Collaboration and Content Strategies Blog

Oracle WebCenter and Fusion Middleware 11g

Blogger: Craig Roth

Oracle's analyst summit in mid-June provided a good look at their plans for Fusion Middleware 11g and WebCenter (released July 1st for download; see summary of features here).  Now that we're out of non-disclosure mode (and into "please disclose!" mode) I'd like to share my high-level impressions.  They covered a ton of stuff, but my view is biased towards my coverage area of portals with connections to search, productivity, and collaboration. Other Burton Group analysts were also in attendance from our Identity and Privacy Strategies team and our Application Platform Strategies team (see Anne Thomas Manes' thoughts here).

First, although Oracle owns 4 portal products, all the portal-related time was spent on WebCenter. Sure, other portals were mentioned in bullets as examples of how they can plug in (or consume WebCenter's social software), but it was clear WebCenter is the leading actor here (and supporting actor in the stories of the SOA, identity, and enterprise application teams). This confirms what I (and Oracle) has been saying: that WebCenter is the primary portal and that the other 3 (Oracle Portal, WebLogic Portal, and WebCenter Interaction née Plumtree) will be supported and have their die-hard fans but will not be best for new portal projects.

It was helpful to hear Oracle frame its collaboration/portal/search/productivity/social software ambitions in relation to Microsoft SharePoint.  For all its plusses and minuses, SharePoint provides a common point of reference against which to measure.  They described how they line up with SharePoint as an alternative, can coexist with it, and where they surpass it.  This is what IBM should have done with Quickr+Connections at Lotusphere.

As with SharePoint, WebCenter provides an impressive set of functions in one box. There is often better integration between WebCenter and other Oracle assets (like their applications and development tools) than Microsoft where other groups can sometimes get away with ignoring what the SharePoint and Office group does.

There are numerous SharePoint analogies in WebCenter.  From conversations with the execs there I found that some are intentional and in other cases they say SharePoint copied them (well, copied AquaLogic User Interaction)!

• Business Dictionary as a role based catalog of information assets. Seems like SharePoint's Business Data Catalog.  This should be an interesting battle since SharePoint's BDC is clearly a version 1.0 work-in-progress and Oracle has a lot of expertise to bring here being a database company at heart.
• Federated search. 'Nuff said.
• Office integration. Clients I speak with expect Microsoft will always have the best Office integration, but there are cases where Microsoft's internal silos or some good ideas can expose openings.  Oracle showed a nice Word sidebar for document management that had people, versions, etc.
• Slide sorter. This was a neat feature that SharePoint offered, but Oracle's version seems to leapfrog it. They demoed picking all the slides for a sales deck. Oracle calls this a "folio" or compound document. Oracle acquired a neat little company called "Outside In" that has sophisticated filters for productivity files.  Blending this into Web Center can provide for some good Office integration.

Oracle did a fine job of acknowledging the need to work with SharePoint and others.  But the meat boils down to their WSRP producer running on .NET, selective metadata consumption, and Ensemble (a reverse proxy solution).  Hopefully this gets beefed up with more programmatic integration, discovery tools, and guidance so it requires less reliance on WSRP.

Of all the competitors, WebCenter is the newest architecture from the ground up.  Being the youngest has its advantages.  Since WebCenter is newly architected it feels like it more seamlessly integrates new concepts like tagging, linking, social connections, and REST services than IBM and MSFT where it's more bolted on. So they're better at utilizing these features across the suite that Microsoft and a little bit better than IBM.

But will Oracle - the whole company - give WebCenter the resources it needs to win the marketplace(not just the resources required to be a good and useful product)?  In the Q&A session, Oracle President Charles Phillips said there are "No plans to have middleware broken out in reporting. We have lots of product lines, we're getting more with Sun... " This hits at the perennial knock on Oracle's efforts around knowledge infrastructure - lack of push and commitment.  Oracle did talk about how much revenue Fusion pulled in, the growth rate, penetration, etc.  That would indicate the company would have to care.  But still, Microsoft manages to report on four breakouts (Client, Server and Tools, Online Services Business, Microsoft Business Division, Entertainment and Devices Division).  Oracle sticks to two (Applications, Database and Middleware).  Sun will add at least one more (servers and hardware).  If Oracle is dedicated to the enormous space between enterprise apps and the database, breaking out middleware from the database would be a great way to track and prove this commitment.

