Can I just say…

On a quick run through my Google Reader feeds I came across this post by Om Malik: Look Who’s Launching an Email Service which tells a tale of IBM’s Lotus brand launch of a hosted email solution called LotusLive iNotes.

So, some quick observations on LotusLive iNotes:

• The iNotes name dates back to the first Lotus Notes hack for the web, interNotes which became iNotes around mid–late 1995.
• 1Gb of storage for USD$36/year is a joke. Really, seriously guys? When Google Apps gives 25Gb for USD$50/year?
• The sales pitch seems to be positioned against Google’s GMail offering (with subtle comments about advertising in your email and data privacy), when Google Apps for your Domain is the more comparable product.
• You cannot sign up for LotusLive iNotes online, you must contact IBM Sales.
• When you try to contact IBM Sales by clicking the Request a quote for LotusLive Notes link, you get message code 40, This service is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later. with the very helpful <title>: IBM 2009/10/01 20:57:10.
• Poking around the lotuslive.com domain is interesting, it appears to be hosted not at IBM itself, but through a company called Virtela which advises us that Virtela is the Premier Global Network Integrator Enabling Business Solutions for Multinational Organizations. Now, that does not mean that LotusLive itself is hosted at Virtela, but it is an odd choice given that part of the sales pitch appears to be that the hosted service is provided by IBM.

Now, I have no inside insight at IBM, having left nearly eight years ago. But I find it bizarre that the company would launch yet another hosted offering built around Lotus Notes (there were a couple floating around in the 1990s, and Lotus itself had had a hosted option when IBM bought the company in 1995). If the offering is indeed hosted by a third party, then this is doubly bizarre.