August 27 2012 Monday
Really don’t care...
IBM finally decided to announce that the last major yellow word in the community has changed... Lotusphere event has been renamed as "IBM Connect" and Lotusphere has become a sub-event or so now.
Shocked? No...
Expected? Yes...
IBM has been working on this transition for a couple of years. First, Lotus name has been removed from internal department hierarchy, then from some major products like Connections or Sametime. Last year Lotusphere 2012 was not yellow anymore. While, in spite of my expectations, Notes/Domino family is still 'Lotus' branded but sure, it will be renamed in a couple of years.
So what?
The only problem I'm having with the rebranding is that it's going so slow. I think that these kind of changes should be realised in one stroke. Of course it's not a clear way to rebrand a complete product tree, but Lotus is a special product because of its community. For more than a year, one of the the most discussed topics has been this rebranding issue. IMHO, this discussion is so unnecessary and real waste of time. We have all experienced some denial and some anger but the change was inevitable.
Now what?
The rebranding phase is almost over. We are all sleeping, waking up, talking and thinking inside a bubble. It is time to think out of this yellow bubble.But now, it should be an oppurtunity for all of us.
If you are old enough, you would remember how IBM survived near-bankruptcy-experience in 90s. Gerstner has made a very important move in IBM's point of view. It wasn't important to market names and products anymore, instead, IBM started to sell what the customer was looking for: Solution....
I am a business partner and I can only sell Domino or XPages or Sametime to a bunch of professionals who like yellow color as much as me. Companies need solutions that fit to their needs. They will need a web application development framework capable to integrate with numerous systems. None of CIOs will care if it's yellow or based on Java.
At the end of the day, I don't care the name...
Let's concentrate on the customer again.
Shocked? No...
Expected? Yes...
IBM has been working on this transition for a couple of years. First, Lotus name has been removed from internal department hierarchy, then from some major products like Connections or Sametime. Last year Lotusphere 2012 was not yellow anymore. While, in spite of my expectations, Notes/Domino family is still 'Lotus' branded but sure, it will be renamed in a couple of years.
So what?
The only problem I'm having with the rebranding is that it's going so slow. I think that these kind of changes should be realised in one stroke. Of course it's not a clear way to rebrand a complete product tree, but Lotus is a special product because of its community. For more than a year, one of the the most discussed topics has been this rebranding issue. IMHO, this discussion is so unnecessary and real waste of time. We have all experienced some denial and some anger but the change was inevitable.
Now what?
The rebranding phase is almost over. We are all sleeping, waking up, talking and thinking inside a bubble. It is time to think out of this yellow bubble.But now, it should be an oppurtunity for all of us.
If you are old enough, you would remember how IBM survived near-bankruptcy-experience in 90s. Gerstner has made a very important move in IBM's point of view. It wasn't important to market names and products anymore, instead, IBM started to sell what the customer was looking for: Solution....
I am a business partner and I can only sell Domino or XPages or Sametime to a bunch of professionals who like yellow color as much as me. Companies need solutions that fit to their needs. They will need a web application development framework capable to integrate with numerous systems. None of CIOs will care if it's yellow or based on Java.
At the end of the day, I don't care the name...
Let's concentrate on the customer again.