Register for "The Burton Group Guide to Saving Money On Communication, Collaboration, and Content Technology"

There's still time to register for our telebriefing tomorrow with replay and live Q&A on Wednesday.  Anyone facing budget concerns or trying to avoid them in the future with regard to communication, collaboration, and content technology will find this telebriefing valuable.

Here's the details:

7/7/2009 at 2:00 PM EDT / 11:00 AM PDT / 18:00 UTC/GMT / 20:00 CEST

OR

7/8/2009 at 9:00 AM EDT / 6:00 AM PDT / 13:00 UTC/GMT / 15:00 CEST

The Burton Group Guide to Saving Money On Communication, Collaboration, and Content Technology

07 Jul 2009 2:00 PM ET -- With the economy in recession, enterprise IT departments face pressure to trim their budgets and abandon some of what they wanted to accomplish. Cost cutting has a particularly hard impact on teams that are maintaining or seeking additional investments in communication, collaboration, and content management (3C) technology, given that their contributions to the bottom line are often indirect while their costs are easily quantifiable. This TeleBriefing with analysts Larry Cannell, Guy Creese, Bill Pray, and Craig Roth will describe where cost savings can be found with existing 3C infrastructure as well as how to meet new 3C needs with tighter budgets.

 

Clients can register for the telebriefing here.

Virtual Collaboration for Lotus Sametime

Blogger: Craig Roth

Some of the great research work that IBM was doing around virtual worlds has now made it onto enterprise desktops through IBM's announcement of the availability of the "Virtual Collaboration for Lotus Sametime" plugin for Lotus Sametime 8.0.1 or later.  An OpenSimulator instance runs on the server and connects to Sametime through a bridge. There is a web client, although most users would probably use the SecondLife client.

The plugin provides 3 enterprise virtual world environments that I'd classify as virtual collaboration: collaboration spaces, boardrooms (meeting rooms), and theatres (see details in the slideshow below or the YouTube video).

Sametime 3D - Virtual Worlds in OpenSim

View more presentations from Chris Sparshott.

It looks like neat stuff to me.  And from what I can tell, there's no cost to Sametime users to add this since OpenSimulator and the SecondLife client are free.  Even though this has moved from research to general availability, I still consider it an experiment.  Now is when early adopters can start playing around with this, find good uses, and report their stories back to start assembling a business case.  I haven't had a chance yet to read the "Business Value Study" they reference. From my research last year, the best business cases were around rehearsal and training, not virtual collaboration, but I look forward to seeing what they came up with once I get past Catalyst season.

Google Wave and its Audacity of Scope

Blogger: Larry Cannell

As impressive as the recent Google Wave demonstration was, the most sensational part for me was the breadth of aspirations Google says it has for the platform and protocol. Sure, the product demonstrated has some very cool features, such as the blending of synchronous and asynchronous collaboration (for example, a user can see what others are changing within a page in realtime). But, when Lars Rasumussen says “Wave is what email would look like if it were invented today” and we are told Google is open sourcing the protocol and software, then this starts looking like a grand plan indeed.

Call it the Audacity of Scope. This is not simply about a snazzy HTML 5-based application, Google is telling us it aspires to make Google Wave as pervasive as e-mail. However, realizing these aspirations is a long-shot. To have any hope of making it happen Google needs a strong extended-release dose of determination, flexibility, credibility, and lots of luck.

Determination: Google will certainly use its muscle on the Internet to make the Wave platform available and in the hands of as many people as possible. But fostering a federated system as pervasive as e-mail will take time. Ultimately, Google is a business and may not have the patience to see something like this all the way through.

Flexibility (and openness): E-mail wasn’t invented by a single company, but evolved as an idea over time. Although ARPA can be credited with creating and moving forward key e-mail standards. there were many more innovations that built on these simple protocols. If Google maintains sole control over the federation protocols then Wave will remain a Google-based service that many will integrate with, but will fall short of the pervasiveness of e-mail. Google needs to take steps to make Wave a truly open protocol.

