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HP vs. Dell: Showdown at the Windows 7 upgrade corral
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Category: Office 2.0
September 22nd, 2009
Google Apps vs. Office Web Apps: Can Microsoft compete in the cloud?
Readers of ZDNet Education will know that I’ve been using Google Apps for some time and recently migrated my school district to Google Apps for Education (affectionately known as GAPE or Edu Apps, essentially their Premium Apps offering provided to educational institutions for free). The technology, particularly Gmail, has been remarkably well-received by staff and students, but acceptance of Google’s cloud-based word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software has been hampered among a sizable chunk of users by the perception that they need Microsoft Office on their desktops (no matter how small a fraction of its functionality they use).
That being said, for those of us who have no such biases (and the group is growing, especially among students and new teachers in the district), Google Apps begs for collaboration and a model of computing where it really doesn’t matter if we lose our USB stick, are sitting in an Internet cafe, are at home, or are at any terminal at work. We can still access everything we need. The cloud, naysayers be damned, is our friend.
So can cloud applications from Microsoft, the very folks who convinced all of those naysayers that they really need to have Microsoft Office installed on their computers, also be our friends? When a Microsoft Ed Tech rep reached out to me and offered me access to their Office Web Apps Technical Preview, I jumped at the chance to take them head-to-head. A Google vs. Microsoft prize fight! While Microsoft’s Web Apps are very much in beta and Google’s are relatively mature, production products, an apples-to-apples comparison isn’t out of the question. I’ll point out spots where the beta nature of Microsoft’s applications show through, but this should give those without access to both products a good comparison of their respective features and benefits.
Next –
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May 27th, 2009
Take the e-mail test: Can collaboration tools save time and money?
Every once in a while, you learn a thing or two from a fifth-grader. My 11-year-old son uses a Web-based e-mail account to chat with a few pals on the East Coast and a couple of out-of-town cousins. But you’d think he was friendless if you saw his inbox. There’s rarely anything in it.
Of course, that’s not because he’s friendless. (He’s not.) It’s because he deletes his email messages as soon as he reads and responds. When I asked him why he never saves them, he simply responded: “I already read it. Why do I still need it?”
OK, maybe that same sort of 11-year-old reasoning doesn’t apply in business environments, where critical documents and information are often found in an e-mail message. But the basic idea is a good one: If you’re done with it, delete it.
April 2nd, 2009
Ariba, DocuSign partner to offer e-signatures on business docs
For the past five months, I’ve been trying to sell a house in the Washington DC area. Sure, there are so many other things I could say about that in a blog post - but that’s for a different blog and a different time.
In that time, we’ve signed and initialed more documents than I care to remember. One set of documents was 65 pages. And it required my wife and I to sign and/or initial all of them. My real estate agent sent them as a PDF. We printed them out, signed and initialed and faxed them back. Of course, it never really quite worked out the first time. Inevitably, the fax would cut off 10 pages into the send. And then, there was the time we forgot to initial in one place and that page had to be faxed, initialed and faxed back. We tried to scan the signed documents into a PDF, too, but that came with its own set of nightmares.
So, when I received the news that Ariba - a company that offers spending and contract management services to companies - had partnered with Docusign, which offers digital signature technology, I was intrigued. Read the rest of this entry »
February 6th, 2009
Southwest Airlines' Next Competitor? Cisco Systems.
Southwest Airlines likes to tell Americans of all stripes that they are “free to move about the country” because of its cheap fares.
But Gary Kelly (at left, in 2004 Halloween costume) and his low-cost airline, born with the mini-skirted stewardesses, still charges $359 to get someone from its headquarters in Dallas at Love Field to San Jose, where John Chambers’ Cisco Systems is based. And another $359 to get back again. Oh, and add $20 to get each way if you choose its “business select” service, which entitles you to boarding priority — and a free drink.
Southwest, which generates about $11 billion in annual revenue, has been able to successfully stick it in the gut of much larger airlines, such as hometown rival American Airlines ($24.5 billion, most recent four quarters) and Atlanta’s Delta Airlines ($20.2 billion), by flying the same airplane on short routes and just minding its Ps and Qs. Oh, and its hedges its fuel costs really well.
But it can’t hedge Web 2.0 particularly well. There’s no way that Gary Kelly can beat Cisco if John Chambers just manages to convince CEOs to keep employees in their seats at the home or branch offices — and travel half as much as they are accustomed to.
Chambers is clearly using Cisco and its own employees as an incubator for this. In the past year, he said on the company’s earnings call earlier this week, the 64,000-worker company has over the last year:
• Increased its used of online collaboration technology by 3,100 percent. The technology? Its WebEx interactive meeting service, of course.
• Conducted 4,000 video conferences, internally, every week. This is its TelePresence technology, that it likes to promote with tie-ins in the Fox series “24,” to solve national security threats. But, first, it solves corporate budget threats. Use of TelePresence has cut — listen, Gary — Cisco’s run rate in travel expenses from $750 million to $350 million. That’s a 53% cut.
