August 5 2010 Thursday
Google Wave is dead - long live Lotus Notes?
Yesterday Google killed Wave. Google mention several reasons, the primary being:
The question is how did even the mighty Google get this so, so wrong? I have lamented on Wave on This Week in Lotus and on Google not understanding enterprises on the blog lately, where I basically laid into them for not thinking their product strategy through. Was Wave bad? Honestly I can't say. I used it all of 5 minutes and never went back. No one else I knew was on it, so it was worthless to me. Basically people "just didn't get" Wave as a product, or a process. This is not news though, as for decades IBM Lotus has struggled to define what Lotus Notes and Domino are. See Wave and Lotus Notes are very similar. Both are (to quote Google about Wave):
Still today, 20 years after the first public release, Lotus Notes is radical. So radical in fact, that most IT managers and CIO's don't understand the true power of "real collaboration". This is the reason "migrations" are done to Exchange. Lotus Notes and Google Wave are so far ahead of their time that it hurts the heads of those managers and executives who insist that IT and businesses can run on email and spreadsheets. Maybe even IBM don't realize what they have here......
Times are a-changing people. Social software is going to be as pervasive as email in the generation to come. Email and spreadsheets won't cut it anymore. As a manager it is your job to bring business value and using innovative tools (and yes, even after 20 years Lotus Notes is still one of the most innovative tools out there). But if you resist, and you will resist because you are "old school" then you will cost your organization a generation of innovation.
Google has killed Wave. IBM has invested millions into IBM Lotus Notes and Domino. What are you waiting for? As Gartner's Matt Cain (at the 2009 Gartner Portal, Content and Collaboration Summit) said:
Google just got spanked. IBM are, and will continue to be, the undisputed leader in this space.
Given all the media hype on Wave on the likes of CNN, MSNBC and NPR if IBM play their cards right they could have a marketing coup with tons of free publicity. I won't hold my breath though. Still maybe Lotus Knows Google Waved Goodbye to Radical Collaboration.
Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked
The question is how did even the mighty Google get this so, so wrong? I have lamented on Wave on This Week in Lotus and on Google not understanding enterprises on the blog lately, where I basically laid into them for not thinking their product strategy through. Was Wave bad? Honestly I can't say. I used it all of 5 minutes and never went back. No one else I knew was on it, so it was worthless to me. Basically people "just didn't get" Wave as a product, or a process. This is not news though, as for decades IBM Lotus has struggled to define what Lotus Notes and Domino are. See Wave and Lotus Notes are very similar. Both are (to quote Google about Wave):
[allow for a] radically different kind of communication
Still today, 20 years after the first public release, Lotus Notes is radical. So radical in fact, that most IT managers and CIO's don't understand the true power of "real collaboration". This is the reason "migrations" are done to Exchange. Lotus Notes and Google Wave are so far ahead of their time that it hurts the heads of those managers and executives who insist that IT and businesses can run on email and spreadsheets. Maybe even IBM don't realize what they have here......
Times are a-changing people. Social software is going to be as pervasive as email in the generation to come. Email and spreadsheets won't cut it anymore. As a manager it is your job to bring business value and using innovative tools (and yes, even after 20 years Lotus Notes is still one of the most innovative tools out there). But if you resist, and you will resist because you are "old school" then you will cost your organization a generation of innovation.
Google has killed Wave. IBM has invested millions into IBM Lotus Notes and Domino. What are you waiting for? As Gartner's Matt Cain (at the 2009 Gartner Portal, Content and Collaboration Summit) said:
E-Mail becomes the collaboration console: The future of E-Mail is....gasp....Lotus Notes
Google just got spanked. IBM are, and will continue to be, the undisputed leader in this space.
Given all the media hype on Wave on the likes of CNN, MSNBC and NPR if IBM play their cards right they could have a marketing coup with tons of free publicity. I won't hold my breath though. Still maybe Lotus Knows Google Waved Goodbye to Radical Collaboration.