Credibility: Getting vendors to agree to a standard is difficult, almost impossible when there is enough at stake (which is the case here). Don’t expect traditional IT vendors like Microsoft, IBM, or Oracle to be lining up behind this effort anytime soon.

Besides Internet-based services, open source is the only other method which has been successful in bypassing or breaking traditional IT-vendor lock-in within most large enterprises. So, another aspect to watch is how involved open source developers, and other open source projects, get with the Wave effort. If Google loses the open source crowd it loses its critical mass.

The key here will be what and how much of Google’s code will be open sourced. Rasumussen said “We intend to open source the lion share of the code we use to build our system.” This is a good start but what does this really mean in terms of code? To some, “lion share” sounds like Google is hedging its bet.

Luck: Google can do all of the right things for years and Google Wave may still not catch on. This is a long-term undertaking and many things can happen in the meantime to derail it (for example, management loses interest, an open source community doesn’t form, better alternatives emerge, or a million other things could go wrong).

But, regardless of all the hurdles Google faces with Wave I am still glad to they are attempting this. It’s great to see new ideas get this level of attention (and Google certainly can draw a crowd). If nothing else, the demonstration starts breaking down preconceived assumptions about how the Internet can support collaboration.

This Month In Collaborative Thinking

Blogger: Mike Gotta

Some recent posts on Collaborative Thinking. Follow the citation links to read the full article(s):

For Those Caught In The Wave...

There is a great deal of "irrational exuberance" about Google Wave in the news right now given its current state (pre-beta). While prognostications on how it will derail existing solutions make for good press coverage, such statements should be viewed as part of the natural enthusiasm when something creative and innovative comes along.  This is a ways off... 

IBM Plugging Holes In Connections/SharePoint Integration

...Despite this plug-in, I still believe IBM has made a fundamental and perhaps unrecoverable competitive mistake by not being radically more aggressive regarding SharePoint integration. The window for IBM to have entrenched itself in "SharePoint shops" for social computing is just about closed in my opinion given that Microsoft will begin talking about the next version in greater detail later this year.

Saba Social Left Out Of IBM Deal

...However, there are some nuances in the deal. The focus of the partnership is between Saba's platform and IBM's WebSphere platform, not the Lotus software stack. Specifically, there was no mention of what the deal means in terms of Lotus Connections and Saba Social.

Persistent Group Chat in Office Communications Server R2

In August, 2007 Microsoft announced its intent to acquire Parlano. Parlano's leading product, MindAllign, delivered "persistent group chat". After the acquisition was completed, Microsoft has kept quiet on exactly how it would adapt Parlano's technology and deliver it as part of Office Communications Server (OCS). With OCS R2 launched in February 2009 that mystery has been resolved...

Oracle Beehive 1.5: Still A Work-In-Progress

Oracle makes the case the collaboration has been fragmented across three major domains (Enterprise Messaging, Team Collaboration, and Synchronous Collaboration). This has resulted in tools being deployed that are more costly for organizations to deploy and maintain from an infrastructure and operations perspective. At least that's the argument. There are some key points to consider however (for a brief analysis of Beehive, read the full post):

Google Announces Wave to Much Fanfare

For those caught up in the Google Wave announcement, I just wanted to point to postings from members of the Collaboration and Content Strategies team:

• Mike Gotta: "irrational exuberance"
• Craig Roth: "magician’s hand-waving"
• Larry Cannell: "the audacity of scope"
• Guy Creese: "A+ for vision and market impact ... solution for large enterprises expect Google  a solid D, consumers and SMBs, I wouldn't be surprised if it's in B+ territory"

Oracle Enters Beehive in Collaboration Tournament

Blogger: Craig Roth

Oracle announced its release of Beehive 1.5 today.  They are hoping that a technology refresh of the Beehive collaboration assets (along with additional assets acquired along with BEA) can give Oracle another shot at the collaboration market after the moribund Oracle Collaboration Server has fizzled. 

