Pattern Finder

Google Apps Are Gearing Up

Based on a blog post at Google Blogoscoped, it looks like Google's in the process of inserting Google Gears into Google Apps. This will allow users to work with Google documents offline, rather than always having to be connected to the Internet.

This development is of interest to me because I'm in the process of updating my Google Apps report. Although it came out only five months ago--a short time ago for a report on software applications--it's now out of date, due to Google's continual updates. Google now has Presentations, the company is hinting that JotSpot functionality will finally turn up, Gmail now supports IMAP, etc. While I think Google Apps, Premier Edition still has a way to go before large enterprises will buy it, Google is clearly going down the list of prospect objections and picking them off one by one.

Lotusphere 2008 Impressions

Now that I'm back home from Lotusphere 2008, I thought I'd write down some impressions of the conference:

• IBM's Knowledge of/Experience in this Space Is Impressive: After listening to the keynotes, talking with IBM Lotus executives, and catching a few demos in the Partner Pavillion, it's clear that IBM has a sophisticated and nuanced understanding of collaboration, communication, and content--an understanding that goes way beyond that of Microsoft and Oracle. This shouldn't be surprising, given how long Notes has been around, but the company hasn't been resting on its laurels--it's continuing to push the mental envelope as to what's possible.
• Yet IBM Is Preaching to the Converted: The attendees were folks steeped in Lotus products and traditions. They followed some of the more arcane product announcements with ease (no neophytes here) and cheered and clapped at the dings against Microsoft (during the tongue-in-cheek "Innovation Idol" skit, laughing at the scripted appearance of a Windows blue screen of death and applauding when a "Flairpoint" machine was plugged in and ultimately blew out all the lights in the room). It's one of the few vendor shows I've been to where I didn't run into a prospect; I'm sure there were some, but they weren't there en masse.
• IBM Is Finally Dipping a Toe Into SaaS: IBM Lotus announced "Bluehouse" at the conference, a SaaS-based solution targeted at companies with less than 500 employees. (The name's probably going to take some getting used to--an attendee at the press conference referred to it as, "That 'blue' thing you announced...". The notion of "Big Blue" had penetrated, but what the following object was was a bit vague.) Bluehouse will allow participants to store and share documents, as well as track contacts, activities, and meetings. Curiously, however, it does not contain e-mail--the one feature that companies install first when they move to one of these solutions.

In short, a meeting of the Lotus faithful that shows the breadth and sophistication of the product line and gives sustenance to IBM and its customers for the remainder of the year.

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.

Microsoft Buys FAST; Last Year It Was BI, This Year It's Search

Microsoft announced today that it was buying Fast Search & Transfer, the Norwegian enterprise search firm, for approximately $1.2 billion. It looks like pretty much a done deal, in that FAST's Board of Directors is recommending the acquisition and the two largest shareholders are on board (per a ZDNet blog post).

FAST went into an operational meltdown last year (see Forbes article), with writedowns, layoffs, and the exiting of many longtime U.S.-based employees. This probably helped decrease the purchase price, and Microsoft seized the moment. While the operational wheels fell off, the FAST technology is strong at its core.

That FAST would be acquired is not surprising; Bjorn Olstad, the CTO, commented in a meeting I was at last year that the infrastructure players (IBM, Microsoft, Oracle) would increasingly encroach on FAST's space. In short, FAST was well aware of the challenges ahead, and sounded like it was amenable to being acquired. What surprised me was that Microsoft bought FAST; I always thought it would be Oracle, for a variety of reasons.

Last year, we saw the infrastructure players absorb business intelligence (Oracle bought Hyperion, SAP bought Business Objects, IBM bought Cognos); this year it will be search. At this point, Autonomy is the only large best-of-breed player left standing, and it will have a hard time going it alone.

This is a huge coup for Microsoft in the enterprise search space. After futzing around for years, Microsoft finally started to get serious with search in SharePoint 2007. It's not perfect--clients have started to tell me the boundary conditions they're running into--but it's a lot better than search was in SharePoint 2003. If you split the search market into three sectors: (1) cheap and OK, (2) relatively inexpensive and an 80% solution, and (3) expensive and sophisticated, Microsoft is targeting tier two with SharePoint Search. Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express is its answer to tier one (see my previous blog post here), and the FAST acquisition is its answer to tier three.