* Seen use of its discussion forums jump 1,600 percent. Talking online is a lot cheaper than jumping on a 737 and flying to Houston or New Orleans.
• Watched its own YouTube flourish. Cisco’s video-sharing service is called C Vision. You may not want to see how to fix or market an Aggregation Services Router. But Cisco’s internal use of video as a communications mechanism went up 2,300%.
Maybe business travel is only a quarter of all airline industry revenue. But it’s the only part of the business where airlines make money. Already, the general economy has created havoc for the big airlines.
And even Southwest has hit headwinds for the first time, reporting losses in each of the last two quarters.
It’s not immune to being sucked under, if business travel is cut in half.
And as previously reported, Cisco, which has 63,000 or 64,000 employees and $39.5 billion in annual revenue, proves that you really can conduct internal meetings without anyone leaving their home offices — Southwest will have to train its guns on router makers in San Jose. Not loyalty miles marketers at DFW International Airport.
Oh, yeah. Chambers says he’s cut per-employee travel expense at Cisco from $7,900 per employee per year to $3,400. And he’s not going to let it come back up.
Why should he? And if you’re the CEO of any profit-challenged company elsewhere (and there are more than a couple of those), isn’t cutting travel expense in half something you ought to be able to promise your board of directors?
Next up: Convention organizers organize to defeat John Chambers.
November 18th, 2008
Echosign prepares for tipping point of e-signatures
Electronic signatures aren’t new. In fact, they’ve been equivalent to written signatures since 2000, under the Federal E-Sign Act. But adoption has been slow. Sure, my tax accountant may be submitting my electronic signature on my tax returns but recently, when it came time to put my out-of-state home on the market, I found myself printing 30+ pages from a PDF, signing the documents and then faxing back to my real estate agent.
But the tipping point is coming. A recent entry on the Echosign’s corporate blog focused on what the company is seeing as it continues to push e-signature technology. The company is making a comparison to the adoption of digital photography. It took a while to take off, but once it did, there was no looking back. Film? Prints? Photo albums? Today, it’s all about double-digit megapixels, high-capacity SD cards and online sharing sites like Flickr and even Facebook.
Anticipating that a tipping point is just around the corner, Echosign is announcing today the arrival of its version 4.0 and a new key feature - analytics. As part of the new verison, Echosign wants companies to be able to track digital signatures - and subsequently deals that have been finalized. It also wants companies to be able to be alerted when a signature is still expected - but hasn’t been received. And finally, it wants to be able to look at the turn around times for closing deals, as well as comparisons of different sales teams or against industry benchmarks. From Echosign’s official announcement:
EchoSign 4.0 builds upon the core value proposition of electronic signatures: closing more deals, more quickly. By keeping the contract and deal electronic, digital, and in the cloud, EchoSign prevents the contract cycle from going off-line and having to revert to manual or traditional ways of getting a signature. In this volatile economy, a “closed loop” e-contracting service is an efficient and effective application that gives sales teams of all sizes a competitive, productivity enhancing tool.
To see more of Echosign’s new features for version 4.0, check out the company’s video demo.
November 18th, 2008
Central Desktop launches Enterprise SaaS suite
When it comes to online collaboration, Central Desktop has been serving small and medium-sized businesses for some time with the tools they need to manage versions of files, emails related to a project and calendaring tools designed to keep team members in sync.
Now, as rocky economic conditions keep businesses of all sizes guessing about the future and everyone seems to be looking for ways to operate more efficiently, Central Desktop is introducing a portfolio of tools designed to meet the needs of the enterprise.
Today, the company is announcing its Enterprise Solution Package, a suite of SaaS offerings that includes a new integrated workflow engine, enhanced enterprise-grade security, a minimum up-time guarantee (SLA), Salesforce.com integration as well as access to numerous APIs that were previously unavailable. In addition, the company will provide customized consulting services and training for all Enterprise Solution customers.
Company CEO and co-founder Isaac Garcia said large companies find themselves needing enterprise-level functionality such as security and support to go with their collaboration tools but don’t have the budgets to invest in client-server solutions. 
September 9th, 2008
News to know: DEMO, Google, Live Mesh apps, Microsoft PCs
Here are today’s notable headlines. You can get News To Know via email alert and RSS daily:
Ed Bott: Should Microsoft get into the PC hardware business?
- OEM licensing confusion starts at Microsoft.com
- Adrian Kingsley-Hughes: What could Microsoft bring to the PC hardware business?
DEMO: Today’s Web becomes a two-way street - Sam Diaz
- Walt and Kara at DEMO; finale is an Arrington jab
- DEMO: Off-stage peeks at products, services and technologies
Andrew Mager: TechCrunch50: Day 1
Gallery: The sights of TechCrunch 50 [right] 
Mitch Ratcliffe: Social design advice for Starbucks
Mary Jo Foley:Microsoft building a family of Live Mesh applications
- Microsoft keeps banging the virtualization drum
- Do you have what it takes to be a ‘Windows guru’?
