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 »

July 9th, 2007

Can Postini legitimize Google's enterprise ambitions?

Posted by Maurene Caplan Grey @ 3:51 pm

Categories: Email, Messaging, Productivity suites, Security

Tags: Google Inc., Postini Corp., Maurene Caplan Grey

Google has been thundering into the SaaS space with their broadening ”application-of-the-day” suite. Google has portrayed themselves as a productivity suite contender in the enterprise space, which supports today’s announced plan to acquire messaging security provider Postini. However, they face a Mount Everest-like uphill climb. Google needs to shed their pure-play consumer image, in favor of a provider for consumer and enterprise services. As my ZDNet colleagues, Dan Farber and Larry Dignan, point out in their post today:

With Postini, as well as its recent partnership with Salesforce, it’s clear that Google sees itself as an on-demand enterprise applications provider. The big question is whether enterprises will see Google that way.

Google’s venture into the enterprise space is further burdened by highly publicized privacy issues.  Read the rest of this entry »