Getting a big charge out of Domino
Source: Computer Reseller News
Computer Reseller News via Individual Inc. : The recent Notes
Domino developers conference in sunny southern California was
festive and jazzy enough to remind me of the days when PCs
were fun.
Remember that? When even database devcons-for FoxPro, for
Paradox, even for dBase, for God's sake-were actually
interesting and charged with emotion?
About 1,900 attendees came in to touch and feel Domino.
If Lotus/IBM can follow through and actually market this
Domino technology, they might have something here. Of course,
many pundits say this is a big "if." Remember all those jokes
about how IBM was selling sushi as cold, dead fish?
I do see some early good signs. The adspots featuring
actor/comedian Dennis Leary now running on national TV are a
step in the right direction. They're funny, and they get the point
across that Domino is a way to get real work done on the
Internet. Leary mocks a couple of Gen Xers sitting at their
expensive Thinkpads doing nothing but browsing. With Domino,
he said, they could be getting "real work done." Domino
facilitates "raw, in your face, naked capitalism," Leary says.
The potential downside is the ads risks making the Internet seem
stodgy and "unfun." After all, the initial appeal of the Internet
wasn't only that you could send E-mail, but that it opened up
whole new worlds, site after site, on which you could waste
time. Microsoft, with its gadzillion-dollar Free MSN campaign
plays into that pretty well.
Domino also straddles a fine line. Because it will continue to
support the alphabet soup of network protocols-X.400,
SPX/IPX, etc., etc., etc.-some perceive it as beholden to its
legacy roots. Microsoft Exchange Server faces the same
dilemma.
Meanwhile, upstart Netscape Communications Corp. is touting
its all-Internet- protocol SuiteSpot as the only way to go in the
Age of the Internet.
What about legacy databases? What about your old E-mail
systems? Unclear.
Industry observers say the Lotus story of multi-protocol support
is actually quite strong and, in a perfect world, would be well
accepted.
"In the transition from minicomputers to PCs, there was a strong
logical argument for the use of terminals. The point is logic
doesn't always win," says David Marshak, analyst with The
Patricia Seybold Office Computing Group in Boston.
The question now is whether people will embrace Domino even
though it supports all the major relevant protocols, or whether
they will go the full Internet route in the belief that something
like SuitesSpot is more open.
Meanwhile, as VARs and users sort out that issue, the rhetoric
between Lotus and Netscape is getting superheated.
Lotus execs fume that Netscape has misrepresented Notes
pricing and claim that a Notes SMP box, supporting Notes
Desktop or Notes Mail clients, is quite price- competitive with
Netscape.
They also claim Netscape charges a 40 percent premium as
processors are added to the server.
A Netscape spokeswoman disputes that contention. "With
SuiteSpot, you get to chose five out of seven servers and can run
those servers on the same box or distribute them around. So
while [the prices Lotus quotes] are on our price list, less than 1
percent of our users buy SuiteSpot that way," she said. With
Domino, on the other hand, "they insist you run it on a single
server," she added.
How is the battle between SuiteSpot, Exchange Server and
Notes shaking out? Send your thoughts to bdarrow@cmp.com.
Copyright 1996 CMP Media Inc.
<<Computer Reseller News -- 11-25-96, p. 89>> |