- Sean Portnoy: Is Microsoft adding a Time Machine-like interface to next version of Windows Home Server?
Paula Rooney: Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008, System Center VM Manager 2008 will ship in 30 days
Adam O’Donnell: Spammers are Social, Too
Ryan Naraine: WordPress shuts door on new PHP attack vector
Too much ‘whining’ and not enough action on SOA?
Video: Will one company control the cloud? [right] 
Tom Steinert-Threlkeld: Maybe It’s Time for Twenty-Somethings To Take Over Media
Joshua Greenbaum: Microsoft Hitting Google Where it Hurts: Making Ad Words Accountable
Jeremy Allison: Learning the programmer’s craft
Larry Dignan: Google makes waves and may have solved the data center conundrum
- Dana Blankenhorn: Can Google Chrome build an ecosystem?
- Rose’s iTunes 8 mockup and Let’s Rock predictions
- Google patches ‘critical’ Chrome code execution flaws
- John Carroll: Google’s Chrome, competition, and old pants
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InfoWorld: Google cuts time it retains IP address logs to 9 months
Jason D. O’Grady: Garmin releases RoadTrip Mac client software
HP: We’ve broken the 24-hour battery life barrier
Dana Blankenhorn: Ad danger to open source
Yahoo search arrives on AT&T mobile phones
Sprint readies retail swat team to improve customer service
Oliver Marks: An enterprise balancing act in the cloud
Dave Greenfield: Are browsers the answer for the 3-D Web?
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes: Does DRM guarantee Spore is destined for extinction?
Jennifer Leggio: ‘I Hate the New Facebook’ group surpasses 500,000 protestors
Christopher Dawson: Will we see a new OLPC XO in 2010?
Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex edges closer
London Stock Exchange hit with ‘connectivity issue’
Intel rolls out low power server chips 
Video: Can Chrome give Internet Explorer a run for its money?
Matthew Miller: Microsoft finally adds WiFi store to the Zune with Zune 3.0
- eWallet for iPhone desktop syncing client now available
- RIM continues to gain in smartphone sales, 2nd quarter 08 report
Roland Piquepaille: 68 molecular building blocks of life
Richard Koman: LHC and Faith-Based Science
Paul Murphy: Where there’s hype, there’s fire?
Heather Clancy: Adaptec adds custom power management to its RAID products
Harry Fuller: Cities poised as leaders in a globally warmed world
September 5th, 2008
The Office (2.0): No paper? No problem.
I think I may have been the only person at this week’s Office 2.0 conference using - gasp! - a pen and paper. There was no program “book” when I registered - the agenda was online only. And none of the exhibitors handed out press releases on paper - though I did see a couple of media kits on CD and USB drives. The message was clear. In a 2.0 world, there’s little need for paper. Here’s a roundup of some of the products and services I came across as I chatted with vendors at the show:
EchoSign takes e-signatures into the mainstream with behind-the-scenes technology that makes signing a document as easy as typing your name and email address. 
Literally. We’re talking about documents that range from contracts to loan documents. The demo showed how accommodating the product can be - especially for those who are still leery about the whole digital signature thing. You can add in a password, to ensure that the person signing is the person who should be signing. You can allow people to print, sign and fax in a traditional way - except that the fax goes through EchoSign’s digitization process when it’s sent back, allowing the recipient to track and monitor it online the same as an e-signed document. And if the document has places where it needs multiple signatures or initials, EchoSign takes that into consideration, as well. I can’t imagine doing something like this for the big stacks of paperwork it takes to buy or sell a house, but there are plenty of other scenarios where e-signatures just make sense.
Vyew (pronounced view) had a cool demo of a document being revised through real-time collaboration. There were so many tools in this product that it was hard to keep track - highlighting, sidebar comments, pen markups, calculator and polling plug-ins, flowcharts and more. And it doesn’t matter if you are working on a Mac, PC, IE, Safari, Firefox or if your document is a spreadsheet, Word doc or PDF. And feel free to drop in a video clip or even leave your thoughts on the revisions as an mp3 audio file. I could see the document getting very messy, very fast - but no messier than a paper copy with scribbled notes all over it.
And speaking of collaboration, CentralDesktop has a tool that helps keep it all organized - maintaining version control, tracking comments and emails that are related to the projects. There’s also calendaring involved to help keep track of the project status but it’s not meant to replace the calendar you already have (and who needs another?). Clearspace, a product from Jive Software, also tackles project collaboration, allowing users to create “spaces” and “groups” on-the-fly, without the need for an administrator to set things up. The interface is pretty easy to follow and it’s pretty flexible with customization for your company, too.
