Collaboration and Content Strategies Blog

Liferay Social Office, Another Supporter of SharePoint Protocols

Blogger: Larry Cannell

Liferay, the makers of the popular open source portal, will soon be releasing a new product called Social Office. This is collaborative workspace product that consists of newly developed features combined with capabilities that were previously offered as portal add-ons. A Liferay Social Office site provides document libraries, team calendars, activity tracking, instant messaging, blogs, wikis, message boards, and announcements.

However, what I find to be the most interesting new feature of Social Office is its support for Microsoft Office. Liferay Social Office will support (as other open source vendors have called it) "the SharePoint protocol.” Specifically, Social Office will support two protocols used by SharePoint: MS-DWSS (Document Workspace Web Services) and Microsoft’s version of WebDAV. Documentation for these (and other) protocols used by SharePoint and desktop Office applications were released by Microsoft earlier this year. I blogged about this a few weeks ago (“Cloning SharePoint” and “What the heck is a SharePoint Protocol?”). In short, support for these two protocols facilitates the use of the “Shared Workspace” pane in Office applications. This enables management of document workspaces from within desktop applications like Word, Excel, or PowerPoint.

Two new vendors supporting a protocol does not make for a trend, but I will be on the lookout for others to follow. Maybe then the argument could be made that MS-DWSS is the POP3 for collaborative workspaces.

How Web 2.0 Is Influencing the Future of Intranets

Blogger: Larry Cannell

Last week I participated in our European Catalyst Conference in Prague and it was a wonderful experience. Prague is a fantastic city and the conference was full of good sessions, stimulating conversation, and incredible food.

If you missed it, the video below is a screencast of a session I presented at our North American Catalyst Conference a few weeks earlier.

How Web 2.0 is Influencing the Future of Intranets

“The expectations of tomorrow's workers are being molded today by popular consumer Internet services. These capabilities may not directly translate to enterprise use but will have a strong influence on future products and services. This session explores how today's consumer Internet is impacting the future of intranets.”

You may also view this on YouTube.

Microsoft PDC: It Comes Down to Promise vs. Reality

Blogger: Guy Creese

I'm observing Microsoft's PDC Conference at a seven time zone distance (I'm on vacation in London ["on holiday" as they say in the UK] while PDC is taking place in Los Angeles). Microsoft so far is saying the right things--for example, that part of Azure's purpose is to blur the line between software and services. However, the devil is in the details. For example, how seamless will the experience be: for developers, for end users, for buyers (e.g., licensing), and for IT (e.g., monitoring the online and in-house services from a single, unified dashboard). In short, the announcement is heartening for enterprises and their IT departments; however, how Microsoft delivers the reality (e.g., seamlessness and pricing) will make all the difference in the world. Microsoft's current offerings are not seamless (e.g., partners at the moment can't significantly customize SharePoint when it's hosted by Microsoft) and in some cases expensive (e.g., Office vs. every other productivity suite), and continuing along the same lines just won't fly with the clients I talk to.

The announcements I was pre-briefed about under NDA take place today (I think). So I'll have to wait to offer commentary about them. Nevertheless, I would urge you to monitor what Microsoft is saying at PDC. This appears to be the largest coming out party to date for Microsoft's future direction.

Outlook, the most flexible enterprise SaaS e-mail client

Blogger: Larry Cannell

Cloud computing and software as a service (SaaS) has been getting some bad press lately. In an interview last month Richard Stallman said “If you use a proprietary program or somebody else's web server, you're defenceless. You're putty in the hands of whoever developed that software." This should be a concern for any enterprise considering SaaS. A SaaS provider can be just as proprietary as any software vendor.

In our recent enterprise SaaS e-mail report we addressed this concern and concluded Microsoft Outlook is the most flexible enterprise SaaS e-mail client available. The reason: Outlook can be used with three of the major SaaS e-mail services we expect to see in the very near future (Microsoft, Cisco/PostPath, and Zimbra/Yahoo). By supporting Outlook these vendors can provide a near seamless transition from on-premises to SaaS e-mail. Since there is no need to sell a new e-mail user interface the business case for making the switch is simpler.

