Pattern Finder

We'll Be Talking About Microsoft 2010 and Its Alternatives at Catalyst

For those of you pondering whether to attend Burton Group's Catalyst Conference in Prague (April 19-22), you should know that we will be spending half a day on a track called: Microsoft 2010: Pros, Cons, and Alternatives.

Microsoft customers have always had to deal with forklift upgrades: "OK, let's see, the new version of Exchange is out. How does that impact the versions of Windows Server and Outlook that I'm running? Also, there's a new OS; should I refresh Office as well or leave it be?" So it's always been complicated. Now it's become extra complicated because of two new delivery options: virtualization and SaaS. So it's not just, "Should I upgrade to the new version of Exchange?" it's also, "Should I run Exchange as a virtual machine or should I run it in the cloud?" A complicated set of decisions had morphed into a three-dimensional complicated set of decisions.

Furthermore, it's not just the Microsoft products that makes it difficult to figure out. Enterprises now have more options. A number of our clients are looking at using Google Apps Premier Edition (GAPE) or Lotus Symphony. Add those options into the mix, and CIOs are now staring at a Rubik's Cube of decisions.

We're going to spend half a day walking through the alternatives. For example,

• Is it worth upgrading to Exchange 2010?
• Is it worth upgrading to Office 2010?
• Is it worth upgrading to SharePoint 2010?
• I'm looking at BPOS--how strong or weak is that, compared to running it in house?
• Can I run Exchange as a virtual machine? If so, which hypervisor should I use?
• I'm looking at alternatives to Office--which ones should I investigate and which ones should I dismiss out of hand?
• Is moving to GAPE worthwhile?

If you're like to hear the answers to those questions and get into a dialogue about your specific situation, we'd love to see you in Prague.

Proof That Microsoft Is Worried About Office's Competition

Image via CrunchBase

Actions speak louder than words. Microsoft is staffing to compete against OpenOffice.org, according to this job posting on the Microsoft Careers site: https://careers.microsoft.com/JobDetails.aspx?ss=&pg=0&so=&rw=1&jid=9914&jlang=EN. Since the posting will probably go away at some point, here's the text of the posting:

Job Category: Marketing
Location: United States, WA, Bellevue
Job ID: 700901 9914
Division: Marketing

Linux and Open Office Compete Lead, US Subsidiary (CSI Lead)

If you’re looking for a new role where you’ll focus on one of the biggest issues that is top of mind for KT and Steve B in “Compete”, build a complete left to right understanding of the subsidiary, have a large amount of executive exposure, build and manage the activities of a v-team of 13 district Linux & Open Office Compete Leads, and develop a broad set of marketing skills and report to a management team committed to development and recognized for high WHI this is the position for you!

The Commercial Software Initiative (CSI) Lead plays a pivotal role for the Subsidiary GM, the BG leads and the BMO by building a discipline within the US that is focused on competing against. The core mission of CSI is to win share against Linux and OpenOffice.org by designing and driving marketing programs, changing perceptions, engaging with Open Source communities and organizations, and drive internal readiness on how to compete with Commercial Linux and participate with Open Source Communities.

The CSI Lead owns three core objectives for the Area (and Subsidiaries) as follows:

1. Drive compete Strategy. The CSI Lead is responsible for providing a 360 degree view of the US compete environment (directly to the Compete lead and BMO) and ensuring plans are in place to help drive healthy, balanced, and sustained growth. Ability to win share and ensure growth faster than the market (Servers, IW, Web, HPC)

2. Be a Perception Change Agent. The CSI Lead needs to drive perception across a number of key audiences (IT Pros, Government Elites, BDMs, IT Journalists, etc.) Ability to implement programmatic marketing that will CHANGE THE WAY PEOPLE think about Microsoft, specifically those with a ‘hostile’ or negative perception of the Microsoft platform.

3. Build ‘Compete Muscle’ in the US. The CSI Lead owns ensuring that the region and subs are fully ready to compete against Linux and participate with Open Source Communities. This includes everything from training to being the subject matter expertise, where needed. Ability to diagnose and share problem, find root causes and pull together a team that will PLAN / DO / CHECK / ACT in the right direction.