OK, so now you’re convinced that your company needs to make a move into the 2.0 world - but how? Appirio is a double-sided business that was on-hand to answer that very question. The consulting side of the business examines what you’re looking to do and shows you how to convert to Google Apps or jump into Salesforce.com and so on. And if you think of something that really doesn’t exist, Appirio will put the developers into gear and build an application that does it for you. Here’s the catch: that application goes into the portfolio of applications that Appirio is selling. The most recent offering: contact and calendar synchronization between Google and Salesforce.
Finally, my favorite demo - and one I even signed up for. SlideRocket is like Powerpoint on steroids. 
If you’re a presentation builder, be sure to check this out. It went into public beta this week and will head into a full-scale launch later this month. Yes, there are slides, just like Powerpoint - but there’s so much more than that. Need an image? It only takes a click to search Flickr or a stock photo library for a free image or one you can buy. Want to throw in an animated overlay? No problem. Need to use a slide built by a co-worker? Just access the library. If that co-worker updates the slide later - maybe with current sales or inventory data - your slide will automatically update, too. And be sure to tag your slides so others can search for them later. And what if you have idea for a tool or plug-in that could do even more. SlideRocket says it will open the API soon. Finally, sharing - for a collaboration meeting on the presentation, a final sign-off or just putting it in the public domain - is just a few clicks. And don’t worry if the recipient on the other end has the necessary software (Powerpoint) installed for viewing. This is Web-based so that means anyone can take a look.
The Office 2.0 conference concludes today.
September 4th, 2008
Deploying and managing online communities: Who, how and why?
There was an interesting discussion at Office 2.0 that dealt with the topic of online communities. There’s a lot of noise on the Web today and it’s easy for that to noise to get – for lack of a better phrase – out of control. So should a company try to control the noise?
Before any company can answer that, you have to look at the “online community” itself. Is it an internal community – possibly a feedback or knowledge sharing forum on an Intranet? Or is it a public-facing community that allows customers and consumers to chime in? Is it a community focused around marketing efforts, the communications team or maybe even the IT folks?
One of the points raised was the difference between old word-of-mouth marketing vs the 2.0 version of it. It used to be that people shared their experiences with a product or a brand with friends, family members and co-workers and over time, the message was spread. But in social media world – filled with wikis and blogs and even YouTube vlogs – an experience with a particular brand or product can spread to millions of people within hours. Isn’t it better to let that message spread virally in a “controlled” environment (not that anyone is suggesting that the message be controlled, of course)?
A couple of key takeaways: Engage with purpose. If a company is entering a new product category or geographic region, a community can be a good way to be transparent. You haven’t just created an online community to spew a one-way message. You’re there to learn about what the market wants or needs or what has or hasn’t worked in the past. If, through a handful of evangelists or marketing or sales folks, the company spark discussions, visitors are more likely to engage. It seems worth noting that the activity has to be there. If you simply launch a community – especially an external one – and leave it alone, you’re unlikely to succeed.
Too often, executives of a company are frightened by what a community might bring – notably, negative comments about the company or its products. But the panelists here say it’s not necessarily the negative comments in an online community that are scariest. Worse is an online community with no comments. You want people to engage – and if they don’t, why would anyone else join? It’s just easier to bash – or praise – your company, product, service or even the experiences of interacting with the company via some other online community, maybe a blog that will never reach other people with similar interests or experiences.
July 29th, 2008
Microsoft, In Search Of Itself
Forget combining your search business with that of Yahoo, for now. Let investors agitate for a sale at Friday’s Yahoo shareholder meeting. Microsoft: speed up your search for your self.
Microsoft makes more money than scores of nations in the world by selling that world on whatever the latest version of its Windows operating system is and the Office suite that runs on it.
But Microsoft still can’t make a compelling case for Vista. And when it comes to providing applications on the Web, the pieces of its Office suite remain conspicuously absent.
Sure, it’s getting aggressive in countering criticism, calling, for instance, Forrester Research ‘schizophrenic’ about its research on the acceptance of Vista in the corporate world.
And it’s trying to change the thinking among individual users, aka consumers, about Vista by (a) putting $500 million into advertising campaigns touting its benefits and (b) conducting the so-called Mojave Experiment, where users are shown an alleged new operating system from the company, get blown away by it, and then are told what they have seen is in fact Vista.
But can you see what they have seen to allegedly change their minds?
Not if you go to the Mojave Experiment video.
Try to find a clip among the 55 panels where you actually can see what the focus group user is shown. Instead, you get five carefully crafted clips at the bottom right of the screen showing, at a high level, some distinctive features, such as parental controls and the recording of TV shows.
You’re not sure what they’re seeing but you’re pretty sure the average buyer is not going to get the kind of handholding and direct demonstrations that these users get (see clip 55 on “instant search.”) Maybe that’ll happen, if PC retailers start setting up more demo stations, a la an Apple Store.
If the clips are enough to make you start thinking about checking out Vista, Microsoft takes you on your search over to its Windows Vista website.
There you can watch a semi-amusing commercial about “sharing memories as they happen” and you get to read how Microsoft defines whatever the leap forward is about Vista.
