Notes on Productivity Home Page

Eric,

Thanks for sharing this info. Elguji has been using Prominic for over two years now and the SaaS service that they provide for us has been outstanding. We are hosting more and more IdeaJam customers with Prominic.

They are truly the leader in Domino hosting of ANY kind. The Experts!

Good to know, Bruce. As I wrote, I've been sending folks to Prominic for years and I even set up some clients on their hosted Domino servers. I did not realize that they were also offering Domino on a SaaS model. That's all great news for the Lotus community.

@Bruce - interesting to hear since IBM offers no SaaS license modeling, billing, provisioning or anything else along those lines for their portion.

I believe we have some customers of yours using Elguji software in the same hosted model.

@Eric- anyone that inquires on eProductivity, we point them to you to obtain licensing and then we run it for them on their hosted environments. The issue has to do with how IBM handles licensing. The ISV's, such as yourself, have an excellent opportunity. It is the bigger hurdle of how they access the Domino servers.

Chris, according to my conversation with the folks at Phase2, what makes their offering unique is that they now HAVE an agreement with IBM that permits them to offer Lotus software in a SaaS model. This has long been the stumbling block for hosted Notes/Domino. I'll share more details as I learn them - I've shared all I know, so far. If anyone from Phase2 is reading this and is able to provide specific facts I invite them to do so.

Eric,

That's an interesting comment to hear, about offering a SaaS model. Do you consider "hosting" different from "The Cloud" different from SaaS?

I think there's a lot of overlap and ambiguity between them all, and I don't think the industry has really sorted out the meaning of all of it yet. And that's assuming there is a difference, besides the label.

Anyway, thanks for your continued commitment to Notes - it's certainly good for all of us!

Update:

Eric,

Also, regarding SaaS/rental licensing, IBM has had (a well hidden) option for years. You can read about it at { Link }

It's not particularly friendly (i.e. you still have to purchase them yearly as a provider, unlike BES licensing, for which you just pay monthly for your actual user count), but it's something.

Although that being said, based on your update, apparently Phase2 has something special in place. We'll have to learn more about that.

Hi Jon!

I agree, there seems to be a lot of overlap and even confusion in the terms. As I understand it, the concept of SaaS is that the entire experience is hosted on a monthly (or similar term) basis and the end-user simply subscribes to the software "as a service." Wikipedia describes SaaS as a model of software deployment in which the provider licenses an application to its customers for use as a service on demand. I think the key is "on demand."

That is, there are no lengthy licensing agreements, no commitments (other than what the provider may offer to lock in a lower subscription rate) and the user can start or stop at any time.

The upside to this model is that it lowers the cost of entry/startup - e.g. no Notes/Domino licenses to negotiate and it also lowers the cost of exit for the customer as they will not be left with any infrastructure or licenses should they decide to cancel their subscription. Of course, there are pros and cons to this agreement. In many cases, I think the traditional hosting model may be more cost effective over a longer term. However, the low/no commitment startup and low monthly costs and the ability to cancel at any time definitely make SaaS attractive. I now routinely buy hosted services from Amazon, GoDaddy, and others just to experiment with new software. If Phase2's offer delivers, then I could see myself turning up services any time I want to test some new feature of Notes/Domino/SameTime/Quickr/Connections. When I'm done testing, I'll just pull the plug. Now that's a service!

It is very cool to see Phase 2 doing so well. I was engaged by them through Alacrinet to design and implement their initial offering of Lotus Domino with a custom xSP configuration, Sametime, Quickr and Lotus Connections. They have a very talented pool of engineers and technologists. I wish them continued success in the cloud.

Art, I had a look at your site. Interesting. Thanks for sharing. Let me know if any of your customers want to learn how to GTD-Enable Notes to get more done...

It is true that we offer Lotus software via SaaS [pay-as-you-go] license model. No long-term contracts, no software to buy, and includes data migration, site customization, SSO, high-availability, training, and 24x7 support.

We have programs available for any ISV/consultant referrals, and we welcome any talented development partners that add value to our services like eProductivity.

Thanks for the post Eric, and hello Art...

Just wanted to give an additional shout out to Prominic. They are one of the few "Darren Duke approved" hosting/cloud/SaaS/whatever providers out there. They've been great supporters of the LUGs here in the Southeastern US and definitely bleed yellow!