September 19th, 2007

Symphony plays on in Notes 8

Posted by Maurene Caplan Grey @ 12:53 pm

Categories: Collaboration, Email, IBM, Messaging, Microsoft, Productivity suites

Tags: Microsoft Office, IBM Lotus Notes, Microsoft Corp., IBM Corp., Media Coverage, E-mail Servers, Groupware, Enterprise Software, Software, Maurene Caplan Grey

It’s the morning after IBM’s Lotus Collaboration Summit, at which IBM announced that the reincarnation of an ODF-compliant Lotus Symphony is integrated into Notes 8 — as well as being offered as a free download. The media coverage conveys that IBM is trying to win over the Microsoft Office market, and the half-page IBM ad in yesterday’s New York Times about the free Symphony download appears to support the “IBM takes on Microsoft Office” mindset. But, I don’t believe that — not for a moment. Read the rest of this entry »

August 2nd, 2007

Xandros and Scalix: A marriage of convenience

Posted by Maurene Caplan Grey @ 1:08 pm

Categories: Collaboration, Messaging, Open Source

Tags: Scalix Corp., Xandros, Maurene Caplan Grey

Today’s trivia-by-association question: I say, “Linux.” Quick, what’s your first thought? …  

Xandros is gambling that their transition from a desktop Linux player to an end-to-end Linux platform player will drive Xandros mindshare, so as to position them with the Linux “big boys.” Given the voluminous number of Linux distributions, Xandros’s ambition is lofty — but not insurmountable.

In 2004, Xandros stepped into the server market, and progressively built out their infrastructure platform.

Meanwhile in the Scalix camp, founder Julie Hanna Farris had been skillfully, and aggressively, marketing Scalix as the ”Exchange Killer.“ As ZDNet’s David Berlind wrote back in 2005:

For Scalix’s first trick, it offered an Exchange-compatible e-mail and calendaring server for a fraction of the cost of what it takes to run Exchange.

Though certainly one of the more prevalent voices in the messaging/collaboration world, Scalix hardly has been alone Read the rest of this entry »

April 27th, 2007

Enterprise communication: Flexibility trumps security

Posted by Maurene Caplan Grey @ 6:50 am

Categories: Collaboration, Email, Messaging, Security, Social communities, Web 2.0

Tags: Security, Electronic Communication, Knowledge Worker, IM, Messaging, E-mail, Maurene Caplan Grey

Before wireless email became commonplace, executive management would often forward their most important email messages from their corporate account to their free, consumer email account (e.g., hotmail) – so that they could access them at a public kiosk while traveling.

Consumer instant messaging (IM), and the plethora of free "2.0" e-communication systems, are today's traffickers of business information. No longer the primary domain of executive management, everyone can participate in the risk of exposing private information on public networks. Tools that are free, easy and fun, while serving some business purpose, will be used by the average knowledge worker. Witness consumer instant messaging. 

As the knowledge worker decides how best to communicate, flexibility trumps security.

• Let me (the knowledge worker) choose the method by which I communicate, and I'll be more productive. 
• Business units and IT, sanction my choice of e-communication tools and the organization will be flatter and more productive.

The need for flexibility drove the executive to forward business messages to her consumer email account. However, today the traveling executive normally accesses her business messages through a secured Web or mobile session to the corporate email server. As consumer IM became a near staple of enterprise communications, enterprise-level, third-party "connectors" arrived to secure those IM sessions.

With the current explosion of new consumer e-communication media, an unending parade of enterprise-level (i.e., secure) unified communication suites are surfacing — with the supply-side vendors are one-upping each other, near daily. View Microsoft's announcement of the Microsoft-Nortel alliance, followed by Marguerite Reardon's (CNET News.com) report.

[Cisco] has been pursuing several new markets, such as telephony and video, over the past few years to find new growth markets. So far, Unified Communications is proving to be a winner. During the company's second-quarter earnings call in February, executives said that sales of its Unified Communications products had increased 38 percent compared with a year ago. … Even though sales seem to be strong for this product line, Cisco will likely continue to compete against some tough competitors, including Microsoft, which is working with voice veteran Nortel Networks.