The announcement comes at a good quiet spot between IBM's collaboration announcements at Lotusphere in January and Microsoft's announcements on SharePoint 2010 that will probably come to a peak at their conference in October. Likewise, its most attractive feature is that its platform and standards offer an alternative to a Microsoft stack (Windows Server, SQL Server, SharePoint) and an IBM stack (Notes/Domino and/or Quickr+Connections with WebSphere).  Beehive offers more standards than you can shake a stick at (although I don't recommend shaking sticks at beehives generally): WebDAV, IMAP/SMTP, JSR 170 for content repository access, XMPP for IM and presence, LDAP or AD for directory, and JMX for management.  You can use Solaris, Windows Server, or Linux for the serve and any development tool desired.  From a technology point of view its appeal is likely to be based on architectural decisions about what standards and stack an organization wants to embrace (or stay away from).

But technology aside, the key for Oracle (as always) is whether they can utilize their channel to sell this stuff and whether organizations can be persuaded to pay real money for it after previous false starts.  In the past, Oracle hasn't had much voice left to talk about collaboration and portal after yelling about database and ERP.  But since the Stellent acquisition, content management has been a bright spot for them and I think it has changed some minds. 

Personally, I want to see the collaboration market stay competitive.  End users win when vendors compete hard on features, quality, and pricing.  Lately it seems like Microsoft SharePoint has gotten a lion's share of attention from organizations.  Microsoft has been the main attraction at this tournament  and I'm glad to see Oracle showing up to play.  IBM Lotus still feels to me like they haven't shown up to the tournament and are setting up a parallel exhibition match for the same sport in another part of town.  They didn't mention SharePoint by name in the Lotusphere main tent (although it was clear who they were talking about and Jive got a mention). But as an analyst I'm like an unaligned spectator at a sporting event - you just want to see a diverse set of skillful challengers compete really well and bring up the level of play.

Do Chargebacks Work for SharePoint, Portals, and Collaboration?

Blogger: Craig Roth

Larry Cannell recently mentioned a case study of a corporation that had created a chargeback system for SharePoint.  It fostered some good internal debate that I have captured in this posting. This large corporation used a chargeback system for SharePoint in which fees are assessed per SharePoint site and rolled up by department.  This was considered a big improvement since it forced measurement and understanding of usage.  But IT wound up granting a lot of exceptions (the article doesn't say why) so they are thinking of charging by storage volume instead.

Larry Cannell commented previously in this blog about how a chargeback system drives (distorts) user behavior.  For example, charging per site discourages creation of subsites, but charging per GB of storage encourages moving files to other storage systems.  The ultimate impact is that people expend energy consolidating sites or moving files around to save money and the total cost of ownership for the SharePoint installation is hobbled.  Also, subsites are very easy to create and may not take many resources at all, so a fixed fee per subsite could be way out of sync with actual costs incurred.

Bill Pray commented that the exception granting process is very important.  Organizations should define an exception process because rigid application of chargeback rules in every case can be detrimental to the growth of the system.

My advice has always been that, especially during the critical early phase of rolling out a tool that thrives on network effect (portals, collaborative workspaces, social software, IM, etc.), you don’t want to disincent usage.  In the case of a portal, that means you don’t want to charge per site set up or by the amount of content being stored.  If you do that it causes squirreling behavior – carefully watching your usage, using free siloed systems where possible, or having a shadow presence that links to off-site content that won’t be shared.

The correct approach in my opinion is to charge a fixed fee based on number of potential users or something like that, regardless of usage.  It’s accordingly been called a “tax”, but the result is to encourage usage since you’re paying for it whether you use it or not and may as well get your money’s worth.  And the more an organization uses it, the more value they get for their tax, hence encouraging usage rather than discouraging it.

Once the system is well established and network effect (aka snowball effect) keeps it rolling on its own momentum, an organization could potentially change the chargeback mechanism to go from tax to usage, although I would probably set thresholds that indicate abuse (like dumping multi-gigibyte multimedia files into the Sharepoint repository).

I should add that we recently completed a set of interviews with clients about how the recession is impacting their approach to communication, collaboration, and content systems.  One discovery was that the companies we spoke with that were very successful with their chargeback systems also had barriers (generally legal and regulatory) that prevented business units from going around IT or forcing them to compete against outside providers.  In cases where business units can write a check to an outside collaboration provider as easily as they can to IT, chargeback systems have to be approached with much more care (e.g., subsidized, regulatory conformance policy for external alternatives, rates that change over time due to externalities).