With Cisco/PostPath and Zimbra/Yahoo we are seeing the emergence of viable Exchange-compatible competitors. This level of compatibility is made possible through both the MAPI (Messaging Application Programming Interface) interface and Microsoft’s publication of Exchange protocols. Today, Zimbra has good support for Outlook using its MAPI client software. PostPath (recently acquired by Cisco) does not even require the MAPI client code. In addition, both of these products support Exchange ActiveSync for synchronizing with mobile devices.

Take a situation where a company has employees using an on-premises Exchange Server with Outlook for their e-mail, calendar, tasks, and contacts. This company could switch to the Microsoft SaaS offering (Exchange Online) and could also use Cisco’s or Yahoo’s offerings when they become available. At this time the only issues appear to be with Outlook’s mail rules (mail filtering is available but manageable only through their web interfaces).

Having a separate client (like Outlook) that can speak to multiple SaaS e-mail providers offers the enterprise needed flexibility. Web-only SaaS e-mail vendors do not presently offer this. Zimbra comes closest with their Zimbra Desktop client, but only supports e-mail (via IMAP or POP) and no support for calendars, tasks, or contacts.

By the way, Bill Pray and I will be hosting a Burton Group telebriefing this week discussing our enterprise SaaS e-mail report. Burton Group customers have a choice of two dates:

Tuesday, October 28, 2008
2:00 p.m. EDT/11:00 a.m. PDT/18:00 UTC GMT/19:00 CET

Wednesday, October 29, 2008
9:00 a.m. EDT/6:00 a.m. PDT/13:00 UTC GMT/14:00 CET

You can register for one of these telebriefings HERE. I hope to see you online at a telebriefing this week.

iPhone and Enterprise E-mail... A Few Months Later

Blogger: Bill Pray

When Apple released its iPhone 3G earlier this summer, Apple touted it as “The best phone for business. Ever.” For most users, that means enterprise e-mail, calendar, and contacts on the device.

The iPhone 3G launched with a native support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync – a logical, but interesting choice for Apple. Logical because Microsoft Exchange is, by most measures, the leading e-mail solution in the market. Interesting in that, given the desktop marketing wars between “Mac and PC”, one wonders why Apple did not provide native support for IBM’s Lotus Notes also.

So where do things stand with other enterprise e-mail solutions a few months later? Below is a quick summary for IT shops that do not have Microsoft Exchange:

Google GAPE: For the iPhone, Google provides a tailored web interface. Another option is Gmail for mobile, a Java-based e-mail application. Gmail also supports IMAP synchronization of e-mail to iPhone’s native e-mail client.

IBM Lotus Notes: IBM announced at the end of September the release of iNotes Ultralite software that supports Lotus Notes on the iPhone. The software is free for anyone with a Lotus Notes license. iNotes Ultralite is web application that leverages the Safari browser on the iPhone to access the Lotus Notes functions. The advantage is that since it is a browser, no data is stored on the iPhone (except in the browser cache), should the iPhone turn up missing. However, it is not a client, so no data on the device also means no synchronization with the iPhone’s native e-mail, calendar, and contacts functionality.

Novell GroupWise: GroupWise 7 ships with GroupWise Mobile Server – an OEMed product from Nokia for mobile e-mail, calendar, and contacts for GroupWise. GroupWise Mobile Server does not support iPhone and, with the latest end of life announcement from Nokia for the product, will not in the future. Novell customers can utilize a partner solution recently released from Notify Technology that provides full support for the iPhone and GroupWise through the native iPhone functionality using ActiveSync.

Oracle Beehive: Using IMAP, Oracle Beehive e-mail is supported on the iPhone. Another option is to install Oracle Beehive Integration for Outlook, through which iPhone users can also synchronize calendar entries, tasks, and contacts through iTunes. Like Novell GroupWise, Notify Technology provides a technically better solution for Oracle Beehive also, with full support for the iPhone and Beehive through the native iPhone functionality.

