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.

Google Buzz: For Most Enterprises, Much Ado About Nothing

Image via CrunchBase

Here we go again. Google announced a new product, Google Buzz, and the media is all agog about it:

• Miguel Helft and Brad Stone, "With Buzz, Google Plunges Into Social Networking," The New York Times, February 9, 2010.
• Ashley Vance, "Google Gets More Social with Buzz," Bits Blog, The New York Times, February 9, 2010.
• Jessica Vascellaro, "Google Adds 'Buzz' to Gmail," The Wall Street Journal, February 9, 2010.
• Tony Bradley, "Can Google Generate Buzz in the Enterprise?" PC World, February 9, 2010.

Google Buzz is a service that allows users to share updates, photos, and videos within the Gmail e-mail interface. As such, it's a competitor to social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

So while the media at large is blogging and writing about what this means for Facebook and Twitter, how about the bread-and-butter enterprise? What does it mean for an enterprise, trying to keep its e-mail up and make its information workers more productive? Not much.

First of all, the enterprise would need to switch to Google Apps Premier Edition (GAPE)--and very few large enterprises have done so. Some are thinking about it, but there's a big difference between thinking about it and doing it.

Second, Google Buzz isn't available on GAPE. In typical Google-speak, Google is refusing to say when it will turn up in GAPE, other than saying it will be "soon." (That certainly helps an enterprise plan [sarcasm intended]).

Third, Google has linked Buzz to largely consumer-oriented sites, such as YouTube and Flickr. Does an enterprise really want to have its employees conversing with/looking at those sites? As a general rule, I would argue no. The enterprise conversation universe should be centered within the company itself--what are other employees and and divisions doing and thinking? This isn't always true--a Marketing Communications Specialist very much wants to watch and participate in external conversations--but that's the exception, rather than the rule. Enterprises looking for a more social software orientation while keeping an enterprise focus should look at the forthcoming Microsoft Outlook Social Connector rather than Google Buzz.

However, I'm not convinced Google Buzz will be a total bust for organizations. In certain contexts, it may be quite useful. For example:

• Colleges and universities: Google Apps Education Edition has done well at some universities (being free for students has helped), and Google Buzz adds functionality for those who already use Gmail. Within universities, that's usually students, who like the web orientation of Gmail and have disdain for Outlook (it's their parents' e-mail system). Faculty and staff, however, typically stick with Outlook, and probably won't be that interested in the Google Buzz features.
• High tech startups:  A lot of high tech startups use Gmail or GAPE. It's cheap and it keeps them from having to build their own internal IT infrastructure. Furthermore, using Gmail is a style thing--it proves you're cool and cutting edge. Google Buzz adds to the functionality of Gmail, and keeps users from having to bop out to Facebook and Twitter to see what's going on.

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. Once again, I think Google is doing a service to the market by offering up a new work paradigm, as it did with GAPE and Google Wave. However, I'm not convinced Google Buzz will ultimately win in the enterprise space.

Oracle Announces Oracle Cloud Office

Image via CrunchBase

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.

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.

Opening Keynote at Gilbane Conference

Following are my notes from the opening keynote at the Gilbane Conference yesterday. The panelists were: 

• Susan Parker, Director, Mass.gov, Commonwealth of Massachusetts
• Michael Edson, Director, Web and New Media Strategy, Office of the CIO, Smithsonian Institution
• Luuk de Jager, Senior Director, B2C Organizational Empowerment, Central Marketing Office Online, Philips Consumer Lifestyle

Parker: Mass.gov

Before Mass.gov, a lot of different web sites. Mass.gov came along in 2001.

Goals of Mass.gov:

• Brand: Simple, recognizable brand name
• User-Centric: Content organized according to users, not government structure
• Consistency: Same look and feel
• Consolidation: From hundreds of individual web sites to a handful of sub-portals

Mass.gov came out of an e-government task force chaired by Governor Celluci. Vision was high level. Over time has evolved into “a single face of government.”

Did an analysis of a consolidated web site; reduced the number of people needed from 20-30 to 5-6 people.

We want to deliver info to where people live, such as on Facebook. We have a long way to go to do that. We've just started on a Massachusetts Open Data initiative.

We have had a problem with being dependent on expensive consultants to keep our systems running. For products, we use Interwoven Team Site and Vignette.

Statistics:

• Mass.gov gets 2.5 million unique visitors a month; there are 200 content authors.
• 104 individual web sites in the Executive Branch before Mass.gov. In December 2009, 36 total sites.
• Before Mass.gov, 157 separate sites in all Mass government. Dec 2009 is 89; goal is 30 in June 2012.

Edson: Smithsonian

Used a process of "workshops to wiki." Time was the enemy. Used a public-facing wiki over the course of 6 weeks. To find information about the project, search for “Smithsonian Web Strategy.” Recorded the workshops on the wiki.

We’re a red ink business. We want to lose less money but involve a lot more people.

Build your APIs first; we want to have people reuse our content.

De Jager: Philips

Statistics:

• Philips has $30 billion annual revenue.
  
• 15,000 active SKUs, 52 countries

Four pillars:

• .com: The marketing site
• .shop: Used for consumer intelligence
• .live: User-generated content
• .org: Global scale, local flavor

I'll Be at the Gilbane Conference

I'll be at the Gilbane Conference in Boston this Wednesday and Thursday. I'll be on the analyst panel on the first day, entitled, "Industry Analyst Debate - What's Real, What's Hype, and What's Coming."

I always enjoy going to this conference because: (1) it's not overwhelming in size, (2) the presenters are usually quite good, and (3) I always run into people I know, both end users and other analysts.