•  This includes developing PR, marketing, sales, communication and readiness infrastructure for executing competitive strategies and executing perception changes.
• You will educate our field and partners to compete and win. Work with EPG and other field organizations to profile Linux in key accounts. Drive Linux and UNIX compete content.
• Support competitive sales situations where Linux is a key competitor to help drive marquee wins and grow your US evidence. Work with your account teams and develop growth plans.
• Start a productive and positive culture of ‘Loss Reviews’ Look at the competitive pipeline regularly to see where Linux Server and OpenOffice challenges arise.

The right candidate will have a great blend of strategic, marketing and analytical skills coupled with tenacity for execution and delivery. You must be action and detail oriented with experience in the high tech marketing industry including solid experience working with cross-organizational teams to achieve superior results. The ability to multi-task and manage projects under pressure along with an unwavering persistence, commitment, passion and optimism for this work is essential. When successful, you’ll be looked to as the key expert for the Windows Server business by the entire field sales force, marketing, & executive organizations. Experience with server marketing and an MBA are pluses.

Given the slew of mystifying Microsoft abbreviations and acronyms (e.g., KT, Steve B, CSI, v-team, WHI, BMO, BDMs) within the posting, I suspect they'll only get applications from within Microsoft--and that will be a mistake.

BPOS at Coca-Cola Enterprises

Notes from the

Image via Wikipedia

Coca-Cola presentation at Microsoft’s SharePoint Conference 2009.

The Need

73,000 employees: 30,000 knowledge workers. 40,000+ employees that work out of factories and depots. 2.4 vending machines and coolers. 30Is the largest marketer and distributor of Coca-Cola products.

Business Challenge

• Needed a more effective way to collaborate
• No robust and integrated enterprise solution
• Too many partners providing dozens of communication and collaboration solutions
• Move from being support focused
• Lack of governance

A Lotus Notes shop.

Vision: Establish digital communications as a key enabler to engage employees with the company, drive effectiveness and efficiency and improve collaboration and innovation.

Goals

• Deliver the next generation Intranet
• Create a more collaborative environment
• Simplify integration
• Create two-way communication
• Consolidate multiple technical infrastructures
• Leverage existing infrastructure

Governance

• Executive Steering Group Meets bi-annually
• Operational Governance: Meets quarterly
• Delivery Team: Meets weekly

The Solution

March 3, 2008: Coca-Cola Enterprises announced that it will begin using Microsoft’s integrated communication and collaboration tools across its organization.

Implemented Microsoft Online Services: SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, OCS Online, Live Meeting.

Solution wins:

• Provides integrated collaboration
• Microsoft product integration
• Free CCE resources from system support
• Provision additional capabilities on an as-needed basis
• Delivers enterprise support model
• Evergreen Support Deployment (no patching)

Created a Teamsite Wizard. Included things like Language, Time Zone, Purpose. Provisioned in about a week.

Our Usage

User Experience and Portal Design

• Established standards and style guides to implement a consistent look and feel
• Developed IA scheme to ensure scalability and long term adoption
• User-friendly and intuitive design allows for ease of use
• Consolidated platform to access all internal information and documentation

Four major sections: Home, Company, Workspaces, Life & Career

Portal Separation:

• Corporate Portal
• Teamsites
• Micro Sites
• Tool Sites
• Business Unit Sites
• Partner Sites (coming soon)
• Community Sites (coming soon)

Microsoft Online has a list of partner solutions they support.

9 different localizations; 2,400 Teamsites in 10 months.

Integrated with SAP so employees can do thinks like change 401K withholding.

The Cloud

Monthly Averages:

• 2,055,702 page views
• 15 minutes, 20 second minutes average time per visit
• 8.5 visits per visitor

Get a pre-production farm; can get an online database.

