Pattern Finder

Catalyst NA 2008

We're entering into Day 3 of Burton Group's Catalyst Conference in San Diego, and I thought I'd give a quick overview of the conference, the workshops I've given so far, and the presentations coming up.

The total attendee count is up to 1,500--more than last year and an accomplishment at a time when we're seeing client travel budgets slashed left and right. I talked to a client on Monday who is here basically on his own dime--although his company is a client (and hence had a free ticket to the conference), it refused to pay for travel and lodging for him to attend. Rather than accepting defeat, he decided, "Fine," and arrived here on his own frequent flyer miles and is paying for his own hotel. Now that's what I call customer loyalty.

Workshops have been quite popular this year. On Monday, Peter O'Kelly and I gave a half-day workshop on, "Exploiting New Information Management Opportunities." It was sold out. We discussed the evolution from content silos to content streams, how databases have evolved, search engine technologies, and other important patterns we're seeing. We did a "raise your hand" poll on, "How many of you have installed or are in the process of installing SharePoint?" and about 90% of the class raised their hands. When we asked, "How many of you have Lotus Notes?" about half the class raised their hands, to which one person piped up, "Yeah, we have it, but mostly because it's so difficult to rip out."

On Tuesday, Craig Roth, Larry Cannell, and I gave a workshop on SharePoint 2007: "SharePoint and Office 2007." Again, very well attended. Based on attendee comments, it's clear that SharePoint sites are growing like weeds in many companies and that governance is becoming an issue.

For the remainder of the conference I will give four presentations:

• And They’re Off!”: The Vendor Race in SaaS-based Collaboration, Communication, and Content
• SharePoint in 2008: The Next Steps
• ODF, Open XML, and the Implications of Productivity Application File Format Standards (joint presentation with Peter O'Kelly)
• Classonomies: Ontologies, Taxonomies, and Folksonomies Demystified

Technorati Tags: BurtonGroupCatalyst08

CCS Has an Opening

Yes, we're looking for an analyst to join our Collaboration and Content Strategies (CCS) practice at Burton Group. The job posting is on the Careers page on the Burton Group web site; since the company currently has several openings--yes, we're growing--you'll need to scroll down a bit.

Some background. Burton Group is an IT analyst firm; we write reports and consult on IT issues such as security, identity, networking, data center operations, and programming. CCS, the practice I work in, covers collaboration, communications, and content.

Although Burton Group doesn't have as high a profile as Gartner Group and Forrester Research, it is the ninth largest IT analyst firm (according to Outsell), and we should climb up one or two more rungs this year. If you're worried about being a third-party marketing arm for vendors, don't. Burton Group is atypical in that the vast majority of our business comes from enterprises; only a small part of our business comes from vendors (15%). To put this into perspective, some analyst firms get 90% of their revenue from vendors; a typical percentage is in the 30% range. We don't hire analysts out of college; typically, our analysts have worked many years in the business by working in IT, by being product managers, and by being analysts at other firms. I, for example, have done all three.

If you want to be an analyst (at Burton Group, anyway) you need to:

• Know your stuff
• Write well
• Have opinions that you can back up

If you think you have the right stuff, apply by sending your resume to Lynn Ward at lward@burtongroup.com.

Some Counterpoint to the Burton Group ODF/OOXML Report

There's been some disagreement with our ODF/OOXML report, to put it mildly. Unfortunately, many of the criticisms are from people who have not read the report and are reacting to second- and third-hand interpretations of it.

In happy contrast to this "I'll react to the headline" mode, there have been some thoughtful discussions of the issues:

• Leadership by Numbers: A blog post by an IBM/Lotus/Linux/Java consultant in the DC area who characterizes himself as "leaning strongly towards ODF."
• ODF Alliance: The ODF Alliance has published a counterpoint to our report, and based on comments from OASIS and a branch of OpenOffice.org, does a nice job of summarizing an opposing viewpoint.
• Erwin's StarOffice Tango: A blog post by Erwin Tenhumberg, a marketing manager at Sun, entitled, "Dispelling Myths Around ODF."