Yahoo! Zimbra: Zimbra supports the Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync protocol, which permits the iPhone to synchronize with Zimbra exactly as it would with Exchange.

In sum, a few months later, there are ways for all of the enterprise solutions to get e-mail to the iPhone – mostly through IMAP or an optimized iPhone browser access.However, because Apple chose to support ActiveSync, the rich client experience of synchronization of e-mail, calendar, and contacts with the native iPhone clients is only available to those solutions that support ActiveSync. For IBM, Novell, and Oracle this means a web client, or a third party solution like Notify Technologies that connects their product with the iPhone through ActiveSync.

If Apple wants the iPhone to be "The best phone for business. Ever.", Apple needs to add support for other e-mail vendors, notably IBM, to deliver synchronized enterprise e-mail, calendar, and contacts.

IBM Announces Lotus Notes Hosted Messaging

Blogger: Bill Pray

“And so it begins…”

That is the lead that Larry Cannell will use next week when he kicks off our telebriefing entitled “Software as a Service Enterprise E-mail: Get Ready to Go Beyond the Grind.” Today, IBM officially announced Lotus Notes Hosted Messaging. The three heavy weights are now in the SaaS e-mail ring: Microsoft, IBM, and Google. Cisco and Yahoo! have said they will be joining soon.

For many organizations, this means that SaaS e-mail services are now a viable option, especially now that the two primary vendors of on-premise e-mail (IBM and Microsoft) have a SaaS alternative. IT departments can realistically consider transferring the responsibility and headaches for this essential utility to a vendor and reallocate their stretched time and resources to other projects.

Legalcompliance and discovery will remain a concern for many organizations. Who owns, possesses, and accesses the data in e-mail is important. A significant amount of any organization’s intellectual property flows through its e-mail. However, I expect that concern will be resolved over time as legal precedence is set and the vendors become more compliance savvy in their SaaS offerings.

Organizations will benefit from SaaS e-mail because it will spur more innovation by the vendors. The e-mail client is an example. The web client has made significant technological progress because of consumer web e-mail. It will likely replace the desktop client in the future because of the advantages it provides a SaaS e-mail vendor. A SaaS vendor will not want to, or possibly be able to, upgrade desktop clients – that is difficult enough today for organizations with on-premise deployments.

The change in the delivery model also provides many benefits. For example, not many organizations can say today that they are providing e-mail services for less than $10 a month per user. The economies of scale that the vendors can bring to this market will make the price point of SaaS e-mail very attractive. In addition, getting e-mail off of IT’s responsibility list will free them to work on other projects that may lend competitive advantage to an organization.

A price war is a possibility. There is a significant amount of revenue at stake in this market. IBM is starting at $10 per user per month for Lotus Notes Hosted Messaging. Microsoft Exchange Online is also $10 per user per month. Google Apps Premier Edition (GAPE) suite of tools for enterprises is starting at $50 per year per user. Cisco (PostPath) and Yahoo! (Zimbra) have yet to announce pricing.

So it begins, the great battle of our time.” - Gandalf, Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

The Role of Paper in NextGen Content Creation

Blogger: Craig Roth

Sellen and Harper's "The Myth of the Paperless Office" (now with built in irony!  Buy it in a paperless Kindle edition, delivered wirelessly via Amazon Whispernet) argues that paper usage has increased despite the rise of technology and that technology is unlikely to displace paper in the workplace.  This is because paper has inherent advantages that techno-geeks overlook.  These "affordances" of paper define what people can do with it (e.g., grasping, carrying, maniuplating, folding, writing on it, bindable, can be spread out or stacked) versus the affordances of digital content.

