“Good enough” – used to be a pejorative at IBM. “Good enough” is what those upstart competitors offered customers, upsetting finely honed pricing and sales models for feature-rich systems and software products. Generally IBM products suffer from an excess of features, rather than a lack. I often joke that IBM never met a feature request it didn’t like.
Over time the “good enough” Microsoft became the feature rich leviathan, and these days Microsoft is probably more obsessive about throwing more features into a product than IBM ever was – many of Vista’s problems were a problem of feature and scope creep.
Nobody would accuse WebSphere of lacking features. Or DB2. Or Rational’s bunch of tools. So what about Lotus? Two major new Lotus strategies are now about good enough:
Last year IBM acquired Outblaze for its limited functionality browser-based email service, in order to compete with Google. The product is now available as LotusLive iNotes (not to be confused with Lotus Notes or even Lotus iNotes]. LotusLive iNotes is aimed squarely at businesses that want offer their employees email, the whole email, and nothing but the email.
Is LotusLive iNotes really “good enough”? Its perhaps important in this case to distinguish between good enough functionality and good enough scalability. That is – LotusLive iNotes may not offer as much functionality as Google Docs, but IBM is certainly ready to position its scalability as an advantage in the face of outages from other “cloud” providers. As Volker Weber puts it Nobody should belittle LotusLive iNotes as enterprise class.
We could dismiss IBM’s good enough cloud mail play as an aberration were it not for the fact IBM is also now pitching Lotus Symphony, based on Open Office as a “good enough” Office suite. IBM is convinced enough that Symphony is good enough that its now finally rolling the suite out to its massive internal user base. Queue some wailing and gnashing of teeth from IBM employees that are used to Microsoft Office. From an outsider perspective I have to say the latest slide presentations coming out of IBM now seem to have more white space, which is goodness. Will IBM face some internal document challenges? Sure. But good enough is just the beachhead. As in other areas- IBM’s employee base is probably the biggest user testing lab in the world.
So Lotus is now going to market with good enough messaging, where IBM explicitly admits in some cases that Google has more functionality. That’s a big change. A change that should benefit enterprise customers: overprovisioning software, and paying through the nose for it, has been the story of the industry, well, forever. Open source turned the dial; IBM learned an awful lot about good enough from Linux. SaaS turned the dial again. And now IBM is starting to explicitly play the good enough game.
I know some folks are not Lotus fans but the kind of segmented, pragmatic approach IBM is taking makes a lot of sense for the portfolio.
Good Enough- it must be a zeitgeist thing. Soon after I started this post this Wired story came out, pitching Google Docs and the Good Enough Revolution. No – Google’s overengineered now, IBM’s the good enough playa ;-).
disclosure: IBM is a client. It paid some T&E for an information management event I attended last week, where I started thinking about IBM and the good enough. Microsoft is also a client. RedMonk pays Google to use Google Docs premium.
monkchips says:
October 16, 2009 at 5:29 pm
James Governor’s Monkchips » Lotus Knows: IBM Strategy is “Good Enough” http://bit.ly/1yy1We @edbrill @neely
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NoahGK says:
October 16, 2009 at 7:46 pm
Must-read: RT @monkchips: James Governor’s Monkchips » Lotus Knows: IBM Strategy is “Good Enough” http://bit.ly/1yy1We @edbrill @neely
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cahaikes says:
October 16, 2009 at 9:55 pm
@dmac1 check out iNotes http://bit.ly/1yy1We
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Andy Piper says:
October 17, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Good thoughts, James, and as always with your stuff it’s helpful to get a historical angle on this as well.
I’m thinking about this myself, from a multiple brands angle (well, I don’t live in Lotus land, after all)… there are potentially some similar thoughts coming out around WebSphere sMash (enabling “good enough” web apps based on enterprise data?) and what I’m seeing is an increased focus on simplifying the user experience across the board, which might also have an influence in terms of acceptance of feature requests.
Great stuff. Thanks for sharing your perspective.
theRab says:
October 21, 2009 at 1:51 pm
“Google’s over-engineered now, IBM’s the good enough playa” – @monkchips http://bit.ly/38CG63
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theRab says:
October 21, 2009 at 2:20 pm
@burckart also interesting to point out WebSphere sMash as “Good Enough apps for Enterprise data” – @andypiper comment http://bit.ly/1SQNYD
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kellypuffs says:
October 21, 2009 at 4:47 pm
James Governor’s Monkchips » Lotus Knows: IBM Strategy is “Good Enough” http://ow.ly/15Wj23
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eric_andersen says:
October 22, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Interesting blog post by @monkchips on IBM vs Google and what is “good enough” http://j.mp/2XOz14 (via @theRab)
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eric_andersen says:
October 22, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Funny quote: “#Google’s overengineered now, #IBM’s the good enough playa”~@monkchips http://j.mp/2XOz14 (HT @theRab)
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monkchips says:
October 23, 2009 at 10:52 am
@dahowlett @anthonybradburn @dt ibm in many respects has less to lose. it also has a cheap, less feature rich offering. http://bit.ly/1yy1We
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James Governor's Monkchips » Lotus Puts the Labs to Work: On Innovation says:
January 18, 2010 at 8:52 pm
[…] strikes me that IBM’s willingness to move ahead with Labs is also part of a Good Enough revolution. IBM may not be adopting the notion of the perpetual beta, but experimentation with […]
Lotus Puts the Labs to Work: On Innovation says:
January 18, 2010 at 10:19 pm
[…] strikes me that IBM’s willingness to move ahead with Labs is also part of a Good Enough revolution. IBM may not be adopting the notion of the perpetual beta, but experimentation with […]