If you are interested in the ODF/OOXML debate, we encourage you to read our report in its entirety, as well as the counterpoint resources above. We interviewed people at Adobe, Altova, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, and Sun in the course of putting it together, and they all offered feedback/corrections before we published it. However, it is still our opinion, and others disagree. From our point-of-view, the best thing that can happen as a result of this report is a civil, rational discussion of the issues--and not the religious war that this debate has often nosedived into.

For those who have asked when we plan on updating the report, we plan to in the next quarter, with an eye to (1) accepting or rebutting arguments made by others, (2) taking into account the result of the ISO vote, and (3) clarifying points that people misunderstood or misinterpreted.

Response to Ars Technica's Article on the ODF/OOXML Report

Five days ago Ars Technica issued its view of the Burton Group ODF/OOXML report and made it clear that they disagreed with its findings, going with the headline, "Analyst group slams ODF, downplays Microsoft ISO abuses."

We've had some questions from Burton Group clients and others about the article, so I thought it would be worthwhile to go through where we agree, where we disagree, where Ars Technica mischaracterizes what we said, and where it's wrong.

First, a point on which we agree:

• Microsoft's Large Market Share Will Have an Impact: Ars Technica states,  "Statistically, the large market share of Microsoft's office suite will likely ensure that OOXML becomes the industry de facto standard...." We agree. As we state at the beginning of the Analysis section, "... many enterprises are not that caught up in the standards debate; they just want to use what works for their needs. Microsoft Office 2007 defaults to storing documents in OOXML format, so, by migrating to Office 2007, many companies will let Microsoft make the decision for them."

Areas where we disagree:

• Microsoft Doesn't Want to Foster Interoperability: Ars Technica states, "...the veracity of Microsoft's stated intentions to foster interoperability shouldn't be accepted at face value." It's a fact that Microsoft has historically used proprietary file formats and capabilities to gain market advantage over competitors. However, this attitude is dysfunctional in today's more standards-centric world, and we believe that Microsoft--ever the hard-nosed realist--recognizes that. Microsoft has changed its stripes in the past when it made business sense to do so. In the early 1990's it was not partner-friendly, somewhat similar to Apple's go it alone strategy; in the late 1990's it realized that expanding the partner ecosystem would in the long run make it more money, and so it built a large partner network. While Microsoft is not as ODF-friendly as Ars Techica would like it to be, it is definitely getting away from a proprietary lock-out strategy. Mary Jo Foley noted in her blog on January 17th that, "Microsoft is going to put the binary-format documentation on the Web; make a binary-to-OOXML conversion tool available as an open-source license on SourceForge; and make the documentation available under its Open Specification Promise (which is basically MicroSpeak for a pact not to sue)."
• Microsoft Is Consistently Gaming the Standards Process: Ars Technica says, "...there is unequivocal evidence that Microsoft bought votes for OOXML in Sweden and there are compelling allegations that the company has done so in other countries." We noted the Swedish episode in the report, but disagree on the question of degree. The Ars Technica headline, "Microsoft ISO abuses," gives the impression that they are systemic and widespread; we think they are isolated instances. What viewpoint you take probably depends on the story playing in the back of your mind. We think Microsoft is too much of a hard-headed realist to jeopardize votes and market perception by packing the court; others figure Microsoft is just plain evil and has been effective at hiding its nefarious activities. Same set of facts, two different interpretations.
• Sun Is Unfairly Attacked: Ars Technica said, "...the report aggressively attacks Sun with allegations that are completely speculative and unsubstantiated." Multiple interviewees in the ODF camp told us that it was virtually impossible to get anything into ODF in the early days if it wasn't also in OpenOffice.org: that despite all the talk about ODF being open, it was apparently a case of a vendor pushing its own agenda--the same charge that is typically leveled at Microsoft.

