Lotus Rock Star

06/30/2010

Getting back to business...and writing...and conferences...and travel

Category What's Going On
After an intense few weeks of "delivery" on a project whereby a terabyte or so of data moved across the pond and 12,000 users were renamed in LDAP in two shiny new clusters (geek creds...still got it), I am focusing some time on the business of doing business (rather, making it happen), some travel, and upcoming conferences.

Back to the Future
I'm thrilled to be taking the whole technical gang at SNAPPS to IamLUG in St. Louis in August and especially excited about the new "TackItOn" concept whereby attendees can add a day of focused training on XPages, iPhone/IPad, or Domino Optimization. I announced it here, and all IamLUG attendees are welcome to register for the extra day and a discounted rate!

I've also just announced (moments ago, for the three of you in the yellowverse who don't get my newsletters) that Collaboration University 2010 will end its super-early registration savings of $200 on Sunday, July 4th. You can still get alumni discounts of up to $200, plus webinar savings of $297...it adds up, folks...and I've posted and emailed a little more detail on the content as we shape up the agenda. It's not an easy task when one of the products is still in managed beta, but I can guarantee this year will have more "new" to it than any of the ten previous installations!

On the horizon, of course, I am looking at ILUG in Belfast in November, and possibly even Tri-State LUG in October as it has the unique quality of being days away from a wedding that will take me east anyway!

Back to Now
In the near term, I will be spending next week in New Hampshire...both having meetings and substitute-dog-sitting for Carl Tyler's beautiful lab Jessie! I'm looking forward to spending a couple days with Gab and Tim Davis, partners in crime and business (not at the same time, don't read too much into this, beloved customers) and meeting with some folks about Quickr now and future.

The following week, I head to Tampa with Viktor and Jerald for a short training assignment - Dojo and XPages - and of course while there's much to see and do in Tampa, I hope to visit with both our training client and another enterprise customer based there. Afterwards, the guys will come home while I drive 3 hours south to Naples to visit with my dad, stepmom, and 93-year-old grandparents. Every chance I get...

So while I juggle travel schedules, proposals, new clients, and conferences, I'm also managing to get a bit of writing done for my newsletter and have more frequent blogging in mind. There will be some changes to the newsletter this time, as I am broadening its scope outside the two products Sametime and Quickr and into the collaboration and innovation world as a whole. In fact, the next one will feature either one or two guest columns on innovation and collaboration strategy. I'm very excited about this gradual change and hope to be able to appeal to a wider audience while still meeting the geek needs of my fellow technicians.

Back to the Future II
More to come. Oh, and a product announcement in July. Haven't done that in seven years. Should be fun.

Posted by Rob Novak At 12:13 PM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (0)

06/14/2010

Pushing boxes, or: How many letters do you really get from your VAR?

Category SNAPPS Licenses
Over the years, SNAPPS has been primarily a high-end services organization. We started in 1997 as a one-man show, writing commercial and corporate Notes applications. In 1999, we added a bit of hosting (back then it wasn't referred to as cloud computing, not even hosting, one was an ASP - application service provider - a term that fell out of favor a few years later). That has had its ups and downs. But essentially, it's the same idea, plus eleven years. There have been technological innovations and bandwidth improvements year over year that make this model more attractive - for some.

In 2002, before it was cool, we started Giving away Code in Great ways. The idea was to feed into our consulting business. That worked OK, we brought on many enterprise clients based on word of mouth, buzz, and even the occasional movie.

In 2006, we started Collaboration University, which to this day (our 11th and 12th iterations coming in September!) I still believe is a great concept - partners and experts organizing and delivering a focused, small conference on their own. No sponsors, and no intermediaries. And it's a blast.

Two years ago, we got pretty heavily into government business - as subject matter experts, not engineers. While I'm unable to disclose the exact nature of the work, many of you have taken some clues from what I have been able to say here on my blog and at Lotusphere. That has been more fun than I thought it would be, despite the paperwork. And believe me, you think you have paperwork...? I laugh at your paperwork...

