Nifty Fifty? Will a community effort be enough?
I haven’t really chimed in on the debates taking place on Ed’s and John Head’s sites. It all revolves around whether there is a need for more templates, like the “Nifty Fifty” out there. Here’s my take:
I do believe that people in the SMB market are being shown Sharepoint. And when they are, they are being told that it can do X, Y, and Z right out of the box. We all know that these X, Y & Z apps are very basic, but that’s not the point. The point is, people selling MS solutions tell these businesses that this stuff will work for them immediately, and Lotus Notes won’t.
This is definitely going to win them marketshare whether IBM will admit it or not. A person selling a Notes solution can grouse all they want about how we can easily build all same solutions as Sharepoint, but all a business owner is going to hear is, it’s NOT included. That alone will cause some businesses to go the Sharepoint route because they don’t have the time or budget to create “custom” applications.
What’s the solution? Quite frankly, I dunno if the community effort to create some basic templates will really do anything. It’s a great idea, and I applaud those that are going to be a part, but I just don’t think that will sway a typical business owner. Some community designed templates will never have the prestige that vendor supported efforts will. It’s unfortunate, but true.
I think that IBM gets that… kinda. The blog template, RSS features and SAP stuff all show things that have good tangible value to the customer. Now they need to continue down that path. There needs to be more from IBM going forward than ever. Because we are no longer just battling Exchange, we are also battling Sharepoint, whether IBM wants to acknowledge that fact or not.
August 4, 2006 @ 9:04 am
I am sorry, but I don’t think the SMB market gives a rat’s ass about blogs, rss or SAP. After having seen the state of many SMB’s “applications”, even the very simple applications that used to be in the original Nifty Fifty would be something that many of them could use. Combine Domino Express with a set of working applications that are all based on the same CSS and work in Notes and on the Web and you have a something that SMB’s might really look at thand ASPs can market.
Sean—
August 5, 2006 @ 10:04 am
I don’t disagree, and I did say “kinda” above
I disagree a little because I think that RSS and blogs DO have value to many SMB’s. SAP is probably not really for that market though, you’re right there.
At least it’s “something” but until they produce more “sharepoint-like” apps, I don’t think they’re doing enough either…
August 5, 2006 @ 10:51 am
I agree with Sean on this one.
I’m constantly told that my experiences are a bit unusual, but where I work is in the “SMB-ish” size range and there’s no interest in blogging or RSS and we dont’ run SAP. We can’t run Sametime through our BES.
If you add the Domino collab products (Quickplace, Domino.doc, Sametime) you add a good chunk of what the default Sharepoiint does (something that Ed always knocks MS for…having to add more products to get the functionality). A lot of it is that it’s just not Microsoft, I think. Some of it is that the default look of Quickplace and Domino.doc isn’t as “modern” as the default Sharepoint install looks.
It helps sell a product to IT management when a piece of software does something out of the box, but it doesn’t make the users want to use it. It’s still up to us to polish it and sell it to the users, and the job’s hard when it’s not Microsoft, and it seems to me that sometimes it’s even harder sometimes when it’s Domino. I don’t know if the experience is any different for shops that are trying to deploy something like Oracle Collab Suite.