Pattern Finder

Oracle Announces Oracle Cloud Office

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Although the details are sketchy, it appears that Oracle will be coming out with Oracle Cloud Office, a SaaS-based productivity suite based on OpenOffice.org. See the following articles:

• Eric Lai, "Oracle will boost MySQL, release Cloud Office suite," Computerworld, January 27, 2010.
• John Rath, "Oracle Outlines Integration with Sun," Data Center Knowledge, January 28, 2010.

This adds Oracle to the list of vendors who already offer an online productivity suite (Google, Zoho) or will soon (Adobe, IBM, Microsoft).

I didn't hear Oracle's presentation yesterday because I was out of the office consulting, but based on these and other news stories it sounds as if Oracle has a grand vision here--certainly one more expansive than Sun ever did. It will be interesting to watch this play out over time.

Initial Observations from Lotusphere 2010

After listening to the initial keynote, here are my observations:

• It’s well attended; but since Lotus didn’t make any announcements about growth or “the largest ever,” attendance is probably stable or down slightly.
• Lotus finally talked about “hybrid solutions”—that is, integrating both software and services (SaaS) so they’re seamless. This is a mantra that Microsoft has been chanting for several years now. Although IBM has been slow to catch on, if they do make it so that enterprises can’t tell where Notes or Quickr or Connections are running, they will be offering what customers want.
• There were several announcements about planned enhancements to LotusLive, and they will bolster the service—a big improvement from its initial incarnation, when it lacked e-mail.
• Project Vulcan is Lotus’s vision for the future. It’s a good vision—it’s not technology-centric but rather user-centric. However, the next question is when Lotus will deliver it. Are we talking one year or four years?
• Some general swipes at Microsoft SharePoint, but no acknowledgement of its fast growth or how Lotus Notes can integrate with it.

Some Stats from Tom Jenkin's Presentation

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Today I'm attending the Open Text Analyst Day in Boston, an annual event where Open Text goes over the past year and talks about its plans for the future. Tom Jenkins, the Chief Strategy Officer, started things off, and he served up some interesting statistics. At this point, he says there are:

• 100,000+ original films
• 40 million+ original books
• 1 million newspapers
• 1.5 billion e-mail users
• 3.5 billion texters
• 4 million+ original songs

A Twitter Traffic Example: Gartner Buys Burton Group

The recent purchase of Burton Group by Gartner (purchased on December 30, announced on January 5) offers the perfect opportunity to watch how an announcement travels through Twitter. Below is a chart from Trendistic that shows the rocket ride of tweets that occurred Tuesday morning (the search is for tweets that included both "Gartner" and "Burton Group"):

 

You'll notice that the height of tweeting was around 9 AM ET, when the deal was announced; it then took five hours to subside to a steady, low buzz.

Gartner Acquires Burton Group

It just went out over the wire that Gartner Group has acquired Burton Group. The FAQ on the Gartner web site is here; all analysts will be retained.

I'll Be Talking at Lotusphere About Alternatives to Microsoft Office

For those of you attending Lotusphere 2010 (Orlando, FL, January 17-21), you may want to stop by to see my presentation on alternatives to Microsoft Office. It's session INV108 within the Futures and Innovations track, entitled, "Microsoft Office Alternatives: Considerations and Best Practices."

For those of you who have read my Market Insight: Productivity Suites 2009 or Productivity Suite Proliferation: Is It Time to Ditch Microsoft Office? reports (note: Burton Group subscription required for access), the session's findings will not be surprising.

However, it will be my latest thinking, which continues to evolve as I talk to more clients about their productivity suite strategy and issues they worry about. For example, as time goes on, I've become convinced that segmenting your users is not only key, but required. I've always said you have to segment your users (e.g., casual users, expert users, Twenty Somethings used to the web, veteran workers wedded to Microsoft Office) to figure out where it makes sense to displace Office--or if you can even do it. But at this point, I think you need to put a permanent process in place where you continually segment users. You can't get away with thinking that segmenting your users is a one-off deal. Instead, you must create a feedback loop that ensures that you're fielding a set of productivity suite options that map to your workers' evolving needs. If you don't do that, you'll fail.

In the past, enterprises ensured that workers didn't bump into any feature constraints by overbuying--by buying all the features for everyone. Today, if you can successfully segment your users, you can buy different sets of features for different segments, and save money in the process.

In any case, I think it will be an interesting session, and I hope to see you there.

Proof That Microsoft Is Worried About Office's Competition

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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.

Unscientific Study: Amazon Kindle Seems to Be Popular with Air Travelers

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The media has recently been full of stories of the imminent demise of Amazon's Kindle, an e-book reader, due to increased competition from Sony, Barnes & Noble, and others. However, based on a personally conducted, unscientific in-flight sample, I'm not convinced that's true.

Back in June 2009, when I bought my Kindle 2, Kindles on airplanes were a pretty rare sight. Then, when I was on a flight in November 2009, I was sitting in an aisle seat reading my Kindle when the woman at the window pulled out her Kindle several minutes later. Yesterday, flying from Boston to Salt Lake City, with a sample size of two rows (my row on the left side of the plane and the row immediately in front--a total of five people), three out of the five of us were reading Kindles. I have yet to see a Kindle competitor being used on an airplane.

Business Travel--Ya Gotta Love It

Or not.

Burton Group called a management meeting in Salt Lake City this week, so today (Sunday) I flew out to Salt Lake City from Boston. That meant I got to:

• Get up at 2 AM so that I could get showered, dressed, and help my wife shovel the driveway with 3" of snow on it.
• Leave the house at 3:45 AM to get to Logan Airport at 4:30 AM. (Route 93 was snow covered--we're into Day Two of a weekend snowstorm--and the speed limit was around 30 MPH.)
• Stand in the snail-paced security line for half an hour. It had a Business Traveler lane that wasn't open, so I got to enjoy the bedlam of the Family lane.
• Sit on the tarmac for two hours waiting for the plane to be de-iced. (The plane was scheduled to take off at 6:30 AM; it took off at 8:30 AM.)
• Sit in the seat in front of the toddler from Hell, named Maggie, who spent most of the two hours on the tarmac screaming at the top of her lungs phrases such as "I can't see!" (when she wanted to look out the window) or "Ow!" or "Wah!" Based on her parents' blase conversation during the entire escapade, it's clear they didn't care about the impact of Maggie's screeching on others, and in fact felt she was expressing her individuality. Happily, once we got into the air, Maggie slept.
• Take a ride on Express Shuttle from the airport to downtown, commanded by a driver who pocketed my $10 at the beginning of the $8 ride without giving me change and then hustled me out of the van at the hotel, no doubt hoping I'd forget that he owed me $2. (His ploy didn't work.) 
• Arrive in a room that the front desk assured me had a refrigerator and extra feather pillows, but didn't. (However, to be fair, they were delivered two hours later, interrupting my nap.)

Yup. Business travel--ya gotta love it.