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Independent Papows keeps eye on struggles facing Lotus
(IDG) -- A year after leaving Lotus, former CEO Jeff Papows says his decision was based on IBM's growing integration with the company and that he is watching closely as his former colleagues struggle to rebound and maintain their lead in the collaboration market. Papows, who spent 4 of his 8 years at Lotus as CEO, says leaving the company was one of the hardest decisions he ever had to make. "I love that place, I still love that place." He says he still gets hundreds of e-mails from former Lotus colleagues. But Papows said he left when it became obvious that IBM would take a much greater role in the company "The first 3 years IBM left us alone and we made our milestones," Papows says. "But the last couple of years, as some IBM units struggled, we started to get pressure to do more back-end integration." It was the beginning of the end.
Papows is now the CEO of Maptuit, a Burlington, Mass., application service provider. He also is the chairman of the board of Zixit, which provides secure messaging software, and on the board of IT Factory, a Lotus Business Partner. Later this month, IT Factory will deliver a Zixit plug-in for Lotus Notes in a move orchestrated by Papows. "I'd spent my entire career with a publicly traded company," Papows says. "As Lotus became a less independent company, my thought was that my true skills would get less of a workout. This late in my career wasn't the time to be running a lab for IBM." He said a Wall Street Journal article in April 1999 that questioned his military and educational background had nothing to do with his leaving. IBM executives "never brought it up," he said, and CEO Lou Gerstner advised him to ignore it and let it become "last week's fish wrapper." In Papows's place is Al Zollar, who appears better suited to follow the IBM path. He spent 23 years with the company before taking over at Lotus in January 2000. Zollar may have the company on a fast track to integration with IBM after last week when he announced in an internal memo that Lotus would be restructured. Many observers feel the restructuring will more closely align the company with IBM. It also may be designed to repair an executive exodus that plagued the company last year. Regardless, Papows says Zollar, whom he helped for the first six months of last year to transition into his new role, faces many challenges. "The whole situation breaks my heart," Papows says. "We were on top of the world through 1999 and some how in a year the wheels have started to come off." Lotus has not shipped a major product since R5 was released in March 1999 under Papows' watch. Attrition also has hurt the development staff at Lotus and Iris, the brains behind the Notes technology. "Al is a great guy, he leads an extraordinarily important company with an amazing technology, but they have some people issues to work through," Papows says. "I wish them all the luck in the world." The latest people issue involves Cliff Reeves, vice president of product management, who left in December. Reeves was the momentum behind Raven, the company's knowledge management package announced in October 1999 but now in disarray. Half the product was released last year, but the key piece, the Discovery Server, has not shipped and will be a focal point at Lotusphere next week. At Lotusphere last year, Reeves, a 23-year veteran of Lotus, was charged with building excitement around Raven and led the demos onstage. He was likely to fill that role this year, pumping up the product and downplaying its development problems. His departure so close to Lotusphere is somewhat of a mystery. But Papows maintains many strong memories from his time at Lotus. He says the high point of his tenure was building Lotus's share position in regard to Microsoft's Exchange product. "We had 64% to 28% when I left." The gap has closed in the last year with Notes, at approximately 60 million seats, enjoying about a seven million seat lead over Exchange. Papows became CEO in 1996, the year after it was acquired by IBM. He helped lead the company through the acquisition and build a niche company into one with a 50 million plus user base. He also developed a business partner program that grew to 22,000 companies by the time he departed. RELATED STORIES: Security experts warn of holes in Lotus Domino RELATED IDG.net STORIES: Can Lotus pick up the pace? RELATED SITES: IBM | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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