October 16th, 2009

SharePoint rolls on, gathers no MOSS

Posted by Tim Walters @ 9:54 pm

Categories: Collaboration, Content Management

Tags: Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Corp., MOSS, Content Management, Collaboration, Groupware, Enterprise Software, Software, Phil LeClare

Next week’s SharePoint conference in Las Vegas is officially sold out, just another sign of the insatiable appetite for Microsoft’s still-imperfect suite. Cold calling sales reps at lesser companies will look on with envy as each attending prospect or customer shells out a list-price $1,199 for the pleasure of hearing a three-day sales pitch about the 2010 version.

And there appears to be plenty to get excited about. Confidential briefings prior to the conference as well as Microsoft’s carefully crafted “sneak peak” teasers have highlighted many cool new features, crisp UI facelifts, and fixes for some major flaws. Already in July, for example, Forrester colleague G. Oliver Young reported on the game changing impact of SharePoint 2010 for the enterprise 2.0 vendors. Of course, the true test will be how well the numerous new and improved features cohere across the suite to drive comprehensive business value. That’s not a question that will be answered in Las Vegas.

What we do know is that Microsoft has applied MOSS-Be-Gone to the product name. Back in April, SharePoint senior director Tom Rizzo announced the demossification of SharePoint 2010. The official reason is that they removed “Office” in order to avoid any confusion with the Office client. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server becomes Microsoft SharePoint Server – oh, but please don’t call it MSS, since that’s already applied to Microsoft Search Server. As Rizzo wrote in April, “Just remember: SharePoint is SharePoint is SharePoint.”

In other words, MOSS had to go in order to emphasize the billion-dollar SharePoint brand. That’s a smart move on Microsoft’s part, but it won’t keep cynics from believing that it was rather because Microsoft wanted to end any association with troubled super models, old-school Formula 1 drivers, or non-vascular plant forms that reproduce via the explosive release of airborne spores. (Although this last might account for the unchecked reproduction of SharePoint sites in the enterprise.)

Microsoft’s product names, at least on the infrastructure side, have always been an arid landscape of dry-as-dust descriptives that produce inelegant initialisms such as WSS, IIS, MSS, and the mercifully sunset but not to be forgotten MSCMS. With Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, Microsoft (accidentally, I suspect) produced an acronym – a word, rather than a string of initials. Alarm bells must have gone off as it became apparent that MOSS is not only pronounceable, it’s a name that erases any obvious reference to both Microsoft and SharePoint. MOSS has something warm and cuddly about it – search for moss on Flickr and you’ll find several cute puppies and kittens – but it’s the antithesis of brand strategy.

So, adieu, MOSS. From a business perspective, Microsoft is doing the right thing by highlighting SharePoint. But it’s sad to let go of a very rare fun name from Microsoft. No one is going to call their pet SharePoint.

What do you think about the passing of MOSS? Please share below – even if it’s only to be the first Microsoft MVP to announce that you’ve just renamed your dog.

July 16th, 2009

Microsoft Office 2010: The odyssey continues

Posted by Sheri McLeish @ 10:47 am

Categories: Cloud computing, Collaboration, Content Management, Information Workplace

Tags: Microsoft Corp., Forrester Research Inc., Microsoft Office, Office Suites, Software, Phil LeClare

Sequels never can match the thrill of the original. But the good ones offer a compelling story of their own, develop familiar characters, and introduce something new and exciting. Last week Microsoft gave developers a backstage pass to preview Office 2010, due out in the first half of next year. The drama unfolds with Microsoft and Google waging a multi-front war with each other in search, browsers, productivity tools, and, soon, operating systems. Glimpses of the fourteenth iteration of Office reveal Web-based lightweight apps along with capabilities geared at improving collaboration, multimedia content development, and email management.

Can Office 2010 save the franchise? Or will a simpler, better customer experience from Google draw in a bigger audience before next summer? And what does it mean for the bit players, independents, and sleepers like the Open Office suites from IBM/Lotus, Novell, and Sun, or for Adobe, Zoho, Thinkfree, Corel … that’s a lot of competition for a sluggish software market that Forrester sees as being down by 5% or more for the year.  The glimmer of hope for software vendors will likely come from subscriptions revenue for software-as-a-service (SaaS) products in 2010, which Forrester projects to grow by 7.5%.

Microsoft wants to lead that growing SaaS market. For enterprises, what’s notable about the Office 2010 story is that Office Web apps can be on-premise or hosted. The lightweight Web browser versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote will be free for consumers through Windows Live. Pow! But the bigger deal for enterprises is the option to host Office Web apps on-premises as annuity customers as well as via a hosted subscription through Microsoft Online Services. This option isn’t offered by Google today and, for the moment, may be what makes Office Web apps a hit in the enterprise.

To date, Microsoft’s dominance in large businesses remains mostly intact, with 57% of firms running Office 2007 and 80% supporting some version of Office.  Combined, the alternatives make up less than 8% of the enterprise market, according to Forrester’s March 2009 North America, Europe, And Asia Pacific Desktop Innovation Online Survey. And of those Forrester surveyed, 78% said they have no plans to look for an alternative to Microsoft Office. Real barriers remain for alternatives, from concerns about content control and security, sunk license costs, and online/offline issues for Web-based tools to fear of rejection by business users. Like it, love it, or not, people have a comfortable, familiar relationship with the Office apps. And that’s a critical edge Microsoft must maintain.