Areas where Ars Technica mischaracterized what we said:

• No Mention That ODF and OOXML Will Eventually Give Way to Standards Supporting Hyperlinked Documents: This was probably the most important point we made within the report, and one which Ars Technica neglected to mention.  As we note at the beginning of the Analysis section, "Software as a service (SaaS) productivity applications are bringing mashups and dynamic web-based documents into the enterprise, challenging the long-held idea that a document must be monolithic and static. Over the next decade, standards being put forth by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) may ultimately dominate the document standards domain...."
• Google Apps Report Was a "Scathing Condemnation": Ars Technica says, "...Burton Group issued a report with a scathing condemnation of Google's enterprise productivity suite...." True, we advised our enterprise clients not to adopt it yet, as it was lacking in areas such as role-based administration and records management. However, I wouldn't characterize this paragraph within the report as a "scathing condemnation": "Because the solution is weak compared to best-of-breed point solutions, it will not displace many already installed applications. However, it will appeal to organizations that are comfortable with the SaaS delivery model and are looking for basic features and nothing more, as well as organizations making their first steps in trying out ECM
  and collaboration solutions. In addition, it will serve as a collaboration add-on to Microsoft Office, which is how Google uses it internally." Interestingly, the adoption curve has played out as we called it--large enterprises have stood on the sidelines, with a few of them trying it out in departments, while some SMBs looking for a low-priced alternative to Microsoft Office have adopted it.

Areas where Ars Technica is wrong:

• Burton Group Makes Money Installing SharePoint: Ars Technica says, "Burton Group earns revenue from consulting on enterprise collaboration software installs (think SharePoint) and likely has its own agenda." While Burton Group has a consulting arm, it helps clients draw out a strategic IT roadmap, based on the client's environment and preferred architecture. We do not install software for clients. We do work for Java-centric clients; we do work for Microsoft-centric clients. True--we do have an agenda, which is to advise clients on what would be best for them in a vendor-neutral way. Given that 30% of the client calls into our Collaboration and Content Strategies practice have to do with SharePoint 2007, it would be foolhardy for us to ignore and not write about what Microsoft is doing in this space. However, SharePoint 2007 does not do everything well--the blog and wiki support is pretty dismal, and don't even think of using it for digital asset management--and we tell clients that.

Behind the Scenes of the ODF/OOXML Report

I thought it might be interesting to talk about how one of our reports came together: from its genesis to its publication. In this case I'll talk about our recently released report on ODF/OOXML: What’s Up, .DOC? ODF, OOXML, and the Revolutionary Implications of XML in Productivity Applications.

Although each service draws up a tentative publication schedule at the beginning of the year, this report was not on it. While CCS kept its eye on the ODF vs. OOXML debate, it was not a subject that was top of mind for us. That changed in September 2007, when a client asked me to give a PowerPoint presentation on OOXML to a CIO consortium. I spent several days digging into the subject (studying both ODF and OOXML), put together a 49-slide deck, and spent several hours presenting to him and seven other CIOs. While this was a Microsoft shop trying to figure out the nuances of migrating from Office 2003 to Office 2007, it was clear that OOXML needed to be understood within the context of its competitor, ODF. That got us intrigued.

In Q4 Peter O'Kelly decided he'd write an overview on the subject, building on the technical details I had initially unearthed. He interviewed a wide variety of people and vendors--including Adobe, Altova, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, and Sun--and wrote most of the report. He then passed a draft on to me, which I altered--I added the one-page summary at the front of the Analysis section and made tweaks throughout the document--so we were both in agreement on what it said. We then sent it out to the vendors mentioned above for feedback to make sure it was accurate. They all made comments--some of which we accepted, and some of which we did not. We fixed all the factual errors that were reported back to us, and made a judgment call on the ones that dealt more in tone.

We sent it in to Production (our editing group); the report was published on January 11.