Gregg Eldred

Comment posted by Tim E Brown02/20/2006 12:06:08 PM
Homepage: http://tbrown.hopto.org

That sucks!
Keep us all posted on Ed's response, if any.

-Tim E Brown
Columbus, Ohio

Comment posted by Philip Storry02/20/2006 01:18:32 PM
Homepage: http://www.not-so-rapid.com

Oh, I think you'll find that antivirus and spam protection are now the least of their worries.

Who's backing up their email? How rapidly can they get it restored?

Those are the first two questions I have. To be absolutely honest, I have a whole load more. Like what the SLA is like on their internet connection, and how much any downtime on it in will cost them in business terms when they can't read their mail.
Or what the SLA is on this "free" mail service?

And how much space do they get in a free POP3 mailbox, anyway? Will a webmail interface make it easier or harder to manage their mail, and therefore more or less likely to hit that limit?

And when someone decides to connect a POP3 client to their mailbox to get around their mailbox size issue, what happens when their desktop dies and loses all the mail they downloaded? (Have they even considered that?)

When this webmail interface is found to have an XSS bug which allows nasty things to happen, how quickly will it be upgraded to the patched version by their ISP? (If at all?) In fact, what's the SLA for those upgrades? How do they request new features?

Basically, there's no such thing as a free lunch. They've just assumed a lot more risk than they had before their switch, and have effectively agreed to much lower level of service to boot.

But I doubt they care. They're obviously oblivious to SLAs, and the proper concerns of IT in a business environment. What they want is something pretty which appears to work. To be absolutely honest, this is the kind of customer who, through apathy and a short-sighted view of IT costs, gives ANY product a bad name.

If they had switched to Exchange a few years ago, then I'd bet that they'd never patch it or upgrade that either. Outlook is actually pretty secure these days, but they wouldn't ever find that out, because they'd just see the upgrades & patches as costs, not as investments. They'd be perpetuating the worst Outlook half-truths just as they recently perpetuated the worst Notes half-truths by using R4.x.

I doubt Ed could ever have done much here. I doubt anyone could have done much here. The owner of this organisation wants a free lunch, and no product can really get over that kind of mentality.

Yes, it's a pity to lose a Notes/Domino customer. But on the other hand, they weren't a very good customer. I doubt I'll mourn this "loss" - frankly, I see it as a gain, or a neutral transaction at worst.

Sorry to hear you don't see it my way though. I hope we can find an understanding.

Comment posted by Gregg Eldred02/21/2006 09:50:15 AM
Homepage: http://www.ns-tech.com/blog/geldred.nsf

@2, wow, there are some really good talking points there. I especially like the fact that in the past, even with 4.6.7, they never had any viruses. That may very well change now.

Thanks for the great comments!

Comment posted by Ed Brill02/21/2006 10:03:46 PM
Homepage: http://www.edbrill.com

I was recently asked about a similar situation for a -very large- customer. Silly for them to even consider it. Let me pick this up and blog it tomorrow.

BTW because you wrote Brill in the headline but only "ed' in the body of your post, blogdigger/technorati didn't pick it up for me. It's only 'cause I surfed on by that I found this. As per my blog discussion today, I don't have you in my RSS... I will change that.

Comment posted by Philip Storry02/22/2006 09:11:10 AM
Homepage: http://www.not-so-rapid.com

@3 Gregg,

Cheers. I should also point out that I was careful to mention only messaging concerns. I left out their loss of calendaring, to-dos, and the applications capability of Notes. As a platform rather than an email client, it can do great things for them with minimal investment...

An example - a shared contacts database could be easily set up using Directory Assistance, allowing everyone to have type-ahead lookup for their addressing AND a common contacts store. All for "free", if they're running Domino.
(And to be vendor neutral for a moment, you can do the same with Exchange if they'd switched to that.)

Gradual development of such a system can turn it into a sophisticated bespoke CRM system. The total costs over a few years could be just a few tens of thousands of dollars in development - much cheaper than many other CRM systems.
(To lose my vendor neutrality, you can't do that as cheaply with Exchange. You'd need SQL Server, Microsoft Visual Studio, an IIS server, and possibly more...)

As I said, I can't mourn this kind of decision. They could be leapfrogging competitors with this kind of advantage, but instead they're committing themselves to slashing costs.

Comment posted by Brian Benz02/22/2006 05:50:49 PM
Homepage: http://www.softwaresoapbox.com

Here's a story about what can happen courtesy of Doc Searls:

http://doc.weblogs.com/2006/02/14#aShoutToYahoo

My favorite line:

"....if our data lives on the network, what happens if Google, Yahoo and the like become the phone company?"

Comment posted by Giulio02/22/2006 11:29:15 PM
Homepage: http://www.buzznotes.com.au

Ok. Budget is always an issue, but what impact would there be on the budget if someone else hacks the email provider and circulates the contents of one of their clients. A big fat law suit, loss of credibility, would also have a "budgetary impact". I feel your pain and frustration.

I think the upside of this is because it is free they have no financial commitment to stay with them, I wouldn't be surprised if they then decide at a later date to go with a licensed email system. Given that they were running 4.6.7, they wouldn't have been paying for licenses anymore anyway. So it sounds like they are trying to do it on the cheap. If they realise the greater risk that they are subject to by doing this, they may still be a prospect.