Seriously, more than 3,000 US Government solicitations are posted every WEEK. Check it out. fbo.gov.

But the one thing we at SNAPPS have never done, however, is sell licenses for IBM. Or anyone else, for that matter (except ourselves, with the occasional ISV-esque tools we build). Why, as it seems we quite obviously have all the skills to do so? We understand how it works. A deeply embedded and personal disdain for commoditization is the likely culprit. We know the products, and heck, I've taught (preached, evangelized) a sales session to other partners and IBMers at Lotusphere for six years, poking fun at commoditization every chance I get. But at the same time, we've helped IBM reps directly close hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales over the years - likely millions indirectly (by using our code to demo -- exactly 1,187 IBMers have downloaded our Quickr Templates for instance).

There's also the issue of the aforementioned paperwork. Selling licenses isn't difficult from the value proposition, meeting business objectives, or creating innovative solutions to business process issues (that's the benefit of having provided consulting for so long). But actually being part of the "channel," as reported by many a friend in the industry, involves a lot of paper. NDAs, tests, SVI, SVP, GPP, Industry networks, sales "plays," incentives, mastery exams, Partnerworld levels, points, worldwide enterprises, country enterprises, Prometric testing IDs...I could go on - and that's just the IBM side of the equation. To sell software, you also have to have a relationship with a distributor. They're called VADs. To get one of those, you have to pass a credit check, fill out tons of forms, have them hook up numbers that relate back to your Partnerworld IDs, and ultimately, when a customer wants a quote (or they have one prepared by IBM), you ask the distributor for their quote to you. If you're lucky, there will be some margin in there - and of course there is, a little, sometimes a little more depending on things like special bids, special deals, and how much you actually sell. Then you have the client procurement issues to deal with, and the VAD rules and regs, and "registering" the sale so it counts for you in the IBM supercomputers. Say the client pays in 60 days and you get 30 to pay the VAD - that just won't do, so you have to build the same trust relationships (albeit at a different level than senior management) that you do as a high-end services organization.

Sounds like kind of a pain, huh?

Well, I went ahead and did all that last month. So today I'm announcing that to round out the value-laden consulting engagements on which we've always been focused, SNAPPS is officially open for business and can sell licenses, in the US, across the Lotus brand. The number of companies that can say that is about to get much smaller, since IBM is in the process of implementing new rules this year whereby a company needs to be "authorized" to sell a brand - a process of (you guessed it) lots of paperwork, multiple sales and technical certifications, and enrollment in programs designed to track whether you're, well, in the program. Portal's already gone over, Quickr, Sametime and Connections go next month on July 19th, and Domino goes in January 2011. We'll be authorized in all three, ready to help.

Do I have a lot to learn? Sure. But as I find out, I will share our stories (what I can share, anything public) here on LotusRockStar. And, as we get into the world of license sales for our clients, we're planning to really add the "value" bit at the beginning of that acronym.

Now I am going to share a secret. It's not a secret among partners, but is pretty hush-hush in the channel (until the tempest kicks in which is infrequent and shuts down quickly). You know that software maintenance "Quote" you get from IBM every year that looks suspiciously like an invoice? You don't really have to buy directly from IBM. At the bottom right corner in 0.2-point type is the proviso that you can indeed buy from your Business Partner, just reference the quote number. Partners have been dealing with this for years by tracking their clients on calendars and checking in with them to try to keep the business when IBM sends out those quotes. Don't get me wrong, IBM has a good reason for sending them out automated like that. They have no idea if the partner is still in a good client relationship, or for that matter even exists. So they get a pass on that. Sort of. My point is, you can buy from an IBM Lotus Business Partner and realize a lot of benefits that don't come with the dry transactional aspect of the direct renewal.

