Marketing Lotus Notes POP Mail client

HCL Domino Domino Forum
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First, I have been progamming and using Lotus Notes for 10 years since version 3.0. Here are my thoughts about an IBM marketing plan…

Lotus Notes 6.5 looks like it would make a really good POP email client for “Home and Home Office” users. They can connect it to any POP mail server such as a cable modem ISP POP mail server.

IBM should give it away for free and call it Lotus Notes Express (or Lotus Notes SecureMail) similar to Microsoft Outlook Express. The average person on the street has never heard of Lotus Notes, but they sure know Outlook.

Now, IBM just needs to figure out how to get it to the home user desktops for FREE, and make Lotus Notes a household name.

IBM should just modify the existing installation, but give 2 main options as seen below.

(1) Enterprise Installation (Lotus Domino Server)

(2) Home and Home Office Installation (POP)

If #1 is clicked it will proceed as normally.

If #2 is clicked it should prompt them for information such as POP, SMTP, Newsgroup address, etc., and automatically create the associated Account Connection documents in the Personal Address Book. It should activate a 15 minute local replication mail schedule in the Location Document to iniate the POP and SMTP routing.

Maybe IBM can dramatically drop the prices of their desktops & laptops to beat out their competion such as HP and Dell. I like the idea of their current marketing of some hardware models such as “ThinkExpress”.

Maybe even create a distinctive web site such as “http://www.IBMExpress.com” which will cater strictly to “Home and Home Office users”. Lotus Notes Express would, ofcourse, be bundled into all operating systems.

They can put a logo on the computer similar to “Intel Pentium Inside” which says “Lotus Notes SecureMail Inside” or “Lotus Notes Express Inside”…

Anyone agree with me ?

-Lance

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Subject: Agree… If this had been done 5 years ago…

Agree…

Not only give it for free at home, but also make a web page that offer it for free, with a lot of info about it selling his adventages as a client…

And also, give him for free at the universities and schools… Do not forget that the students of today will be the users of tomorrow, and when they leave their school, they would use what they learn to use…

And do a Linux version, or do a package that ships together with the lates version of wine and with clear insturctions so it is installed at linux (for free)…

Business today is not on licences. Is on services. On business… not at personal home (if we do not have quota there, why do not give it for free?).

Unfortunately, now, may be, is to late to do it. But let´s try anyway. At least, do it with the new rich client (Lotus WorkPlace) and please, make sure it will be have the posibitly to connect to Notes applications under any platform (including linux) and that is attractive for linux users (free for personal use!).

IBM is losing the was versus Microsoft althougt it has a better client. And it is loosing the war because the marketing. If it does not react very soon, there will be so many dependences on future versions inside the Office suite (ie, Right Management Services, Sharepoint, etc) that it would be virtually impossible to react on time to remain on the market (people will be so tie to Microsoft that besided they are aware of that, they will be unable to live without them!).

Finally… What happened with Lotus Organizer ? Why is not longer syncronized with Notes ?. I have a lot of business where the assistant to top management directives were using Lotus Organizer. They did not like any other product for this… (neither Notes!). If we make Notes more Organizer alike (on the agenda side) we will even more opportunities to have the product introduced any where !