Sellen and Harper would be interested then to see that paper use is finally declining for white collar workers according to the October 9th edition of The Economist:

American office workers’ use of paper has actually been in decline since 2001. What changed? The explanation seems to be sociological rather than technological. A new generation of workers, who have grown up with e-mail, word processing and the internet, feel less of a need to print documents out than their older colleagues did. Offices are still far from paperless, but the trend is clear.

In a recent blog posting, I wrote about my research and upcoming document on Next Generation (NextGen) Content Authoring trends.  I find that the trends I defined provide a useful method to frame the decrease of paper use in organizations that The Economist describes.

One of the trends I discuss is "living documents".  A living document is one that may never be "finished".  It is continually being changed and updated.  Wikipedia articles or a wiki-based tourism guide are examples of content that is constantly getting updated and where the concept of being "finished" or "published" doesn't mean much.  In fact, in a book on the IMF, Sellen and Harper pointed out that documents have lives, careers, and even social lives of their own.  Such dynamic documents do not lend themselves to being printed unless that paper will be thrown out after it has been read.  Put simply, dead trees form a poor foundation for living documents.

Another related trend I discuss is "freshness preference", where quality is compromised to some degree in exchange for timeliness.  Since the shelf life of content produced under this trend is lower, this decreases the archival value of printing. 

In any case, paper still exists in abundance in my office and I'm sure it will always exist in the offices of information workers.  Sellen and Harper's book came out in 2002 and they would surely point out that their book goes to great lengths to clarify the advantages and disadvantages of paper and digital reading/writing.  Paper has stayed the same since 2002 and digital reading/writing has improved dramatically, which tips the balance.  I'm also happy to say that environmental awareness has increased dramatically and this "green" view, absent in "The Myth of the Paperless Office", may now play a part as well.  It is certainly a combination of these factors that is slowly reversing a very long increase in the use of paper in organizations.

Note: This is a cross-posting from the KnowledgeForward blog

SharePoint: It's Not a Gap, It's Room for An Ecosystem

Blogger: Craig Roth

There's an old coding joke: when presented with a bug in your program you try to pretend it is intentional by saying "It's not a bug, it's a feature!"  I'm reminded of that when told about the rich ecosystem Microsoft has nurtured around SharePoint 2007.  More information is coming out about the parts of SharePoint where a sophisticated enterprise has to look outside of what is in the box, such as our half day of sessions at Catalyst entitled "SharePoint: Fixing a Hole Where the Pain Gets In" or this article today in InternetNews.  And the more that information comes out, the more I think back to that old coding joke, except now it is Microsoft saying "It's not a gap, it's room for an ecosystem!"

Now, I am not saying that all gaps in SharePoint are mistakes.  Honestly, I don't know how many of the gaps filled by the ecosystem are due to intentionally leaving some portions of SharePoint to communities, developers, and vendors and how many simply happened because Microsoft didn't forsee common needs that it should have.  It's probably some of both.  The best way to determine that for yourself is to look at the feature sets from the long and growing list of partners filling gaps in SharePoint (not just integrating, but filling gaps) and determine if those are niche needs that a vendor should correctly leave to the ecosystem or basic needs that should be included to fit the way the vendor advertises its product should be used.

Too many SharePoint implementations wind up causing pain because a promising demo or proof of concept led planners to underestimate the difficulty of the full solution.  The same implementation might have been considered a roaring success if time and resources were understood upfront and did not follow a winding path with multiple failures before completion.  If you're in charge of an enterprise-wide SharePoint plan or a specific SharePoint site, you don't care if a gap in SharePoint is intentional or not. The task for you is to quickly assess what users will need from SharePoint and to set expectations up front that SharePoint out of the box may not get them there.  Determining what combination of built-in SharePoint capabilities, partner products, community-provided bits, and custom in-house coding will be required to deliver the expectations of the users will help paint a realistic picture of the time and resources needed. 

To summarize, perhaps a cartoon (from our Catalyst track) will help:

Invitation To Join Portal Governance Benchmarking Survey

The most common questions I get about enterprise portals are around portal governance.  And while I provide as much of an aggregated view as possible into what others are doing about portal governance (for example, check out my podcast on Understanding Web Governance), it's been difficult to provide actual examples of what organizations are doing.  My discussions are confidential and companies rarely talk publicly about a topic that involves so much internal politics.

