From: Bill Gates
To: Joachim Kempin; Steve Ballmer
Cc: Jonathan Lazerus; Mike Maples
Subject: IBM helps LOTUS
Date: Sunday, March 20, 1994 11:29 PM
This is one topic I really want to try to get to the bottom of. Why does
IBM help LOTUS so much? Is there anything we can do about this? Should
it become an issue in our global relationship with IBM?
I think CC:MAIL is a real problem for us because of IBM. I think
Smartsuite is a lot stronger because of IBM. IBM uses Smartsuite as
their internal standard.
I want us to figure out how to solve this problem.
We are helping IBM with PowerPC. We are being nice to the PC company on
Chicago. We are willing to let IBM make money on our stuff. We want them
to be the best solution provider. Thay are doing nice software on NT.
We need to put more energy into this problem!
From: Joachim Kempin
To: Bill Gates; Steve Ballmer
Cc: John Nellson; Jonathan Lazarus; Mile Maples
Subject: RE: IBM helps LOTUS
Date: Wednesday, March 23, 1994 9:13 AM
IBM has a LOTUS NOTES product specilist in every district who helps in
selling NOTES, paid by IBM. Every time this happens IBM receives 30% of
the proceeds. We are unsure if this happens for other LOTUS products as
well. We have entered another round of "partnership" talks with the PC
company and mentioned this as an issue, but they claim thay can't fix
this for us. IBM uses some cc:mail amd some smartsuite, but they not
standardized on this as far as I know.
I am unsure if we need to see this as an organizational issue or an OEN
issue. I am willing to do whatever it takes to kick them out, but
strongly believe we need a WW hit team to attack IBM as a large account,
whereby the OEM relationship should be used to apply some pressure.
http://edge-op.org/iowa/www.iowaconsumercase.org/122106/PLEX0_2058.pdf
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