Technology Populism is fueling the collaboration and mobile collaboration markets and blurring the lines between work/life boundaries.  The influence of consumer experience can be equally powerful if harnessed by Google for email and productivity. Most enterprise IT departments rely on the feedback of their business users to measure the value of their productivity tools. Forrester data also shows upgrades generally driven by business demands (34%), because current tools are no longer supported (24%), are no longer compatible (16%), or because the culture demands it (15%). By promoting free access to Web-based tools, Microsoft seeks the sway of the public. Office 2000 ends support this month; Microsoft needs to get those firms on board with 2010 somehow. What will your firm do? What are your barriers to upgrading Office or moving to an alternative? Now is a good time to clarify your firm’s strategy, because 2010 looks like it could be a blockbuster year for buyers prepared to negotiate.

May 6th, 2009

Can Open Text turn the page on Vignette's recent history?

Posted by Stephen Powers @ 5:35 pm

Categories: Content Management

Tags: Open Text Corp., Vignette Corp., WCM, Web Technology, Content Management, Mergers & Acquisitions, Corporate Law, Enterprise Software, Software, Investment

ECM vendor Open Text announced this morning that it intends to acquire Vignette, provider of Web and transactional content management technologies. In some circles, the acquisition of Vignette has been a foregone conclusion for many months now. Vignette has been an established player for years, with an impressive customer base. But the company’s missteps (a major WCM upgrade that stranded longtime customers, questionable expansions into non-core areas, inconsistent customer service and contact) have left them weakened in a market where they should have been able to take advantage of the lack of size and/or stability of some of its competitors. As a result, Vignette’s license revenues have declined in a hot content management market, and the brand has been devalued despite its strong technology.

On the surface, this move appears to be a more understandable fit than Autonomy’s acquisition of longtime Vignette competitor Interwoven earlier this year. While Open Text’s current WCM product of choice (the former RedDot) has proven solid, particularly when compared to those of other ECM vendors, it doesn’t have the same demonstrated track record at the enterprise level as Vignette does. Vignette’s WCM technology – which the company re-architected a few years back – is more advanced. In addition, Vignette also has made good progress with its transactional management capabilities, courtesy of its Tower Software acquisition, particularly in the medical and insurance verticals. Open Text could apply the LiveLink federation model to Vignette’s transactional products and further extend its capabilities.

With Vignette in its stable, Open Text now has a stronger online technology foundation to build upon. And some interesting possibilities exist for integration – such as with Open Text’s digital asset management (DAM) product, and Vignette’s video analysis and delivery offering (from its Vidovee acquision). Of course, while this looks good on paper, execution in rationalizing the expanded portfolio will obviously be key to success. To Open Text’s credit, it has recently stepped up efforts to standardize and integrate its various offerings.

The other interesting question raised by this announcement: what to do about the Vignette brand? The press release states that Vignette will be run as a wholly-owned subsidiary. But will Open Text continue to invest in what some argue is a damaged brand? Or will they eventually go through a rebranding, as they did with their other ECM acquisitions, and retire the purple logo? Time will tell.

What does this mean for IKM professionals? For those using Vignette’s products, there is the comfort of knowing that Vignette has been acquired by a company that understands the content management business. In the short term, expect business as usual. And beware of fear-mongering by Vignette’s competitors. But Open Text will likely have to make some choices about which products to move forward with, and which to eventually sunset. In particular, for those using Open Text’s current WCM, the question will be whether Open Text decides to position the former RedDot solution as a midmarket WCM, or consigns it to the Legacy Heap of WCMs Past (remember Gauss? IXOS? Obtree?). Be sure to keep a close eye on the news out of Open Text’s Waterloo headquarters in the coming days and weeks.

 

October 21st, 2008

CMIS: Boom Or Bust?

Posted by Stephen Powers @ 1:29 pm

Categories: Content Management

Tags: Content Management, Web Technology, Enterprise Software, Software, Stephen Powers

Some of you may have heard about the joint announcement from EMC, IBM, and Microsoft about the creation of Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS). The purpose of this proposed new standard? To create a vendor-agnostic way of accessing the data in content management systems from multiple vendors. In other words: Remember when SQL became a standard for accessing databases? This is the content management system equivalent.

Of course, this could be enormously attractive, making it much easier to develop applications that sit on top of those repositories. Most enterprises have multiple content management systems in place - either due to diverse needs of various businesses, size of the company, or just plain lack of content management vision. Making that content more easily accessible via protocols such as SOAP could be a major win for these enterprises.

For instance, persuasive content - used to influence customer behavior - frequently lives in multiple databases, making it more difficult for organizations to create consistent experiences across multiple channels. CMIS could enable applications to easily access previously siloed content in order enhance those experiences. CMIS could also allow for a proliferation of tools - authoring, reporting, etc. - to work with a variety of ECM systems; think of all the SQL-compliant tools out there - this would be the equivalent. And it could potentially be huge for SharePoint users, who are not always happy with the tools Microsoft provides to access SharePoint content and would like to better leverage that content.

So why am I skeptical? Well, as a former practitioner, I’ve seen too many standards fail to catch fire (most recently JSR-170, which rarely gets mentioned as a must-have by Forrester clients). Standards are kind of like political candidates: you hope they’ll live up to their initial promise and idealism, but you should prepare for the reality and inevitable letdown of their day-to-day existence.

Luckily, major players in the industry have already pledged support for CMIS: in addition to the above, the list includes Oracle, Open Text, Alfresco, and SAP. But the burden will be on those vendors to demonstrate the power of the CMIS standard by actually supporting it and providing (either themselves or in conjunction with partners) compelling applications which take advantage standard, which will further create demand for CMIS-compliant applications and repositories, which will encourage vendors to create more applications, which will encourage….well, you get the idea. Until then, CMIS remains a well-intentioned concept that has the potential to be great, but could also turn into yet another standards-based pipe dream.