Internal markets for services follow many of the same rules of economics that an open (external) market does which should be addressed when designing chargeback systems:

1. Increasing price (or adding a price for something that was formerly free) decreases demand for your product and could increase demand for substitute goods.  All too often, e-mail is considered a free substitute for blasting out information, exchanging documents, and having discussions.
2. With a product that gains benefit from network effect (e.g., online gaming, a dating service, trading cards, collaborative workspaces), decreasing sales decreases demand since each customer will have fewer peers with which to utilize it.
3. Just like in a real market, when the central authority (e.g., federal government or central IT) tries to shape behavior by adding rules and regulations, this often distorts behavior as participants shift usage patterns to exploit inefficiencies in the regulations (e.g., edge cases, loopholes, misalignment of incentives).

Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Suite

Blogger: Bill Pray

Microsoft continues to move forward in its efforts to deliver collaboration applications and services from the cloud. Yesterday, Microsoft announced that it will make the Business Productivity Online Suite available in 19 countries. Microsoft is also releasing the Standard version of Office Communications Online, an instant messaging and presence service, and the Deskless Worker Suite. 

Microsoft has covered all the bases with the announcement of GlaxoSmithKline as a reference customer for the online suite. GSK brings some key points to the table for Microsoft:

• Online or cloud services create concerns for enterprises around security and compliance. Having the number 2 pharmaceutical company in the world state that Microsoft meets their needs in these areas for e-mail, instant messaging, web conferencing, storage, etc. addresses these concerns head on.
• Enterprises have been reluctant to embrace cloud services for a collaboration suite because of concerns about maturity and capability to meet an enterprise's need for large numbers of users and global deployment. GSK is large, global enterprise with more than 100,000 employees.
• GSK says that they are are leaving solutions provided by two of Microsoft's main competitors in the collaboration market - Google and IBM.
• Enterprises also have a healthy skepticism about the actual costs savings that cloud solutions represent. GSK says that they have done their homework and will save 30% on their collaboration technology expenses.

However, GSK has not finished rolling out the solution yet.

So, while these points are interesting, what will be valuable to know is GSK's actual experience 6 months after rollout. In the promotional video interview, BIll Louv (GSK CIO) points out that the internal resistance to selecting the Microsoft solution is from those concerned about moving from IBM's Lotus Notes. He states that GSK, especially in R&D, has a lot of applications written on Notes. "Are we going to be able to survive the migration without disrupting R&D?.. Which is really the core value generator in the company."

This question has yet to be answered and shows the significant bet GSK is placing to get the anticipated 30% savings. Not many enterprises are willing to place a bet of a 30% savings on collaboration technologies against disrupting the core value generation in the company.

GSK's experience will be worth watching.

Don't Touch My Wallet: Convincing Management that Smart Companies in Recessions Increase Spending on [IT, training, advertising, etc.]

Blogger: Craig Roth

The recession has proven to be a boon to writers of articles and blog postings you can email to your executives about how whatever domain they are experts in (like customer relations folks or training people) is critical to avoid cutting and maybe even increase spending on it like other smart companies do.

In researching how the recession is impacting my domain (information technology, and communication, collaboration, and content technology in particular) I was pleased to find articles saying that should really get more budget in tight times. Wonderful! 

... But then I decided to check and see what other domains were saying about recessionary spending. After trolling dozens of sites on other domains like customer relationship management, training, marketing I noticed a familiar pattern - they all say they are smart places to spend too. Needless to say I did not find any articles from domain experts saying "In a recession, our department's budget should be cut" or "Companies that come out of a recession stronger are those that cut spending in our department". Instead every department has become the business equivalent of Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon. At Wobegon Corporation every department provides greater than average returns on investments in recessionary times.  Everyone can't be right, so who is right that spending in their domain should increase during recessions (please let it be portals!) ?

The "Don't Touch My Wallet" (DTMW) script

There are arguments and articles that rise above the fray - I'll get to them at the end. But the bulk of them fall into a script I'll call the "Don't Touch My Wallet" (DTMW) script. There are a standard set of key elements you'll find in a DTMW article.