Cisco: Changing Market Dynamics in the SaaS E-mail Market

Image via Wikipedia

For an analyst's view of Cisco's announcements, see these four postings by Mike Gotta (he's currently at Cisco's Collaboration Summit):

• Understanding Cisco's Collaboration Strategy (Part 1): What Is Driving Cisco into the Collaboration Market?
• Understanding Cisco's Collaboration Strategy (Part 2): What Is Cisco Announcing?
• Understanding Cisco's Collaboration Strategy (Part 3): Clarifications and Questions
• Understanding Cisco's Collaboration Strategy (Part 4): Is Cisco's Vision Holistic Enough?

Mike notes, "In those areas [virtual computing, voice and video networks, and inter-business collaboration] Cisco will progress and mature over the next 3 years (expect incremental consistency)--people should not expect overnight success--this remains a journey for Cisco."

I agree--Cisco still has a lot to learn in these markets, and it will not be an overnight success. However, these announcements have already changed the dynamics of the market. Looking at just hosted e-mail:

• Microsoft just lost its "California trendy vs. business-like" positioning: When going up against Google Apps, Microsoft has been able to say, "Yes, Google's trendy, but wouldn't you rather deal with a company that's been selling to enterprises for years?" In some cases, large enterprises, put off by Gmail's downtime and Google's enterprise cluelessness, have said yes, purchasing BPOS or Exchange Online. Cisco now disrupts that binary choice. Cisco can call high; it's been selling to enterprises for years. So while Cisco is new to hosted e-mail, it's only about a year behind Microsoft, and it's also a "safe" choice. For enterprises that just want to outsource e-mail--they don't care how it integrates with a collaboration platform--Cisco has now became an option. 
• IBM now has another enterprise SaaS e-mail vendor to go against: IBM's Lotus Live offering is for SMBs; if a large enterprise wants someone else to run its Lotus Notes e-mail system, IBM Global Services offers hosting services. If a large customer came to IBM looking for e-mail hosting, they were also probably looking at Google Apps and Exchange Online Dedicated. Now Cisco gets added to the mix.

The big question at the moment is how much Cisco WebEx Mail will cost. The Cisco WebEx Mail product page extols the virtues of the product, but doesn't mention pricing. Assuming it's in the ballpark of $50 per user per year, enterprises now have a new option to consider.

Unofficially, News on Cisco's Hosted E-mail Solution is Out

Image via CrunchBase

On Friday, November 6, The Wall Street Journal posted a story noting that Cisco would soon be announcing a new e-mail solution as well as video sharing and social networking products. Although Cisco doesn't make the official announcement about its SaaS e-mail solution until two hours from now (12 ET today), the Friday trickle has already turned into a Monday flood:

• Marguerite Reardon, "Cisco ruffles feathers with new collaboration tools," CNET News, November 8, 2009.
• Clint Boulton, "Cisco Adds Social Software, Hosted E-mail to Collaboration Lineup," November 9, 2009.
• "Cisco Breaks Down Barriers to Business to Business Collaboration," CNNMoney.com, November 9, 2009.

The question was never "if" Cisco would offer SaaS-based e-mail, but rather "when." Cisco bought PostPath in August 2008, and was clearly working to bring a "Cisco-ized" version to market. In fact, if you attended the SaaS e-mail vendor panel I ran at this year's Burton Group Catalyst Conference, you will remember the Cisco representative saying a SaaS-based e-mail solution was in beta test--and told the audience if anyone was interested in being in the beta to contact him afterwards.

Information missing from the pre-announcement news stories is pricing for the service. It had better be in the ballpark of $50 per user per year. This is the number that Google has burned into people's brains, and one that Microsoft met last week with it's 50% price cut of Exchange Online. (In this case, the WSJ article is wrong. It stated, "Microsoft recently dropped the price of its hosted email service from $15 per person per month to $10." That's the price for BPOS. Exchange Online was $120 per year; it's now $60 per year, and with volume discounts it gets below $50 [e.g., 10,000 users is $49.32 per user].)

Oracle Plans on Supporting OpenOffice.org; Silence on Sun StarOffice

Oracle has updated its FAQ page on the Sun acquisition (hat tip to Savio Rodrigues' blog post). Under the question of, "What is Oracle's plan for OpenOffice?," the company states,

Oracle has a history of developing complete, integrated, and open products, making integration quicker and less costly for our customers. Based on the open ODF standard, OpenOffice is expected to create a compelling desktop integration bridge for our enterprise customers and offers consumers another choice on the desktop. After the transaction closes, Oracle plans to continue developing and supporting OpenOffice as open source. As before, some of the larger customers will ask for extra assurances, support, and enterprise tools. For these customers we expect to offer a typical commercial license option.

So the good news is it looks like Oracle will continue to contribute to the OpenOffice.org codebase and offer support for OpenOffice.org, as Sun does now. The curious thing is there is no mention of Sun StarOffice. Is this because Oracle figured calming down the open source proponents was more important than talking about Sun StarOffice, which it will continue to develop and support? At the other end of the spectrum, is this because Oracle plans to drop development and support of Sun StarOffice? Or is the answer somewhere in between?--maybe Oracle hasn't yet figured out what to do about Sun StarOffice.

Something to ponder.

(As an aside, the Oracle lawyers might want to do their homework. It's supposed to be called OpenOffice.org, rather than OpenOffice, as the name OpenOffice is owned by someone else. I know. My wife used to be the product manager of OPEN/office.)

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."