HCL operates out of 43 countries, serving the financial services, manufacturing, telecommunications, media, publishing, entertainment, retail, and other industries.<\/p>\n

Lotus Notes<\/h3>\n

The sale includes most of IBM\u2019s enterprise business<\/strong>, including Lotus Notes<\/strong><\/a> and Domino<\/strong><\/a> collaboration software, network management software Tivoli<\/a>, and other titles. Lotus Notes<\/a> was developed<\/a> by Mitch Kapor<\/a> in 1989 and was a pioneering enterprise software tool that swept the market with features such as email and collaboration workspaces<\/strong>, that we now take for granted.<\/p>\n

\"Lotus<\/a>Lotus, founded in 1982, <\/span>rose to fame in 1983 with the Lotus 1-2-3<\/strong><\/a> spreadsheet, which drove the popularity of freshly minted IBM PC<\/a>. IBM took over Lotus for the then astounding sum of $3.52 billion<\/a>. IBM looked to the Lotus acquisition to change its white-shirt-and-tie culture to embrace the MTV age<\/strong><\/a> and the new Internet<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Lotus Notes and Domino ranked among the top client-server groupware and email systems in the 1990s, competing head-on against Microsoft Exchange<\/strong>. While Microsoft successfully migrated Exchange to Office 365 in the cloud, Notes and Domino largely missed the cloud era.<\/p>\n

\"Lotus<\/a>Big Blue acquired Tivoli<\/strong><\/a> for $743 million in 1996. It ranked among the leading IT management software providers, competing against CA Technologies<\/a>, BMC<\/a>, and HP<\/a> in the 1990s and early 2000s. Each of those companies<\/a> stumbled<\/a> in recent years<\/a> \u2014 opening the door for ServiceNow<\/a> to disrupt major portions of the market.<\/p>\n

The IBM world-view<\/h3>\n

The HCL deal highlights IBM\u2019s failure to navigate the shift from client-server to SaaS<\/a><\/strong>. Lotus Notes stayed a client-server system and lost business to Amazon Web Services (AWS<\/strong>) and Microsoft Azure<\/strong> and Google<\/strong> Cloud Platform.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Now that the business has been lost, IBM is moving in a different direction. Older software like Lotus Notes and Domino don\u2019t really play a role in the new IBM world-view<\/strong>. One IBM solution provider told<\/a> CRN<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> “I can understand getting rid of Lotus Notes and Domino Microsoft Office 365 and Google Apps are killing the hell out of Lotus Notes.<\/em> ”<\/p>\n

In addition to Lotus Notes, Domino, and Tivoli, the IBM Software asset sale to HCL includes:<\/p>\n