And you can get a few definitions of what is distinctive in Microsoft’s mind about Windows Vista:
You live life beyond your PC. So do we._We live a lot of life on our PCs — working, planning, playing, and connecting. But we live a whole lot more of life elsewhere. That’s why Windows is on mobile phones and on the web. So the power and familiarity of Windows is available in more places and in more ways — closer to where you live your life.
Or:
You live life with your PC. So do we._We live a lot of life with our PCs. So it’s important that using a PC is safe, easy, and enjoyable. That’s what Windows Vista is about — increasing the security, ease, and pleasure of using a PC. It’s Windows — closer to where you live your life.
There’s a decent checklist showing how you can “enjoy more, worry less” with Vista and the combination of Windows Vista, Windows Mobile and Windows Live.
But the striking thing – still – about Windows Live is what’s missing. After years of talking about “software as a service,’’ trying to create buzz about using Microsoft software everywhere and anywhere you go, you can’t create, pull up or share Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations or Word documents from a Windows Live menu. Don’t make people think of going over to Google Docs. Make sure they stay with you, from whatever machine they happen to be using. Heck, even if you get them to use Office Live, you can store, share and download documents. Not create or modify them, using a Web browser alone.
If the aim of this campaign is really to “talk about things you can do with your PC that you could never do before,’’ it’d also be helpful to be able to do the things you’re used to doing on your own PC, without having to carry it around, for instance.
The best pitch for Vista can’t be to just enjoy more and worry less, than the last go-round.
If you’re Microsoft, you ought to be defining why your operating systems — combined with your (Office) apps — are better than anything else out there.
The Mojave Experiment — which comes roughly a year and a half after the launch of Vista — says to “stay tuned.” Okay, but you’d think if Microsoft was really on top of its core business, ahead of the game and knew what really sets the use of Vista apart, it would be able to articulate it to anyone at any time by now.
March 10th, 2008
U.S. to plug Open XML as an ISO standard
The
News.com’s Martin LaMonica reports:
Two members of the technical committee tasked with setting the national position on a pivotal vote said the States will retain its “Approve” position in a vote to make Open XML (all resources) a standard at the International Organization for Standards (ISO).
The chair of the committee, Patrick Durusau, who is also the editor of the rival OpenDocument standard, said that the controversy surrounding Microsoft’s Open XML standards bid is being fueled by an irrational anti-Microsoft sentiment.
Durusau has an interesting riff on the whole Open XML saga. Here’s an excerpt:
One evening, through a cold miserable rain, a hungry Russian peasant was walking home. A luminous being appeared in their path. “Please! If you will make one wish, it will free me from my prison!” The genie pointed to an oddly shaped lamp on the side of the path. “Wish for anything you want, food, power, wealth, …, anything!”
The peasant grunted, “I wish my neighbor’s cow would die,” as he pushed past the genie to continue home. The strategy behind NOOXML strikes me as being quite similar to that of the Russian peasant. It seeks nothing that would benefit itself, no new product to sell to customers, no new service to serve as a revenue stream. It is simply a wish that “…my neighbors cow would die.”
What is puzzling in this day and age of quarterly reports and returns that any corporate governance structure would long tolerate spite as a business strategy. Or that investors would stay with companies
that follow such strategies. OpenXML (OOXML) has issues in its latest version but the profitable strategy is to help isolate those problems and fix them. Correcting problems with an XML based document format is a benefit to everyone. If not a direct addition to the bottom line, it at least avoids later costs in dealing with defects in a format.
February 18th, 2008
BlueTie brings 'featuretisements' to workflow
BlueTie has come up with a novel way to generate revenue for its collaboration suite aimed at small businesses. Rather than licensing, subscription or ads BlueTie is using”featuretisements,” where the company is paid on a cost per action basis. The idea is to integrate monetizable services into the workflow of email and calendaring. For example, when a user adds a trip to the calendar, they can book travel from with in the Web application via integration with Orbitz.
“The ad model is flawed for the world of applications,” BlueTie CEO David Koretz told me. “Applications are about workflow; ads are about disruption. Annoying the user won’t lead to the highest monetization–that’s why social networking ads are not successful. Advertisers don’t want to be in an email application, but if you do it right it shouldn’t feel like ads.”
Working with Orbitz, Business.com and Constant Contacts, BlueTie was able to generate about 70 cents per user in 2007, Koretz said. Currently, BlueTie has about 4 million users across 230,000 companies. Koretz estimated that 2 percent of customers are using the Orbitz service.
BlueTie, which has 85 employees, is profitable and has more than $10 million in annual revenue, Koretz said. The software is free for up to 20 users, with a paid version at $4.99 per user per month that includes additional storage, live customer support, POP3/IMAP4 support, WAP 2.0 mobile support and Outlook replication and instant messaging.