Freedom of choice and data security need not be mutually exclusive. Nonetheless, the average Enterprise is wary to spend money on emerging e-communication technologies, or securing those already on-site – even as the average Enterprise User downloads any tool that provides him with the greatest communicative flexibility. 

April 2nd, 2007

Can Zimbra Encroach Upon the Enterprise Messaging Market?

Posted by Maurene Caplan Grey @ 10:22 am

Categories: Collaboration, Email, Messaging, Open Source, Web 2.0

Tags:

Zimbra is a powerhouse at marketing and public relations. Each Zimbra "event" (like last week's announcement of its desktop client)  results in a flood of media coverage. Marketing- and public relations-driven perception is a top-down approach to drive "radar" mindshare. Evidence of earnest creditability is the bottom-up approach that drives a sustainable customer base. The bottom-up approach is the more impregnable strategy to develop and implement. The consequence of a weak bottom-up strategy is ultimate failure.

The consensus of the Blogosphere and Internet journalists is that the Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) server, Web client and the  Zimbra desktop client are all goodness.

Bottom-up…

• Zimbra is sexy. Its Web services architecture aligns with the current excitement over anything "2.0." Its "zimlets" ("hooks" for integrating ZCS with third-party applications) can also be used to create Web-based mash-up user interfaces.
• Zimbra is open source. Open source has shed its legacy, disparaging image in the enterprise. ZCS comes in two flavors: open source community (Open Source Edition), which is free. Community development feeds the for-fee commercialized version (Network Edition) — more suited to the enterprise.
• Zimbra has "cool" features. For example, you can mouse over URLs and certain words, which are linked to other sources of information.  

Innovation for productivity's sake supports a positive bottom-up strategy — and if the innovation just happens to be fun, so much the better. Though a start-up, Zimbra is not swimming in the same sea as the 2.0 "wannabes."

Back in the "real world," though, the vast majority of businesses spend money on Read the rest of this entry »

March 22nd, 2007

Capturing the Elusive Record

Posted by Maurene Caplan Grey @ 9:48 am

Categories: Collaboration, Email, Messaging, Records management, Social media

Tags:

Last week I delivered a Webcast (Collaboration: New Challenges for Electronic Records Management) on behalf of ARMA International (industry organization dedicated to the record management discipline). Historically, record managers have focused on paper-based records. Today, most records start as electronic-based and new paper-based records are scanned and digitized.

I became interested in records management about seven years ago when the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) decided to enforce record-keeping audits of financial institutions. Because the majority of business communication occurs through email, information found in email messages and message attachments often became the "smoking gun" – potentially bringing down a firm. (Enron comes to mind.) In 2003, the SEC included instant messaging (IM) messages as an auditable source of potentially damaging evidence. As an IT industry analyst covering the messaging space, I soon found myself becoming compliance-savvy.

The tenent of records management is "a record is a record" — based on the content and context of the information. The media which holds the information is irrelevant. However, each type of electronic information has unique characteristics. For example, an email takes a different path across the Internet than does an IM. Information may change electronic formats at different junctures in its travels.

In doing research for the ARMA Webcast, I started to think about the growing variety of new communicative, collaborative and social media toolsets that are being used in organizations. Often the toolset is a free, beta downloaded from the Internet, which gets circulated in the office and soon becomes the core of a business process. This is exactly how consumer IM (e.g., AIM and MSN Messenger) entered businesses and why the SEC said, and I paraphrase, "Thou shall manage IM as thou manages email and other document types."

The mundane certainties of business are glitz clouds judgment and history repeats itself. Blogs and wikis are "all the rage," much like IM was a few years ago. Can the business embrace the inherent social nature of ways to communicate and collaborate without breaking the business rules of records management that protect the organization? I believe that the answer is "yes," but that means cultural change in the business; new (or modifications to existing) technologies to manage new forms of electronic information and, most importantly, promoting workforce innovation while protecting workplace records. 

Sounds like utopia, but there is time to chart a path. Companies need to be aware that a serious risk is brewing. Record managers need to become more new technology savvy. IT needs to become more business savvy. Product and services vendors need to "get" these relationships, before they market themselves as experts.