Hosting Limitations

• Certain product feature limitations
• Increased deployment time lines: You can write the code in 8 weeks, but then Microsoft has a deployment time as well.
• No visibility to servers for support
• No Central Admin/Shared Service Provider access
• No SQL access (can’t do queries against the DB, for example)

Quotes from the SharePoint Conference Keynote

Image via Wikipedia

Following are some good quotes from the Steve Ballmer/Jeff Teper keynote at the SharePoint Conference:

• A questioner asked Steve Ballmer and Tom Rizzo if the company would have a single web page ("sort of like Windows Update") that would list the current updates for SharePoint. Steve Ballmer replied, "The right answer is 'yes'; what's the current answer, Tom?"
• Steve Ballmer: "SharePoint Online is helping us understand compliance issues and we can roll that back into the SharePoint software."
• Steve Ballmer: "SharePoint, in a sense, is becoming an operating system."
• Jeff Teper: The symbiotic relationship between Office and SharePoint was there from the get-go."
• Jeff Teper: "SharePoint 2010 includes a replumbing of the UI."
• Jeff Teper: "SharePoint is the ultimate Swiss Army knife."

What’s New in SharePoint 2010

I’m attending the Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009 in Las Vegas this week and received the 274-page Microsoft SharePoint 2010: Beta tome in my registration materials yesterday. Due to the 3-hour time difference between Boston and Las Vegas, I woke up early this morning and decided to while away my time by reading it. Based on what it says (note: the book contains the disclaimer, “This is a preliminary document and may be changed substantially prior to final commercial release of the software described herein.”), following are my initial impressions about the differences between SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010.

• The UI is friendlier: The 2010 interface includes the Ribbon UI. Hopefully, that will make SharePoint less click-happy. (I’ve always felt SharePoint 2007 makes me click five times to complete a task that should take one click.) In addition, 2010 includes better support for what Microsoft calls “multilingual experiences.” That is, fields within lists can support multiple languages, and users can submit multiple entries (e.g., an English version, a French version, a German version) for a specific piece of content. Also, SharePoint can use rules (e.g., show this paragraph to new workers, show that paragraph to long-time employees) to customize content for users.
• Metadata is now pervasive: Recognizing that good metadata facilities make content easier to classify and search, Microsoft has significantly expanded support for metadata in SharePoint 2010. Examples include: (1) automatically extracting metadata from images, (2) configuring a folder to automatically add tag content with a specific tag (e.g., the folder “Preliminary” adds the tag “stage=Preliminary” to all content stored in that folder, (3) support for folksonomies (user-defined tags), and (4) the addition of the Enterprise Managed Metadata (EMM) service (allows sharing of metadata configurations across sites and farms).
• Support for compound documents: SharePoint 2010 has added the concept of “Document Sets”—that is, an uber document made up of multiple documents. This way, an enterprise can create a product rollout plan that consists of an Excel spreadsheet containing rollout dates, a PowerPoint presentation popularizing those dates, and a Word document describing the rollout stages in detail. By being a Document Set, these documents can be controlled as one logical entity (e.g., versioned as a whole, managed by a workflow as a whole).
• Blogs and wikis are improved: Frankly, given that blog and wiki support was so dismal in 2007, it was impossible for the feature set to go in any direction but up. At a glance, the blog and wiki support looks solid but not ground-breaking.
• Records management and business intelligence are no longer second-class citizens: Both records management and BI showed signs of being add-ons in 2007. In 2010, they’re much more integrated with normal SharePoint usage. For example, rather than records management capabilities being affiliated with a specific site template, a site collection owner can designate which records management features are enabled within that site collection. In the BI case, again, BI is no longer affiliated with a specific site template, but rather a set of capabilities that can be used in any SharePoint site. In 2010, PerformancePoint is no longer a separate product, but rather a service (PerformancePoint Services) residing within SharePoint 2010 (assuming the enterprise buys an enterprise license [ECAL]).
• Web analytics is now included: SharePoint 2010 includes a Web Analytics service so that enterprises can monitor site usage and search terms. For companies drowning in unused sites (e.g., a project site goes live, is used intensively for two months, and then never used again), this capability will be invaluable in helping them clear out the deadwood. In addition, it will help companies understand how their employees are using SharePoint—the first step in optimizing site design, terms, and so on.
• Multi-tenant SharePoint Online will now support custom code: The current version of SharePoint Online comes in two flavors: multi-tenant and hosted. The multi-tenant version (allows no customization) is targeted at SMBs, while the hosted version (allows customization) is for large enterprises. The lack of customization capabilities has been a huge issue, especially with partners that like to customize an installation for their clients. In 2010, Microsoft says it will allow such customization via a mechanism called “Sandboxed Solutions”—basically, process and data isolation.

