Since my earlier posts on Workplace, I’ve been struggling with a problem: IBM won’t sell me licenses for the Workplace Rich Client (echoes of “The Soup Nazi“…) After the earlier pricing misfire, I got another email from my sales rep, invoking the mighty power of the Workplace Client Technology Project Office:
The Workplace Client Technology Project Office has as its mission the job of implementing the Workplace Client Technology into customers environments in a controlled and measured manner and they are running pilot programs for customers. They have asked the following questions be answered in order to be considered for this piloting. We need to ensure the customer has
1. gained a thorough understanding of the technology
2. applied that understanding to real, known business pain(s) in their organization
3. high level sponsorship within their account that will consider making this technology part of their architectural strategy moving forward
Upon completion of this pre-qualification process, the Project Office can then select customers to pilot the software. Once the customer is accepted into the pilot program, we provide the customer information to download software from Passport Advantage.
We went back and forth a few times, as I sought to reassure my sales rep that I wasn’t about to start madly deploying WCT in my Fortune 100 clients without any succor from the Project Office. That didn’t help; the Project Office then wanted to know why we were an MS partner, how much Notes application development we did, and what IBM products we currently had deployed. I then sent a more detailed response that explained what we do (including an explanation of how we do capability assessments and product evaluations) and why we wanted the software. I haven’t heard back from the project office yet (or from my sales rep, for that matter), although this might be due to the holidays.
Why is IBM being so tight with this technology? Sure, it might just be a matter of risk management; they don’t want customers to have bad experiences with the product. That’s understandable, although I note that Microsoft and Oracle (among others) restrict access to beta versions of their product, not the released versions. (As a side note, I find it a little offensive that IBM expects me to audition to gain the right to buy their product, but maybe that’s just me. At least there’s no swimsuit competition).
IMHO, IBM’s overdoing it, because this approach (“we have a ‘game-changing technology‘ but we won’t let you have so you can start gaining an understanding of it”) is not exactly going to speed their product’s adoption. The WCT information page says that you need to contact your sales rep if you want to pilot or deploy the product, but it doesn’t mention the fact that the Project Office is liable to tell you to go pound sand unless you survive their evaluation process. In fairness, that result is alluded to here, but I would be happier to see a forthright acknowledgement.
So, for now the answer I’m giving my customers is simple: “WCT is not generally available to customers, although neither IBM nor press reports have made this explicit. Draw your own conclusions about what that says of its deployment readiness and maturity. I can’t comment because I haven’t been able to work with it.” I am hopeful that the strictures on WCT will loosen somewhat when 2.5 ships, but we’ll have to wait and see.
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