Zollar: Yes.

Tech Update: The headline says "It's official: Lotus Notes more cost-effective than Microsoft Exchange." [Editor's note: The headline was reworded shortly after this interview.] However, the headline only covers half of the TCO criteria that were used in the study. In fact when all the criteria are included, the study concluded that the TCO over a three-year period was lower for Microsoft Exchange than it was for Lotus Notes.

Zollar: Yes. It was only by a few bucks.

Tech Update: Right.

Zollar: Three dollars out of two hundred.

Tech Update: Right.

Zollar: So, less than a percent.

Tech Update: So, it wasn't by much. Nevertheless, you excluded the criteria that leveled the playing field. You focused in on three of the six criteria of a study you sponsored. Don't you think that's a bit of a disingenuous take on the study?

Zollar: Well, I would encourage people to read the study. Because what they'll find when they read the study is that, indeed, they're pretty much equivalent in terms of this three-year-cost that they talk about. But there are a number of factors that we provide that Microsoft cannot do. So, you can do certain consolidations within an Exchange environment. But, you're landlocked in the Intel roadmap. So, if you have the ability or have a belief that you can get greater efficiency out of a Unix or Linux architecture, or an IBM zSeries, or some other architecture, these are the sort of consolidation alternatives that we can present. We also present more value. We have greater collaborative capability than Microsoft has. So, when you look at the collaborative capability which we have and Microsoft, in general, doesn't have with their Exchange deployments, if the cost of ownership is roughly the same, the value that we deliver is far greater. And the options that we give our customers around total cost of ownership--again using Unix or other kinds of systems--is a possibility for server consolidation that is far greater than Microsoft's. So, I would encourage people to read the report, and then, when they look at what we deliver as value on top of it, I think that they'll come out with the scales tipped in our favor.

Also, we can run server consolidation in the Intel architecture as well. We have a lot of Intel deployments. But there are some customers--many customers--who believe that greater efficiencies can be attained with other server architectures. We provide that alternative.

Tech Update: When you said that some of the collaborative features of your solutions are not available in the current Exchange deployments, I just want to make sure that we correctly characterize Microsoft Exchange Server. The newest version of Exchange Server has many of those collaborative features.

Zollar: Yes, they now have many of the same.

Tech Update: But you're saying not the same as the one that you say is still widely deployed [Exchange 5.5]? It's a subtle but important difference. Is that what you meant?

Zollar: Yes, so two things. I talked about the Exchange 2000 deployments. Getting through the Active Directory has been really challenging for many of Microsoft's customers. I haven't found one of them who said "boy, Active Directory--that is a walk in the park." So, that is one of the reasons that a lot of their deployments are gated. Yes, they have the promise of these collaborative capabilities. But we demonstrated it. Furthermore, I will challenge Microsoft any day of the week to a benchmark of how fast you can build a collaborative application in the Notes-Domino environment versus the Outlook Exchange environment. We've done test after test, study after study. We beat them hands down.

Tech Update: Ray Ozzie was the original mastermind behind Notes.

Zollar: Yes.

Tech Update: Not only has he and his company [Groove] received an infusion of $51 million of Microsoft's money, [but] Microsoft appears to be placing a bet on the resurgence of peer-to-peer computing. In your mind, will peer-to-peer come back? And what's it like to know that a part of the Lotus brain trust has defected to your biggest competitor?

Zollar: Well, people move on. Ray did a wonderful thing in creating Notes and has moved on. First of all, let me talk about peer-to-peer. Peer-to-peer is a bunch of baloney in terms of it being a collaboration architecture. There's this notion that [in peer-to-peer] there's no server. If you look underneath Groove's architecture, it's a server that just happens to be on Groove's premises, right? So, the connection, and real-time update of the "peer participants" is actually being coordinated by a server. It kind of proves that point that I make when I talk to customers about this stuff. That is, the model of the Internet is a server-centric model. But, it is orchestrated by individuals at the end points. That's what we really exploit with our capabilities in products like SameTime and QuickPlace. The ability to have what I really think is the value proposition, as opposed to the techno-babble around peer-to-peer. The value proposition is: I get instant collaboration. I don't have to go through a central IT organization to get all kinds of authorizations and all that other stuff that results in delays. I can begin collaborating with a colleague, inside my organization--or outside my organization--instantly. That's the real value that we focused on.

So, now, there's all this talk about this new model, Groove. And others are trying to create it, too. Fine. Wherever that goes, it will be interesting to see. We are out demonstrating it today with real customers like G.E. and Ericsson. IBM is a large user of this capability. We've got this stuff in deployment delivering this kind of instant collaboration. Let the market decide. If I look at the alliance that has been struck between Groove and Microsoft, I think it's really a marriage of convenience. They needed somebody to support the Tablet PC. Groove needed money.

Tech Update: Speaking of SameTime, AOL's instant messenger has such limited penetration in business, compared to Yahoo's. So, shouldn't Lotus be seeking that interoperability with Yahoo instead of AOL?