To be clear, these are not all of the changes that are coming in SharePoint 2010; but they are, at least, some of the interesting ones.

Free Webcast on My Productivity Suite Quadrant Report

As I noted in a post on the Collaboration and Content Strategies blog, Burton Group now offers two reports and a TeleBriefing on the subject of productivity suites. However, all three demand that a user have a subscription to Burton Group’s IT1 or CCS services. If you don’t have that kind of cash around but would like to watch a free webcast about my recently released Market Insight: Productivity Suites 2009 report, here it is on BrightTalk (it’s free, but requires a registration):

Online Productivity Suites News Roundup

As I was browsing through Google News this morning, I noticed a cluster of stories about online productivity suites. At Burton Group, we continue to have Dialogues with clients about alternatives to Microsoft Office, so I thought it would be useful to provide a subset of those stories (removing the rants) along with a précis or quote:

• Christopher Dawson, “Google Edu Apps vs. Microsoft Web Apps: Should I have waited?”, ZDNet, September 21, 2009. The Athol-Royalston School District in Massachusetts moved to Google Apps in August 2009: “students are using Apps quite naturally, even if some teachers and staff are a bit more reluctant.”
• Bryon Acohido, “Microsoft takes notice as more people use free Google Docs,” USA Today, September 21, 2009. A story highlighting IDC’s July QuickPoll saying 27% of respondents are already widely using Google Docs or expect to be within a year, and then quoting Microsoft’s Chris Capossela, noting that Office 2010 will have web apps. "A healthy percentage of Google Docs adoption is coming from ad hoc use," Webster says. "It's the classic case of employees making use of free consumer (online) services to get their work done, without asking permission."
• Tim Anderson, “Microsoft's Office Web Apps - a long way from here: Inside the (half-baked) tech preview,” Channel Register, September 21, 2009. A catalogue of the pluses and minuses of the Technical Preview of the Office Web Apps: “The Office Web Apps look great, present a familiar Office-like user interface, and generally render faithfully. The Silverlight-driven previews look particularly good, with smooth zooming and the ability to pop-out documents into a separate window. The main hesitations are around the limited editing features and the poor performance, which we must hope will be fixed before release.”
• Jason Brooks, “REVIEW: Office Web Apps Will Pose Strong Counterattack Against Google Apps, Zoho,” eWeek, September 21, 2009. “Microsoft recently pulled back the curtain on its Office Web Apps in the form of a limited-access technical preview, and according to eWeek Labs' tests so far, the Office Web Apps suite—while studded with its fair share of tech preview warts—signals that Microsoft's counterattack on the online office encroachment of Google, Zoho and others is off to a solid start.”
• Zack Whittaker, “Students vs. Google Apps vs. Office Web Apps,” ZDNet, September 22, 2009. A student at the University of Kent in the UK compares Google Apps with Microsoft’s Office Web Apps.
• Barry Collins, “Microsoft Office Web Apps review: first look,” PC Pro, September 22, 2009. “Although it’s clearly very early days for these online apps, the obvious fear is that Office Web Apps will only be useful for editing documents created in the desktop software, and of limited use when attempting to create documents from scratch. That may be a sensible move for a company seeking to protect its desktop software revenues, but will disappoint anyone hoping the Web Apps would provide an alternative to the regular Office upgrade cycle. Indeed, if you want to make Web Apps part of your company’s workflow - or even your own - you’ll need to upgrade to Office 2007 or 2010.”

Unraveling the Microsoft Word Kerfuffle

On Tuesday, a Texas U.S. District Court issued an injunction against Microsoft, saying it couldn't sell versions of Microsoft Word that "have the capability of opening a .XML, .DOCX, . or .DOCM file (an 'XML file') containing custom XML." This would seem to stop Microsoft from selling Word 2003, Word 2007, and the forthcoming Word 2010 product.  Microsoft has 60 days to appeal, and it may overturn this verdict, but it does give an IT manager pause.

