25 years of Notes & Domino and the signs of the end of an era are getting stronger. Hardcore yellow bleeders are moving to other pastures. Some think it is the last ConnectED. That’s sad. Especially since IBM had tons of chances to turn it around. Instead of using those 138 billion (138’000’000’000 or 9.86b/yr) USD since 2000 for making a few people richer (and a lot of employees/retirees poorer), IBM could have used that, to get its act together. Did not happen. Somehow giving away money was more important, than making money.
Just to give a perspective, how much money IBM did not use for product developement:
The LHC, the biggest machine in the world, did cost 9 billion and found evidence for the Higgs and a quite a few other things important to all of us (particle physics is important, very). Still the CERN fights a constant battle against people who think this is a waste of money. It isn’t. CERN is justified just by the existence of WWW alone.
National Cancer Institute budget 2013: 4.8 billion.
Fermilab 2013 0.360 billion, down 9%.
UNHCR 2012 4.3 billion USD
UNICEF 2012-2103 0.96 billion USD
It is amazing, IBM made itself into the poster child why shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world (Jack Welch). That must count for something.
In short, 2014 was for IBM rather a disaster. Hardware sales are down 40%. There isn’t a light at the end of the tunnel to be seen.
IBM had CouchDB once. Would have been a nice replacement DB for Notes and Connections.
Instead of making programming in Notes ever more difficult and complicated, IBM could have invested money in making it easier.
Looking into a new design language in 2014. That should have been done years ago.
Did not happen. Anyway it’s a waste of time to look back.
Verse is bound to be the next cool thing. Well, we will see. At least for those who like to have their stuff around them and not in some foggy thing, it will be at least another year if not two, to wait until Verse will be available on premises, if ever.
I am willing to give it a try, but I am still waiting for the beta access, I registered for in November. Therefore I can’t say anything about it.
My last attempt to follow a webcast was unsuccessful. I waited hours for it to start and then suddenly it was over. Must have blinked. The replay link a few days later was dead.
Looks like Verse does not want to have anything to do with me. Probably I should take the hint.
„In short, 2014 was for IBM rather a disaster.“ reorganization on the way I assume?
Replacing Notes DB for CouchDB: What would that cost? Not 138 billion I assume. Perhaps they do it when moving Notes to the cloud? The current DB does not sound the right choice for the cloud.