Kempin: we need a hit team to attack IBM

Date: March 1994

Snippet
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.

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