So what's this all about? When Microsoft designed its XML file formats (OOXML), it included the ability to create custom schemas, somewhat akin to views in a database. The idea was that enterprises could add structured data to documents (e.g., an hCard [address] entry) without changing the underlying document schema. These custom schemas were not embedded in the document proper, but did travel along in the document .ZIP file. This meant that a document could contain multiple custom schemas: one highlighting people's names in a document, another highlighting place names, for example. This "to the side" mapping mechanism is apparently what violates i4i's patent.

ODF 1.1, the other current XML document standard, does not have such a rich custom schema mechanism, but the forthcoming ODF 1.2 standard will have a much better one. When a reporter, Kurt Mackie, called me Wednesday evening, I mused that ODF 1.2 might violate the i4i patent as well. The article reads, "The current version, ODF 1.1, doesn't use this custom XML approach, but 'ODF 1.2 will move to a similar custom schema that OOXML has, he [Guy Creese] said in a phone interview." While the quote is accurate, at this point I think I was wrong. True, ODF 1.2 supports a much richer metadata mechanism, but it's not custom XML-based, but rather RDF-based (see http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2008/programme/friday_1475.pdf). The effect is somewhat the same, but the mechanism is different, and that makes all the difference, at least when it comes to patents.

How will this all play out? I'm not sure--and my impression is no one knows for sure.

The $64,000 Question: Google Docs, Acrobat.com, or Other?

A week ago, ReadWriteWeb published an interesting poll, entitled, "Poll: Which Web Office Suite Would You Pay For? Adobe or Google?" At the moment, out of 519 votes cast, 22% (114 votes) were for Adobe, 38% (199 votes) were for Google, and the greatest percentage, 40% (206 votes) were for neither. A number of commenters took the article to task for failing to point out ThinkFree and Zoho, two startups that offer productivity suites. ReadWriteWeb replied, "...we intentionally left them out so as not to dilute the vote between the two companies that are arguably industry giants as opposed to (awesome!) startups."

The problem with such open polls is you never really know the survey universe--it could include some Adobe or Google employees, hoping to tilt the results; it could include many respondents from SMBs, rather than large enterprises; and so on. Probably the more interesting part of the article is the comments, as they highlight many of the viewpoints I hear from clients. Here is a sampling:

A week ago, ReadWriteWeb published an interesting poll, entitled, "Poll: Which Web Office Suite Would You Pay For? Adobe or Google?" At the moment, out of 519 votes cast, 22% (114 votes) were for Adobe, 38% (199 votes) were for Google, and the greatest percentage, 40% (206 votes) were for neither. A number of commenters took the article to task for failing to point out ThinkFree and Zoho, two startups that offer productivity suites. ReadWriteWeb replied, "...we intentionally left them out so as not to dilute the vote between the two companies that are arguably industry giants as opposed to (awesome!) startups."

The problem with such open polls is you never really know the survey universe--it could include some Adobe or Google employees, hoping to tilt the results; it could include many respondents from SMBs, rather than large enterprises; and so on. Probably the more interesting part of the article is the comments, as they highlight many of the viewpoints I hear from clients. Here is a sampling:

Google Apps: Syncing Outlook with Gmail

Image via Wikipedia

Yesterday, Google announced Google Apps Sync for Outlook, which allows enterprises to keep the Outlook client on the front end while replacing Microsoft Exchange on the backend. From an organizational point-of-view, this allows IT to save money (usually) on e-mail administration without disrupting end-user life (since most companies use Outlook on the desktop).

