A Reply to the Radicati Response, Aug 6

I've been quite astounded by the war of words that has erupted over the recent Radicati Group report, and the tactics followed by members of the Radicati Group staff in the blogosphere. The purpose of this post is to outline my response to Dr. Radicati's response as posted on Eric Mack's site, and to give you my theory as to who is behind the second-wave of blog comments and email intimidations.

See Eric's posting of the email exchange with Sara, www.ericmackonline.com/emo/emonline.nsf/dx/radicati-accepts-my-offer-to-post-her-response.

Part 1. Reaction to Dr. Radicati's Response

Sara says, "I read Michael Sampson's response to my paper but frankly, I don't see where it raises issues that I still need to respond to beyond those which I have already posted on my web site." (www.radicati.com/response.html)

Michael: I've read the Radicati response above, entitled "Our Response to Ed Brill's Weblog". I note:

• (a) Radicati says that the whitepaper was based on material out of five others. I haven't read them, so can't confirm or deny that.


• (b) Ed claims on www.edbrill.com that the Radicati answer to Q3 is incorrect, that it is not accurate to say that IBM reviewed them. I don't work for nor consult to IBM, so I can't confirm that.


• (c) Radicati says that the comments are those of "Ed and his friends". Firstly, Ed didn't make many comments on it in his original posting ... he linked to my response. Secondly, there is now an official IBM response posted at www.lotus.com/lotus/offering1.nsf/wdocs/c3b85eec9126b30885256ee4006c9003. Radicati needs to remove its first response, and write one to the IBM one which says that the Radicati report "contains many inaccurate and misleading statements". If it ever was "Ed and his friends", it is no longer.

Sara says, "1. Michael is entitled to his opinion about the market for Notes, Workplace and Microsoft Exchange. My company clearly has a different position as expressed in the whitepaper."

Michael: I have no problem with Radicati having a different perspective ("a different point of view" as Sara put it elsewhere) on the market ... that's entirely its perogative based on its professional opinion cultivated over 12 years. What I do have a problem with is (a) the mis-characterization of Microsoft's product reality and strategy, (b) the very clear - in my reading - bias shown to Microsoft in commenting on its products and strategies vs. the commentary on Lotus Workplace, (c) the disconnect between what IBM Lotus says is its strategy and Radicati's "interpretation" thereof, and therefore (d) the huge potential based on the failings in (a), (b) and (c) to develop a poor projection model. If the inputs are wrong, then the outputs will be wrong too.

Sara says, "2. Nothing I have read in Michael's response changes my mind about anything we have already written in our paper".

Michael: I wrote ...

• (a) "It has always been hard for an analyst to compare Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Domino". Sara disagrees.


• (b) "Microsoft is just fixing [security] problems it created" [with the release of Exchange 2003]. Sara disagrees.


• (c) Microsoft's customers "have no roadmap ... a concrete set of features and functions that Microsoft will add to Exchange during the next 5 years". Sara disagrees.


• (d) Microsoft extended product support for Exchange 5.5 because its hard line on migrating (or else!) didn't work. Sara disagrees.

Again, Sara is entitled to her opinion. However, my reading of the market leads me to a different conclusion. Let's discuss it again in 5 years.

Sara says, "3. I am amazed at the amount of discussion/publicity all of this has generated given that my company had already openly come out against IBM Lotus's Workplace strategy since the beginning of the year .... In a nutshell, I believe IBM Lotus's Workplace strategy is weak and will cause than to lose market share over the next four years."

Michael: So the crux of the matter is that Sara believes the Workplace strategy is "weak" compared to Microsoft's (non-existent) strategy. Again, my opinion is different ... which is why I wrote what I wrote originally, showing the failings - in my perspective - in the understanding of both company's strategy, in the commentary provided on both strategies, and therefore in the market projections.

And like IBM in its formal response, what factors led to the change of mind with respect to (a) Lotus Workplace and (b) Microsoft Exchange?

Radicati analyst Genelle Hung, "Lotus Workplace would make sense for many businesses. This is a pretty innovative way of looking at messaging and collaboration .... This is really the right approach.'"

Radicati analyst Teney Takahashi, "When you look at the [5.5] migration path, it's generally more complicated than most companies are accustomed to. It'll be more time-consuming. It will require them to take a better assessment of their requirements."

From my perspective, and in my opinion, if an analyst company is going to do an about-face on its view of a couple of products, it should be very clear as to why it is saying that. "We changed our mind" is insufficient.

Sara says, "4. I am also amazed that it seems that a portion of Lotus Notes customers/followers don't realize that Workplace Messaging is a replacement strategy for Notes - I guess they must not be understanding the same things as they listened to the IBM Lotus formal presentations. "

Michael: Workplace Messaging can't be a replacement for Notes, because Notes isn't just an email system. Maybe it's not the "customers/followers" who mis-understood.

