Monday, May 17, 2010

Why did IBM let Chrysler Go?????

I start by re-iterating that this post is purely my opinion and not that of my Employers, or anything else that I am even remotely connected with.

OK Chrysler is moving away from Notes. Moving to a hosted Exchange/Sharepoint environment! Now granted, I have no prior knowledge to this prior than hearing about it today, but I think it would be a great win if IBM could propose a LotusLive solution and show the tremendous cost savings they would have keeping their thousands of apps in Notes.

In my day job, I unfortunately hear about customers moving away from Lotus Notes quite frequently. This is by far the biggest. The second biggest,we were able to help fend off the migration and they are still on Notes.

Sadly Chrysler's plan is already in motion. I do not know what else to say

11 comments:

  1. In the end, you never know what went on behind the scenes.
    What we are seeing is a different attack from MS I believe.

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  2. rofl

    And guess who paid for the migration? http://money.cnn.com/2009/05/05/news/companies/chrysler_loans/

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  3. Chrysler was acquired by Fiat. Fiat is a Microsoft shop.

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  4. Saying they were "acquired" by Fiat ain't exactly accurate. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler

    "On April 30, 2009, Chrysler LLC filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and announced a plan for a partnership with Italian automaker Fiat. On June 1, Chrysler LLC stated they were selling some assets and operations to the newly formed company Chrysler Group LLC. Fiat will hold a 20% stake in the new company, with an option to increase this to 35%, and eventually to 51% if it meets financial and developmental goals for the company.

    On June 10, 2009, the sale of most of Chrysler assets to "New Chrysler", formally known as Chrysler Group LLC was completed. The federal government financed the deal with US$6.6 billion in financing, paid to the "Old Chrysler", formally called Old Carco LLC, which remained in Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The transfer does not include eight manufacturing locations, nor many parcels of real estate, nor equipment leases. Contracts with 789 U.S. auto dealerships, who are being dropped, were not transferred."

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  5. OK, the two organizations have the same CEO.
    http://www.media.chrysler.com/newsrelease.do;jsessionid=7089C79E466FA248227BDBD8F75CF043?mid=1&id=8871

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  6. Whatever the CEO wants, the CEO gets.

    I suspect Nathan is right. Since Sergio didn't have to justify the expense to anyone, why not have an entire company with 50k users and thousands of apps migrate on the US taxpayer's dime?

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  7. OK, who here is going to buy a Chrysler? No? Didn't think. And how long do you think Chrysler will remain in business?....Nothing to see here, please move along.

    Nathan is right though, the US taxpayers are paying for this. TARP - Taxpayer-funded (IT) Application Relocation Program

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  8. I guess the 1.2 Billion dollar savings ran out ;-)
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GXRa4ttRqs

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  9. This is big loss for IBM Lotus . Chrysler was one of the larger Notes install bases that they had. After the Diamler buyout, they switched to the Chrysler style system as well. Not sure what Diamler has done since. But since Chrysler has so many apps, they probably have many many years of Notes to go. I think they were pretty slow on the update of new Notes versions, they were likely far behind. That probably played into the equation as well.

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  10. I will be posting my thoughts on these type scenarios in a new post soon.

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  11. Daimler-Benz was in the process of switching to Notes when they bought, err, merged with Chrysler. Since both organizations had Notes, they turned around and kept Notes.

    Today Daimler is a high-profile target for Microsoft. Some people tell me they are leaning towards Microsoft.

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