Zollar: In this whole area, there's a lot of hype. A lot of discussion. A lot of parties involved. We stand for universal interoperability. That's what we want to achieve. This notion that you have camps of interoperability is not sustainable in the long term. It's really a matter of time in terms of the hardening of the [instant messaging standard]. So, we're working very actively to harden that, and to demonstrate interoperability with the specific providers, against the messaging capability. AOL has been our partner for a while. We provide client-side interoperability today between our SameTime instant messenger and AOL's.

But what companies really want, and what the industry really wants, is namespace interoperability across a deployment that is inside of an organization with communities that that organization needs to interact with outside of the organization. They want to have strong authentication across those connections. Because, companies using Yahoo Instant Messenger to collaborate with partners or other businesses, outside of their organizations may as well just shout it over the radio because it's equivalent with the level of security that exists in those environments today. So, that's what the world wants, and that's what we're planning to do. We're not announcing anything, but certainly we want to get to the point where all the providers are federated in a way that allows customers to achieve what they want.

Tech Update: If that happened it would simplify the management of the desktop. Because, in order to make it work now, you have to have three or four different clients running.

Zollar: Yes, the notion of who's going to provide the Instant Messenger client...obviously, with Windows XP, people are going to have one on their desktops. [Editor's note: Windows XP comes with a built-in, updated version of MSN Messenger instant messaging software]. There may be some additional variations, but that's why I think that the real issue is server-to-server and interoperability across namespaces, and domains.

Tech Update: So, talking about AOL, and Instant Messenger. Microsoft's MSN Messenger now requires users to establish single sign-on with Microsoft's Passport Authentication servers. Companies are beginning to recognize the importance of this network presence. You've just mentioned how you have different realms that trust each other. So, in terms of single sign-on, companies seem to be choosing between Passport and the Liberty Alliance. Some important companies just went with Liberty: AOL, MasterCard, and American Express. Given that most of your technologies require authentication, how long can you sit this out, and you are leaning in any particular direction?

Zollar: Well you know, being IBM, we get invited to talk to all those groups. It's not just Lotus. And, we really believe in interoperability. We think that a lot of the schemes out there today don't represent the kind of openness that we should have. In many ways, the Liberty activity has been kind of a response. I think that, over time, this will really sort out. We will have the kind of alliances in place that allow the kind of interoperability that we really believe in. If you look at the notion of companies signing up, what they're really doing is endorsing a direction today. Nobody's really deployed this stuff, because it is not deployable in terms of being able to deliver real capability--certainly in the customers that we focus on inside of enterprises. So what we focus on--probably more so than the groups you hang out with--is: What do, we do to make sure that our customers can have the open interoperability inside of enterprise settings that will likely be required with all these different schemes. Or at least these two major different schemes. We'll see how this evolves, and we are watching very closely.

Tech Update: That also applies to some companies that are using your platforms for e-business, right? Because if there's a segment of customers out there who have Passport, and a segment of customers who rely on Liberty, Lotus may have a customer that wants to grant access to those people.

Zollar: Yes. I do this every day with our services capability. We authenticate our authentication systems with those from a lot of other companies in the industry. So, if the only way we can integrate with an authentication system is to join an alliance group, then it really hasn't turned into an open initiative. So, we saw those needs with our customers today across many different authentication and security frameworks that our customers have. It would be nice to see convergence. In the meantime, we're focused on doing what's right for customers as they pragmatically attempt to use these systems in the business scenarios that are important to them.

Tech Update: There are some key hearings coming up in February and March. The legal eagles representing Microsoft, the DOJ, the opposing states, the settling states: they're all very busy right now. Witness lists are due in February. Public comments are due at the end of this month. Has either side asked Lotus to participate in the proceedings? Or has Lotus contributed to the public comments?

Zollar: No comment on any of that stuff, for two reasons. One, it really wouldn't be appropriate. Secondly, my view is that there is a competitor out there--at least in the space that I work. It is actually interesting because in this crazy world that we live in, we are allied with Microsoft [Editor's note: a huge portion of Lotus' customers run in Windows environments]. But in the Outlook Exchange portion of their business, we clearly compete. I just place them in the marketplace and stay focused on trying to beat them in the marketplace. That's the thing that I put my attention on. Whatever governments or legal authorities or authorities with jurisdiction decide to do; to the extent that any of those decisions become a reality, we'll deal with them then.

Tech Update: One could say that Netscape has an argument for keeping the browser out of the operating system. Lotus could make an argument for keeping a mail client out of the operating system.