That's why I was thrilled today to talk to Elaine Walsh at United Health Group, who is conducting a benchmarking survey about portal governance.  Participants all benefit by getting a copy of the final benchmarking report that abstracts out any specific company information.  If you're interested, you can contact Elaine per the contact info below.

Here is the announcement:

United Health Group is conducting a benchmarking  survey on Portal Architecture Governance.  The standard benchmarking code-of-conduct will be followed and results will be shared, but blinded.  The survey has 30 questions covering organization, process and tools topics.

If you are interested in participating please contact Elaine_Walsh@uhc.com   (908-696-5090) or Aaron_gaalswyk@uhc.com  (952-931-5052) . We hope to have all survey responses by October 24, 2008.. Again, we will hide participants’ identities and companies  in the report, so no proprietary information about your company (or you)  will be divulged to any other party.

SaaS: Driving Simpler Licensing

Blogger: Guy Creese

A side effect of enterprises moving towards Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions is that it whets their appetite for simpler licensing. Think about it. You can pay Google $50 per user per year for Google Apps Premier Edition (and complete the transaction within minutes), or you can spend days, weeks, and even months negotiating with Microsoft on an enterprise license for Microsoft Office.

OK. If you also buy MOSS 2007, we can give you an additional 2% off of the price of Office. Oh, you also want to buy OCS? Let me see how that will effect the deal we can give you [clicking of keys in the background].

This is a purely hypothetical conversation, but you get the idea--it's long and complicated, and in the end you aren't really sure what you've paid for each product. Now just because licensing is easier with Google Apps doesn't mean large enterprises are flocking to it--but it does make them wistful for a simpler licensing life.

All of the big software vendors--IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle--will have to get over the idea that licensing software has to be complicated. If you have a large direct sales force, complicated pricing is tolerated and even welcomed. That's why byzantine enterprise software pricing (e.g., bundling, discounts, and special deals) has been the modus operandi for years, and enterprises haven't had another option--until now.

Therefore, a huge question is how the large software vendors will alter their pricing practices going forward: will they keep their old and increasingly outdated habits, or will they simplify licensing to save their customers time and aggravation? I must admit I remain skeptical that these behemoths (1) will figure out that they need to change and (2) be able to act on that realization. However, I was pleasantly surprised to see that at least one Microsoft division is moving in the right direction with Small Business Server 2008 (a packaging of Windows Server 2008, Exchange Server 2007, Office Live Small Business 2008, Windows SharePoint Services [WSS], and Windows Server Update Services for small businesses).

You can read the InfoWorld article here; in terms of licensing, the article notes:

Microsoft SBS Client Access Licenses (CALs) can be assigned to users or machines, a nice option if you're running multiple shifts or have users with intermittent access requirements. CALs are available in 20-packs, 5-packs, or, in a hat-tip to the realities of small-business life, single-CAL packs. In addition, SBS comes with five "temporary CALs" that you can borrow against to get a new user up and running immediately. The idea is that you set up a new employee with a temporary CAL and then buy the regular license, returning the temporary CAL to the pool. This way, you don't have to wait until you've had a chance to buy a CAL before you can bring on a new user, and you don't have to buy more CALs than you need. In many ways, the new licensing scheme may be the most important change to the product.

While not as simple as Google Apps, this is a start in the right direction, and recognizes that licensing is going to be more dynamic in the future. Companies don't know how many employees they're going to have in the future--especially in these tough economic times--and so a more dynamic licensing model is a good thing.

So the next time you see your IBM, Microsoft, or Oracle sales rep, ask him or her how they're going to make your licensing life easier over the next year. They'll probably look up at the ceiling, shift from foot to foot, or try to change the subject. But if enough customers ask, the large software vendors will recognize that this is a problem that they need to fix.