Well, I got quoted today in CRN about Websphere & Brightline:

http://www.crn.com/sections/BreakingNews/breakingnews.asp?ArticleID=47007

A few things didn't quite make the article though, that I figured it might be a good idea to post here.

(a) Maybe most important - the article has me talking about Hundreds of thousands of dollars for websphere, which is close, but to me that doesn't mean its all license costs of course. I think a great deal of the cost of Websphere is in skills, hardware, and other related software (like DB2 & Tivoli) that you usually end up needing. Still, its definately true that Brightline makes a very strong case in being a much lower cost solution. For many of us to get started, I think its cheaper to go Brightline than to use the free Websphere Express that comes with Domino -- it depends on your skills.

(b) I still believe the decision to pull Garnet was the right one, and while I agree that Lotus should have come up with an easyier way to integrate with J2EE by now, I don't believe Garnet was the right way to go. I wish they'd discovered that sooner, but hey...

(c) I say the biggest reason we've seen the turnaround at IBM over the last six months, is Ambuj Goyal. I'm quite certain he was brought in to hack the product to pieces that could be swallowed by the other groups; and equally sure that once he got to know the product he discovered that it had too much value for that fate, and replacing it was not the easy task some at IBM thought. The clincher was that he's one of the few people that Steve Mills seems to listen to. So, for having an open mind, the nature and skills to recognise when it needed changing, the cajones to make that change, and the credibility and skills to make that change stick all the way upstream at Aramonk --- hats off to Ambuj. I hope he gets the standing O at LotusSphere.

--AP