Koretz said that BlueTie has signed up 19 partners for featuretisements in addition those already live on the service (Orbitz, Business.com, Constant Contact and MapQuest). Among the new partners are eFax, Skype, Amazon and FTD. Clicking on a birthdate, for example, can initiate a pop up screen from Amazon or FTD with a selection of appropriate gifts. Koretz expects featuretisements to raise revenue per customer this year to $2 per user.
Next version of BlueTie will take airline ticket data and attach it as an e-ticket and add it to calendar, Koretz said. In addition, BlueTie is working with Orbitz to alert users of flight time changes.
Some of this mashup functionality is available in other services, such as Yahoo’s Zimbra collaboration suite, but BlueTie is taking workflow integration further.
However, the limited choices per category is a problem, such as if you are an Expedia or Travelocity rather than Orbitz user. Koretz said he is working on allowing a choice of service providers across categories for customers. In addition, BlueTie ’s featuretisement APIs will be offered as part of a syndication platform available for use by other Web applications later this year, Koretz said.
February 4th, 2008
Zimbra adds offline access, instant messaging
Yahoo suitor Microsoft probably isn’t looking for an open source collaboration suite with native email, contacts, calendar, and task synchronization to Outlook 2007, but the object of its affection just happens to have one.
Zimbra, which Yahoo acquired in September 2007 for about $350 million in cash, is rolling out Zimbra Collaboration Suite 5.0 (ZCS 5.0) this week. The new version supports Microsoft Outlook 2007, and BlackBerry Enterprise server and J2ME for mobile users.
Any file from an email in Zimbra can be stored in a “Briefcase” instead of as an email attachment. The Zimbra Desktop provides offline access to the suite, including all email features, calendar access, folders and search.
The Ajax-based Zimbra supports Windows, Linux and Macintosh platforms, and can consolidate multiple types of email accounts, such as Gmail, Yahoo Mail or any IMAP or POP mailbox (below).
In addition, ZCS 5.0 also has integrated instant messaging (below).
As expected, Zimbra is more tightly integrated with Yahoo, via mashups (Zimlets) with Flickr, Yahoo Local (below), Yahoo Finance, and Yahoo Search.
Zimbra claims to have 11 million paid mailboxes, mostly among ISP customers and universities. New Zimbra customers include Red Hat, Texas A&M University, Kuwait University and Dai Nippon Printing. The open source edition of ZCS 5.0 is free and the commercially supported Network Edition has a 60-day free trial.
Pricing for the Standard edition starts at $18 per user per year (for 50 sears) and $28 per user per year for the Professional edition. Educational users receive a 50 percent discount and service provider pricing is under $10 per user per year. Zimbra Mobile and technical support require additional fees.
Satish Dharmaraj, Yahoo vice president and Zimbra co-founder, addressed the Microsoft question in a forum post.
At Zimbra, nothing has changed. We will remain utterly and thoroughly committed to making our customers successful. We will continue to innovate at a great pace. We will continue to disrupt the market with products that are years ahead of our competition. We will continue to embrace open standards. That’s our DNA. And we remain committed to doing that.
He concluded his post, “Thankfully, I can confidently say that the Zimbra movement is bigger than any one company.”
But would the open source Zimbra movement, a competitor to Exchange, really survive a Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo? Perhaps if it is jettisoned from the mother ship. Maybe Microhoo would settle on Zimbra as its core mail/calendar engine for HotMail, Yahoo Mail and Outlook users, and rethink its position on open source. Doubt it.
December 20th, 2007
Podcast: A look back at 2007
This is our last Dan & David Show for 2007, and we look back at some of the major stories and trends of the year. We discuss the impact of the iPhone, cloud-based applications, social networking, software-as-a-service, green IT, industry consolidation and Web 2.0.
You can download the podcast directly to your desktop or MP3 player if you’re subscribed to our podcasts (See ZDNet’s podcasts: How to tune in). For more the topics covered during the show, search our blog. You can also search the audio by entering a keyword in our podcast player.
December 18th, 2007
Microsoft Office not dead yet
In spite of all the hype this year, there’s still no real momentum among either consumers or businesses for Web-based office suites, according to independent, non-Microsoft-funded researchers.
Market watcher NPD has released results of a new study that found a very small number of its 600-plus-member U.S. customer panel are using Web-based consumer office-productivity suites as desktop office-suite replacements. NPD found:
- 94% of PC users have never tried a SaaS (Software as a Service) office productivity suite app
- 3.9% use SaaS apps as desktop compliments
- Only 0.5% use SaaS apps as desktop replacements
Compete.com’s most recent estimate of 1.5 million Google Apps users is on the high side and may be more of a measure of visits to Google’s site rather than use, according to NPD analyst Chris Swenson.
This survey simply indicates that a tipping point toward the cloud hasn’t been reached yet. So-called Web phenomenon like Google search, Facebook or MySpace didn’t mystically reach warp speed in adoption. Moving robust applications to the cloud is a bit more complex than instant messaging or a social graph. At some point software-as-a-service applications, with offline support, will take the bulk of the pie, but it will require a few more turns of the crank. I don’t think that Microsoft has its head in the sand. It’s a question of timing, but if Microsoft is too late to catch the big wave and launch a full SaaS assault, the company will suffer.