Part 2. A Theory on the Lurker

Someone from IP address 64.174.88.168 has been posting comments on various Web sites with respect to this topic, and also sending emails to the management of those who have commented against the report. I'm thinking of Bruce Elgort ... see www.bruceelgort.com/blogs/be.nsf/plinks/BELT-63GP6R ... although I know of another instance too. My theory is that this person is actually Sara Radicati herself, and here's why I think so.

My second posting about Radicati, "More Unprofessionalism at Radicati", received a visit from a "Dennis O'Hare", and this comment:

Definitely very petty move there. But perhaps it was in retaliation to an upcoming Ferris Webinar (I received the mailing ) on Email Archiving hosted by this same Mr. Luescher. Mr Luescher is also apparently writing an upcoming Email Archiving report for Ferris Research. As far as I know (and please correct me if I am mistaken), Ferris has not published any solid reports/research on this market, and this might hint at some mild form of "industrial espionage" with so many conflicts of interest. Just an observation, given all this blog drama, I really have no intention to start an online "war". :-)

I replied in a comment defending the Ferris publication record. I visited the Radicati site again, and noticed that the offending text had been removed, and posted a comment to that effect. But then the next day, I noticed that the offending text was back.

How does this link to Sara?

• (a) it was after 5pm PST at the time, so Sara wouldn't be at the normal Radicati office and therefore at the router that was giving out the first IP address with a name of "SaraPC".
  
• (b) Sara saw my posting, agreed that it was "very petty", and took the offending text down.
  
• (c) Sara had a change of mind - for whatever reason - and put the text back at some later point.
  
• (d) "Dennis" claims to have received "the mailing" re the Ferris Webinar, but the email address associated with the posting is not in the Ferris Contacts database. However, sara@radicati.com is.
  
• (e) Many others who have commented on this came to the conclusion that it was another analyst inside Radicati who was 'astroturfing' around the Web, and while I initially agreed, I now disagree ... because Sara wouldn't delegate to others the right to change the front page of the Radicati Web site at will ... especially not on topics that Sara feels very strongly about.
  
• (f) It was initially supposed that another analyst inside the firm was posting various responses, but I doubt he did this one ... because it didn't involve his work.
  

In responding to Sean Gallagher's inquiries (blog.ziffdavis.com/gallagher/archive/2004/08/03/1654.aspx), Sara said that

... one of her employees, without her permission, posted some comments on some blogs. After she had held a staff meeting and had announced she was going to officially respond to the comments about the report (which Radicati has done here). But then, the employee "had the unfortunate idea to go online and post some ideas of his own," she said. "I reprimanded the employee in question."

Sean has since posted an article on the fiasco, at www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1631985,00.asp.

What was the nature of her self-reprimand?

Again, it's just a theory ... based on multiple data points ... but until Detective Weber has finalized his investigations (which are hard to do when out "fishing" Volker), we won't know for sure.

Comments

[Christopher Byrne]

Michael Sampson connects the dots in a way that suggests that the anonymous poster was actually Dr. Radicati. Along those lines compare these two quotes...

[Heini]

I am quite surprised how long people can discuss about a few pages white paper.
I still think that the Radicati paper is correct in many points (sorry), I also think that Workplace can (and will) be a replacement for Notes and Domino and that it is NOT just an E-Mail System.
I am surprised that there are still people around believing the deskless workers story?
Workplace is going to be the Next Generation IBM Collaboration platform.
This does not automatically mean that Domino is going to disappear anytime soon but winners look different.
- What about a Notes7 Mac client?
- What about a Sametime Linux Server?
- Wasn't Apache support promised for Version 6?
- Where has the Everyplace component gone that was promised for Version 6?
- What are the recent innovations in Quickplace and Sametime (and where are the roadmaps)?
Radicati can be all wrong and a bright future is near (besides the near 30% growth they already forecast) for IBM messaging solutions. Even if Radicati is true IBM can eventually change their strategy in 2005 so that in 2008 the picture will be different.
Unfortunately the e-mail part of this story is a sad one. If it really was Radicati sending around these anonymous e-mails I hope that someone will find a proper answer for that. I have absolutely no respect for such behaviour.

[Ben Poole]

But that's the whole point Heini: whilst the report is fundamentally flawed, that's been done to death. The real focus now is how Radicati are conducting themselves, not a few contentious points in a white paper.

[Ed Brill]

I think the Apache support for Domino 6 -was- delivered ... 6.0.2.
I'm working on the Notes 7/Mac answer. The Mac is an important client.
There will be "7" releases of Quickplace and Sametime, with new features.
" Even if Radicati is true IBM can eventually change their strategy in 2005 so that in 2008 the picture will be different." That's the point, isn't it. Microsoft said in October, 2001, that they would ship a rebased Exchange on top of SQL Server in 2003. I have the slides. What happened and why doesn't that matter now? Who knows.

[Ed Brill]

I have seen another incident related to the same IP address now. It does seem to lend further weight to your theory.