Guess what happens when you do that? The Business Partner (VAR, SVI, SVP, many other TLAs) can likely (but not always) give you a small discount, because they have a bit of a margin to work with. From our friend and future sage Wikipedia: "Resellers may have pre-negotiated pricing that enables them to discount more than a customer would receive by purchasing directly. This is because a reseller has already qualified for higher-tiered discounting due to previous engagements with other clients, and the strategic partnership between the vendor and VAR inherently brings the vendor more business." They likely (here's where the V and A kick into VAR) can also provide additional advice, services, and support in addition to the support you receive from IBM. Some partners even act as a proxy for their clients, opening support tickets and escalating them faster than possible if the client calls direct, because they add a ton of experience and pre-support diagnostics to the experience. They do more than just computing your PVUs and CALs. Maybe, if they happen to have a mature, value-driven and integrity bound consulting practice, they have the ability to advise you on a strategy level, if that's part of their bag of tricks (hint...it's part of my bag of tricks).

All you have to do, good customer, is be a good customer and pay your reseller on time, preferably a few days early to account for mail, so they can maintain good credit with the distributor.

What could be easier?

Next time you get a quote from IBM, or it's time to renew and your old partner isn't around, you need advice on licensing, computations, or want a software quote, you just like me, or heck if you're one of those 1,200 IBMers who'd like to say thanks for the assist, you may now contact us at licensing@snapps.com. Bring on the paperwork.

Thanks for reading. Back to your work.

Posted by Rob Novak At 2:34 PM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (3)

06/07/2010

SNAPPS - Lotus Quickr Extensibility Focus Group Webinar this Wednesday

Category SNAPPS Quickr
I would like to invite a select group of Lotus Quickr customers* (8.1, 8.2, and/or 8.5** beta participants) to a special webcast this Wednesday where Viktor Krantz and I will unveil a series of potential extensions to Lotus Quickr being considered by SNAPPS for commercialization. We haven't sold products for a while, and have given away millions in free software, but this stuff is so valuable to so many customers that we want to run it by a small group of customers before making a final investment in development.

We will be demonstrating concepts of extensibility that have never been done in Quickr before, including one of the most often-requested features by Quickr (and all predecessor names) customers. As well, we will solicit input to let you give us ideas for customer-specific (bespoke, my European friends) extensions.

This will not be a sales pitch, and will not be the run-of-the-mill awesomeness that we usually do on stage.

This is very early stage stuff, but we don't want to go too far without real customers providing feedback.

This webcast event will be held this Wednesday, June 9 at 10 AM CDT. It will consist of about 20 minutes of demonstration, a quick discussion of our initial goals with the framework, and then we will open it up for questions and your feedback.

*This webcast is by invitation only. To request an invitation, you must be a Lotus Quickr Domino customer or are in active evaluation of Quickr, must have a minimum deployment or planned deployment of 250+ users, and must request an invitation via email to me: rnovak at snapps dot com.

In the email, you must include contact info, let me know your current or planned Quickr deployment size (both servers and users), the name of your Lotus sales representative, and you must use a corporate email address. Of course, your information will not be shared with anyone. Upon confirmation (or if I already know you), you will receive an acknowledgement. On Wednesday morning, one hour before the webinar, you will receive a link. Your identity in the webinar will be visible (we will be using GoToMeeting for integrated audio).

So again, send me:

1. Corporate contact info - customers only - including your country so we can arrange phone service if possible
2. Deployment statistics - number of servers, users
3. IBM sales rep name (specifically Lotus/advanced collab sales rep if you have one, or named account rep if you have that)

If you are an IBM sales rep and would like to have your customer included, please introduce us via email and confirm their availability. Spots are limited by the webinar's capacity.

**We will not be demonstrating anything specific to Quickr 8.5, which is under NDA. What we're working on will have the capability to extend Quickr 8.1, 8.2, or 8.5.

See you online!

Posted by Rob Novak At 12:56 PM Location SNAPPS Glactic Headquarters | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lotus Rock Star

Advanced Collaboration with Lotus Quickr, Sametime, Connections, and Domino

06/30/2010

Getting back to business...and writing...and conferences...and travel

06/14/2010

Pushing boxes, or: How many letters do you really get from your VAR?

06/07/2010

SNAPPS - Lotus Quickr Extensibility Focus Group Webinar this Wednesday

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