After a long tuesday: The distance between customer mind and us
Yesterday, it was the day of Lotusphere Comes To You - Istanbul.
I like these events. They provide opportunity to catch up what's going on, who is doing what etc. VIPs from US or Europe coming and sharing their good feelings about our market. I see that graph, possibly for the 10th time:
That was the third LCTY in Istanbul. Software summits and other IBM meetings are going more non-Lotus business lately which makes LCTY more important for us, Lotus professionals...
To get into my discussion, yesterday began with main sessions about 'Lotus Knows' motto (which was emphasized by local IBM for the first time) and Brendon Seppa's excellent presentation about Lotus Connections and the new 'Social Software' trends. Later, in parallel sessions, Lotus Live and Lotus Quickr 8.5 has been presented with a number of client case studies.
Between these sessions, I had lots of time to talk with customers and seen that their agendas were miles away from the organization agenda...
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | What IBM talked about? | What customers asked about? | | Social Software Business applications of Social Networks Team Collaboration Mobile Collaboration Wikis, blogs, etc. Cloud Computing | Cheapest way of Domino - SAP integration How do we report in Notes applications? What is the future of Lotus Workflow? Is there a way to implement approvals in Blackberry? How do we implement QA documentation or document-based workflow? Turkish packages are coming too late. |
I think IBM and partners will learn a lesson from the situation. More market research, customer meetings or realistic approaches needed...
Leading the market or aligning with customer needs? IBM is large enough to accomplish both...