Some comments, stories on the announcement:

• Google Blog: "Use Microsoft Outlook with Google Apps for email, contacts, and calendar"
• CNet: "Google plots Exchange escape with Outlook plug-in"
• TechCrunch: "Google Takes Another Swipe at Microsoft. Enterprise Apps Now Sync with Outlook."
• VentureBeat: "Google Apps syncs with Outlook--a cure for cloud computing angst"

For those paying attention to this market (or reading Burton Group reports), this announcement is not a huge surprise. Actually, the surprise is more that it took Google this long--2.3 years since announcing Google Apps--to figure out that it needed to offer this functionality. (Cisco's recognition that it needed to support Outlook as a client for SaaS e-mail was the driver behind its acquisition of PostPath last year.) In short, this software frontend/SaaS-backend architecture is required to penetrate this market. As we noted last year in the Software as a Service Enterprise E-Mail: Get Ready to Go Beyond the Grind report:

If the SaaS e-mail solution forces users to learn a new user interface, it can be a huge disruption to the majority of employees and the change will be visible to the entire corporation. However, if only the mail server is replaced and business users can continue to work as they have in the past, then a SaaS e-mail solution is effectively just a back end swap out. This makes it similar to installing a new blade server; thus, only the chief financial officer (CFO), rather than the large user population, needs to be convinced of the need for the change.

The Shifting Sands of Product Archetypes

It's taken me a long time to figure this out, but I recently realized that clients often view and describe products via archetypes. Rather than recounting a long laundry list of desired features, they'll say, "What I want is something like SharePoint, but with an additional capability." Initially, I classified this common way of talking as a time-saver, but I've come to realize its also a very useful market analysis tool--because the archetypes shift over time.

Let me give some examples. Way back when--40 years ago--if you wanted a really deluxe typewriter, you dreamed of an IBM Selectric. It looked cool, it had that nifty rotating ball, and made beautiful copies. When I entered college, my mind's eye was on a Selectric--but I made do with a Smith Corona. By the late 70's, people's mental image of the Selectric was replaced with a Wang Word Processor; which in turn eventually got replaced by a PC running Microsoft Word. Another example in terms of portable entertainment is the Sony Walkman; it got usurped by the Apple iPod. If your product is the archetype, you control the market conversation--your product is the baseline by which other products are described and evaluated.

Stephen Elop Ruminating on Microsoft and Its Strategies

Image by

Microsoft

via CrunchBase

Knowledge@Wharton has an interesting interview with Stephen Elop, the President of Microsoft's Business Division (Office, SharePoint, unified communications, and Business Dynamics). He joined Microsoft in January 2008 after stints at Macromedia, Adobe, and Juniper Networks, so as a recent addition he's spent the past year ruminating on what makes Microsoft Microsoft. While you need to take it with a grain of salt (Knowledge@Wharton interviewed him after he gave a keynote at the Wharton Business Technology Conference pitching Microsoft as an innovative company), I think it does offer insights into Microsoft's psyche.

Some quotes:

• "UC is a multi-billion dollar business. SharePoint surpassed a billion dollars for the first time last year. Anywhere else on the planet, those smaller businesses would be entire companies all by themselves. Given the scope of Microsoft, they're part of a division."
• "This is a defining characteristic of Microsoft. Microsoft is very willing to be self critical, harshly self critical, willing to take a look at something we spent a bunch of money on and say, 'You know what, that was a mistake. We shouldn't have done that. Time to change plans. Time to move on.'"

He talks about six strategic imperatives within the Business Division:

1. Fully embrace software and services: "...don't hesitate, don't try and put a moat around the traditional [products]."
2. Extend our business value advantage for customers: making sure that Office, SharePoint, UC are not siloed but rather "a group of capabilities that interoperate well with ourselves and our competitors."
3. Delight our customers with unparalleled experiences: "Microsoft does this sometimes; other times it does not. I came from companies where the experience is fundamentally the differentiator."
4. Innovation: "Part of the reason we're here today [at the Wharton conference] is to stake out the position that we're driving innovation more aggressively than we've ever done in the past."
5. Epitomize operational excellence: "...quality in our engineering, customer satisfaction, hitting the numbers, driving revenue growth, driving margin growth. All the things you need to do to run a business."
6. Employee excellence: "At Microsoft, there is more time spent, more investment in ... communicating about individuals -- their performance, how to advance their career, how to help them develop as individuals. It really is remarkable."

He also points out that Microsoft is working to offer "contextual applications" (my words, not his): "They'll do simple editing, creation, viewing and so forth in the browser. But when they're polishing up the final version of their term paper, research document or a proposal for funding, they will likely take it into the rich client environment for the highest degree of capability."

Worth a read if you're trying to discern Microsoft's future direction.