December 16th, 2007
Google vs. Microsoft = Search + Apps
The New York Times has a story on the battle brewing between Google and Microsoft. The story doesn’t add anything new or Google knols to the converging paths of the two companies. Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt said 90 percent of computing action–“almost everything you do in a company, almost everything a knowledge worker does,” he said–will move to the cloud.
Microsoft’s head of business software Jeff Raikes calls Schmidt’s assertion “competitive self interest” aimed at making Microsoft look out of touch with reality. But the reality for Microsoft and proof of concept is 500 million users of Microsoft Office and a concerted focus led by chief software architect Ray Ozzie on bridging the online and offline worlds, delivering on the usage scenarios that customers want. Even Google with its Google Gears recognizes that offline support is a requirement for business users today on the not alway on planet.
Chris Capossela, vice president of the Office group, expresses Microsoft’s stance toward competitors: “Needless to say, we are going to do everything we can to remain the leader in this space. And whoever comes our way, we’ll certainly be waiting for them.”
“Waiting for them” means that if Google Apps or Zoho or whatever cloud-based office suite gains traction, Microsoft will have a competitive product ready when it needs it.
As Don Dodge, who works for Microsoft said in his blog post:
Ultimately the customers decide who wins. Great companies adapt to changes in the marketplace. Lazy companies cling to their “tried and true” business models in the face of disruptive forces. Microsoft is a great company…so is Google. Both will be successful in their own way…and the customer wins either way. That is the American way!
However, Google has one key advantage that could be a differentiator as more applications transition to the cloud over the next decade. Search will become even more central applications as more data and Web services are accessible–both offline and online–via increasingly smarter search engines.
There is a scenario for search-enabled applications. Need a formula for a certain calculation–type in or say what you need in natural language and the engine finds the appropriate formula and can even trigger the calculation. Or tell the search engine while you are in your document processor to find your notes on a topic and combine it with the most high ranking articles on the Web. Google currently is the search brand and dominates the category with about 65 percent market share
The idea of building deeper and smarter connections between search and applications is not lost on Google or Microsoft. In the end, the competition is all good for customers.
November 29th, 2007
Working Webware: Can Zoho get a good share of the SMB market?
Rafe Needleman of Webware and I hooked up for a video show, called “Working Webware,” to look at some of the up and coming companies and products aimed at businesses. For our first show, Sridhar Vembu, CEO of Zoho and its parent company AdventNet, was on the hot seat. Zoho is one of the leading on demand productivity software solutions, but the company is going up against the likes of Microsoft and Google.
Rafe and I discuss Zoho’s challenges with Vembu and then give our take on whether the company has a chance for success in the emerging Web 2.0 office software market. We agree that Zoho has many strengths today, especially its set of products, but it will take more to gain a major foothold in a market against such well endowed competitors.
Vembu responded to the our critique in an email:
I agree we face a massive challenge. Here is why I feel optimistic: at AdventNet, we get about 1.5 million downloads of our IT Management & Security products (they range from network/systems/app management to help desk and a lot in between). These products target SMBs directly. We count in excess of 25,000 organizations as customers. We have relationships with nearly a thousand resellers world-wide, and we are establishing tiered distribution partnerships around the world. That business is growing at a really fast clip.
I believe there is a huge untapped opportunity in the SMB segment for Zoho. That is why we are investing heavily (Zoho division alone has now 200+ people in engineering). Fortunately, our AdventNet business is doing extremely well to be able to afford the investment.
Of course no one can predict the future, but based on the response we are seeing for Zoho, I am really optimistic. I believe just as the desktop software industry had room for players like Adobe & Intuit to thrive in the face of Microsoft, we will carve out a space for ourselves in the online application business, assuming a Google-dominated world. Execution is the key, as always.
Indeed, execution is the key and to this point Zoho has done well in leading the pack in innovations, such as being the first to deliver Google Gears offline functionality–even before Google. Being first to move doesn’t always win the race, but Zoho is relentless in its pursuit of carving out its space in the SMB market.
November 26th, 2007
Offline editing comes to Zoho Writer
Zoho said Monday that its Web-based Zoho Writer word processing application is adding offline editing capabilities.
In a blog post, Zoho said users will be able to edit and view documents offline. Previously, you could only read documents offline.
The news comes a few days after the launch of Live Documents, the latest entrant to try and poach a small slice of the Microsoft Office juggernaut.
To make the offline Zoho Writer feature work, you’ll need a Google Gears plug-in installed on your browser. By default, 15 documents are downloaded from the ‘My Docs’ and ‘Shared Docs’ folders.
Zoho also has a video demo of the new offline capabilities.
In the big picture, Zoho’s move is just the latest step in taking Web-based applications offline. Once these features become the norm, there’s a chance that corporate adoption will pick up.