Zollar: They have one integrated with the Windows platform. Certainly you can anticipate them doing further integration, because nobody's telling them they can't. So, we are really focused on making the [e-mail] clients one aspect of the value chain. We believe that there's a need to deliver specialized client functionality for certain users--users who get 400 messages a day, or who have to deal with very heavy meeting volume, or who have lots of coordinated databases. A specialized client for that kind of knowledge worker is where Notes really fits best. But there are going to be a whole rash of client uses that are a part of this collaboration and context--or maybe even commodity access via a browser. So, it really shifts our value statement--more from the client to the server. Again, that's one of the things that we'll be playing on, at Lotusphere. We are an organization that provides a range of collaborative services on servers. We are taking advantage of this new evolution of the industry--Web services--to make these deliverable in a bunch of different ways, more so than just sitting inside of a sort of static collaboration container.

Tech Update: Now that things are moving things back to the server, it starts to even increase the importance of five nines availability and scalability, doesn't it?

Zollar: Absolutely.

Tech Update: One of the places where Exchange has penetrated, and some of the other competitors like iPlanet IMS, is in the ISP space. Is there any interest in that space at all?

Zollar: Well, we really haven't targeted that as a space that Lotus has an offering in. But it is something that we are looking at. There are a lot of different ways to address that need. But I think that there are problems with that space. This notion of a free mailbox is actually a notion that was caught under the euphoria of the dot-com craze. You and I both know that those mailboxes ain't free--they just got paid for by advertising. The last time I checked, there were fewer people willing to do that. There's an expectation that's been put out into the marketplace by a lot of folks that e-mail is a commodity. It's free. Well, think about the value of a corporate mailbox. Obviously, the value of a personal mailbox is also very important. But, think about the value of a corporate or a business-oriented mailbox in a government or a public sector setting. Think about the way that that has to be dealt with, and provisioned from the technology standpoint--compared to this "free mail" kind of environment. I have some real concerns with the economic models that are in that marketplace. That's why, if you look around, there's nobody making money there by providing mail. They're not making money. They're doing other things maybe to subsidize it.

Tech Update: But they're getting new customers.

Zollar: But they're not making money there.

Tech Update: Over the last decade we've gotten some pleasure out of watching IBM run the systems at the various Olympics. The first go-around was quite painful for Lotus. The second go-around was a lot better. Is Lotus still involved with the Olympics?

Zollar: Well, IBM's not sponsoring the Olympics. Actually, in that first go-around, as I recall it, the problem was with the bandwidth and telecommunications facilities used by the press. Of course, that's the wrong audience to have a problem with. That was the root cause of that problem. We've obviously learned a great deal. IBM and Lotus have been a part of that because our Notes and Domino capabilities have been part of the IBM deployment in every Olympics that IBM has supported since Lotus has been part of IBM. We've learned a lot from those events. First of all, we have learned a lot about the kind of total cost of ownership availability, scalability issues that we've had to take on. Our WebSphere capability has probably benefited most from what we learned. The ability to support high-volume Web sites like eBay, I think, is in many ways linked to what we learned at the Olympics. So, it's been a tremendously valuable proposition for IBM, in terms of our learning. But, the decision was made to move on and I hope to have a great 2002 Olympics and beyond.

Tech Update: Favorite book?

Zollar: Well, the one I most recently read is "Winning Through Innovation". It's a book by Michael Tushman It's about this concept of how you make an organization and a team ambidextrous. That is, the ability to live with a current capability while a market is shifting, and then creating new capabilities.

Tech Update: Like changing the tires, while the car is still rolling?

Zollar: Yes. It's a little bit of the innovator's dilemma stuff. But it is much more pragmatic, I think, in terms of the kind of advice it gives.

Tech Update: You have an engineering background, right?

Zollar: Well, Mathematics. Applied Mathematics. And my business background has been engineering oriented.

Tech Update: So it must come in very handy running an operation of your own. What does that mean?

Zollar: Well, we've been making a lot of changes at Lotus. These changes are about getting into an operational model that allows us to leverage IBM. Almost every software provider in the world is knocking on IBM's door, trying to figure out how to leverage it. Lotus in the past didn't really take advantage of the resources that IBM brought to the table. So we have made a number of changes. I call it "creating the new Lotus, internally." And I've always liked that phrase from Gandhi. [Editor's note: the white board in Zollar's office was blank except for this quote from Gandhi: "You must be the change you want to see in the world."] It reminds me that you've got to live the change. You can't just say the change. You have to live it.

Tech Update: In other words, it's all about execution?

Zollar: It's all about execution. In fact, the other reason why I liked this Tushman book is that it makes the point that you can have strategic thoughts. You can come up with all these wonderful innovative things. But how do you get an organization to execute? Oh, and if you want go from the heavy-duty Harvard case study approach to the parable approach, the book "Who Moved my Cheese?" is a great one.

	TECH UPDATE TODAY DAILY: Dan Farber and David Berlind deliver daily insights on the business and technology news that matters to enterprise IT.
	Enterprise Alerts Surveys Computers: Desktops & Laptops IT Management Security IT Professionals
	Manage My Newsletters

Help | Advertisements | Feedback | Reprints | Newsletters

New site: Monitor all the tech news at Technology.Updates.com