Pattern Finder

The Tsunami of Google Wave

Image via CrunchBase

Well, Google certainly made a big splash with Wave at its I/O Conference. (Backstory: Google sent me an invitation. However, since Google Apps Premier Edition has been such a wet squib, I decided not to go. Oh, well, live and learn.)

The media has gone into over-hype drive, asking the wrong questions such as, "Is this the end of e-mail?" and "Is this the downfall of SharePoint?" (Uh, the short answer is "No" and "No.") These are the wrong questions because they look at this announcement through a technical lens: will this technology replace that technology? The better question to ask is, "How will this affect business viewpoints and processes?" And from that vantage point, Google Wave is a significant announcement.

It's significant because Google Wave makes physical a groundswell towards contextual collaboration that has been building for some time. There are a bunch of communications technologies (e.g., e-mail, IM), collaboration technologies (e.g., social networking, workspaces), and content technologies (e.g., productivity suites, document sharing) that the market has always perceived as separate. Google Wave takes them, munges them together, and allow workers to perform both synchronous and asynchronous collaboration within a work context. Rather than making the worker open an e-mail application and a word processing application and an IM application, the worker just works. The three Cs come to him, rather than him going to them. The impact of Wave is that it's an instantiation of a vision that many people--including Burton Group--have been talking about for a long time.

In the real world, what that means is enterprises will start to say to vendors, "I want a Wave-like product." Google has given them a new product category to ask for. So give Google an A+ for vision and market impact. However, they'll probably earn a much lower grade for delivering on the promise for large enterprises. There's a bunch of dynamics at work here.

Open Text Is Putting Vignette Out of Its Misery by Buying It

I just got notification that Open Text is buying Vignette for approximately $310 million; it will become a wholly owned subsidiary.

Vignette is one of those classic high tech stories, full of drama. The story I was told by Vignette management was that in its early days, as the company was starting to get into web content management, it went around to a variety of enterprises to get a feel for what clients needed. In the course of this research, they talked to Halsey Minor at CNET, who showed them what CNET had done. Impressed, they bought the software and that was the beginning of Vignette.

In the dot.com era, Vignette was unstoppable. Headquartered in Austin, TX it grew by leaps and bounds and started to feel invincible. I remember spending a day at Vignette at the height of its growth and being shown the multiple fussball tables for developers, the many flavors of microwave popcorn, and the conference rooms full of Aeron chairs. At that point, I knew Vignette was heading for a fall, and told them so. Incredulous, they basically told me I had no grip on reality. Two years later, when the dot.com bust came along, it turned out I was right and they were wrong.

Vignette has never really recovered from those days. Competitors began offering somewhat similar web content management systems for a lot less money, and the portal business became a lot less trendy as well. So Vignette has survived, but it was only a matter of time before the company got bought. Now we know who the buyer is.

Switching from Comcast to Verizon: There Goes a Day

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Image via Wikipedia

Well, I finally succumbed to Verizon marketing and had the "Triple Play" installed yesterday. The following is the story of the order and installation saga.

Previously, we had:

• Broadband Internet access: Comcast
• Cable TV: Comcast
• Telephone (POTS): Verizon
• Telephone (long distance): AT&T
• Telephone (VOIP): Vonage
• Telephone (wireless): Verizon

Now we have:

• Broadband Internet access: Verizon
• Cable TV: Verizon
  
• Telephone (over fiber): Verizon
• Telephone (long distance): Verizon
• Telephone (VOIP): Vonage
• Telephone (wireless): Verizon
  

Two reasons pushed me over the edge. First, Verizon was cheaper (about $1,000 over the next two years), and Verizon now has more HD channels than Comcast.

So, I ordered online, and ran into the first snag. The system automatically assigned me an installation date (which I didn't want), and even though the web site said I could change it online, I couldn't. I eventually got into online chat, where the Verizon rep said, "Book the order now, and then call the 800 number later to change it."