November 14th, 2007
Next up for Salesforce: A Windows-like browser-based desktop user interface?
We’ve already seen Web-based desktops from the likes of Laszlo with its Webtop (see video) and from Sapotek with its Desktoptwo (see video) — both of which pursue different models (the former, you must host behind your firewall; the latter is hosted multitenant style by Sapotek) and both of which encourage third-party developers to join the ecosystem with their own applications for the two platforms. And, while we have seen several outfits offer a portfolio of Web-based desktop functionality in decidedly non-desktop like user experiences (eg: Google Apps), none of the big guns have weighed-in with a browser-based experience that mimics the user experience found in today’s desktop operating systems like Windows, Mac, and Linux. Perhaps until now.
While I’m still waiting to hear back from saleforce.com for an explanation of what’s up, here are some screenshots of a user experience that takes the tabs that you normally find along the top of salesforce.com’s standard Web-based user interface, and converts them into icons and menu items in what is clearly a browser-based desktop-like user interface (continued below….).
Not all of the icons and menu choices work. But as can be seen from the username at the top of the Start Menu (eval@visualforce_extjs.demo), the desktop user interface was developed using Ext JS’ Web Desktop — a development kit that’s available commercially and as open source for developers to build Web-based applications that look like desktop applications. As far as I can tell, the salesforce proof-of-concept relies exclusively on Javascript and DHTML (no Flash required as is the case currently with both Sapotek and Laszlo).
On salesforce.com’s Dev Net wiki is a page that describes the user interface (along with links to the functional version that I got the screen shots from ) as the VisualForce Desktop. As a proof of concept, the VisualForce Desktop shows how any functionality that’s inherently available through salesforce.com’s developer environments (including the native functionality built into salesforce.com or third party applications that are built in the Apex programming language and that run on saleforce’s multitenant utility-delivered virtual machine) can be ported to run on a desktop like browser-based user interface.
I’m trying to imagine what’s not possible by virtue of this marriage and can’t think of anything. Although salesforce.com is primarily used for salesforce automation and customer relationship management applications, its platform is clearly powerful enough to support any data driven application (in other words, applications that can benefit from salesforce.com’s database functionality). And, given that it’s a mashable platform, there’s no reason that this saleforce hosted Web-top can’t be stretched (under the hood) to pull in other third party functionality (through APIs) that isn’t natively available from salesforce (eg: mapping).
When an if we hear more, we’ll let you know.
November 12th, 2007
Oracle virtualization 3x better than the competition?
Updated below: At Oracle OpenWorld today, the company announced its own server virtualization software that the company claims is three times more efficient than existing x86 and x86-64 VM products from other vendors. Oracle’s VM is based on open source software ( Xen hypervisor technology) and includes a Web-based management console. It’s another direct hit at Red Hat. Last Oracle OpenWorld, the company announced a Linux distro and support that is claimed was substantially less cost than Red Hat’s, but it hasn’t effectively slowed its competitor. Perhaps, Oracle is just trying to wear down Red Hat before it makes a bid for the company as part of its “acquired innovation” strategy.
Various companies–Dell, HP, NetApp, etc.–announced how pleased they are to support Oracle VM, which supports Linux and Windows (Oracle Enterprise Linux 4 and 5; RHEL3, RHEL4 and RHEL5; Windows 2003, Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP).
Oracle VM is a free download, and 24×7 support is priced on a per-system basis. Servers with up to two CPUs is $499 per year per system and servers with unlimited CPUs is priced at $999 per year per system.
At this point, it’s unclear how Oracle arrived at the 3x more efficient metric, or what “efficient” precisely means. In an FAQ on Oracle VM, the company said:
Oracle ran many performance benchmarks comparing Oracle products running with Oracle VM against the existing leading server virtualization product and also with Oracle products on non-virtualized operating systems on x86 and x86-64. Oracle consistently saw much better resource utilization with an average of three times less overhead using Oracle VM, and also saw significant scalability with virtual SMP. In many cases, the comparison with real hardware was approximately equal in performance.
No data was provided in the FAQ regarding the tests. Currently, only Oracle products are certified for Oracle VM.
More to come on this topic…and some perspective from Red Hat, VMware and Microsoft.
Update: In a meeting with Enterprise Irregulars, regarding Oracle VM Phillips said:
Oracle VM is not really aimed at Red Hat. They are not a factor in virtualization. It’s more for our own customers who want us to be more competitive. You can quickly provision a RAC [Oracle Real Application Clusters] node if you already have a VM running on the machine. We want to make our own products easy to use managing Linux and VM together.
I asked him about the benchmarks showing Oracle VM as more efficient than VMware and other competitors. “We’ve done some benchmarks based on real tests. Larry [Ellison] will show more on this on Wednesday,” he said.
Dan Farber, editor-in-chief of CNET News.com, has more than 20 years of experience as an editor and journalist covering technology. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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