The "Don't touch my wallet" (DTMW) statement

• "Now is not the time to slash advertising budgets.", "This is not the time to cut advertising"
• "Maintain marketing spending"
• "Now is the perfect time to increase your innovation efforts"
• "In a downturn it can actually make more sense to spend more money on training, not less"
• "Customer relationship management (CRM) technology is one of those critical areas that companies need to continue continually embrace, especially during tough economic times"
• " Of course, now is the time to be frugal, but be frugal in areas that don't touch the customer." (this last one, from a CRM firm, is my favorite because it not only makes the "don't touch my wallet" statement, but grants permission for the cost cutters to raid someone else's!)

The metaphor

• " Shoot the moon"
• "If the distance runner is really strong, when the runner hits a hill, the runner is gonna speed up"
• And the winner, for mixing metaphors about belts, frogs, and catapults in the same paragraph: "While others are tightening their belts, truly successful companies use the recession as a chance to leapfrog their competition. My favorite company … increases their investments during difficult times. They know that if they focus on innovation while others are cutting costs, they will quickly catapult past everyone else. "

The motivational pablum

• " The first competitors to take action will be the ones who reap the greatest rewards."
• "Have you ever noticed that many of the big winners in business were willing to make bets that ran counter to the prevailing wisdom of the time? There are countless success stories of leaders who 'zigged' when everyone else 'zagged.'"
• "Smart companies know you can’t save your way out of a recession. "

The survey

The articles often quote a survey that shows organizations who spent more on their domain in a recession did better than their peers. They generally don't reveal enough about their methodology to truly evaluate their findings, but these surveys feel fixed for 3 reasons:

1. They are almost exclusively sponsored by organizations with a vested interest in the domain and would be unlikely to publish the results if they showed cutting costs to be a more effective strategy.
2. The mere fact the surveyed organizations were in a position to increase spending in a recession indicates companies with comparatively better financials (compared to their peer group). Of course companies that go into a recession financially stronger are more likely to come out of it stronger.
3. Just surveying those companies that increased spending in one domain is a self-selecting sample. Companies that increased spending on a particular domain already determined it is important for their type of business. For example, companies that doubled advertising expenditures in a recession are probably those that know they are in industries where advertising gets high leverage (like image-related consumer goods), while those in unimpressionable markets (like mining) would probably not bother to increase the minimal ad spending they have. So blanket statements that say "companies that increase ad spending in recessions do better" are not as universally applicable as they imply.

A good study should be sponsored by an institution that doesn't have a stake in the results and examines both sides of the coin: winners and losers, companies who started in good or bad financial condition, companies that increased or decreased spending in the domain.

Principles about spending in a recession

Reading all these DTMW articles did help me uncover some underlying principles about spending in a recession. These are scary times. I don't begrudge anyone trying to make the case for their domain (and, by proxy, their job). Quite the contrary, it's everyone's responsibility in tough times to think about the value their role brings. Where small investments can provide leverage in these conditions, you should make the case for them, throwing them into the marketplace of ideas with the understanding that everyone else is doing the same. With every experts in every domain publishing a DTMW script, running to your executive with a request for more money attached to an article backing up increased spending is likely to be laughed at when every department is making the same argument.

If you have money to spend in a recession that your competitors don't, you'll get more leverage anywhere you spend it wisely: IT, training, customer service, etc. Industries have different leverage points (elasticity) where a dollar of recession spending added or removed has a multiplicative effect on profitability. Don't accept blanket statements across all industries about where that elasticity exists (e.g., "All companies should increase sales travel rather than cutting it when times get tough"). The key is to understand the dynamics of your industry and firm and select the correct points of leverage.

Recessions can shake organizations up for the better - they force organizations to cut waste, improve efficiency, be more aware of what they are doing and why. That last point (what you're doing and why) brings me to portfolio management. In a recession, as at all times, portfolio management theory applies. This theory says organizations should allocate spending to categories - usually these three: running, growing, and transforming the business. Then all initiatives should be categorized accordingly and evaluated against each other.

So first, keep the lights on. Assuming you have some money left after that, understand there is a portfolio of incremental improvement projects and transformational projects that should be evaluated as a whole. The DTMW articles make the mistake of bypassing reasonable portfolio management discipline to make the argument that one should just jump to spending more on their pet domain without analyzing its relation to other projects in the portfolio. Spending more on domain A may indeed have a high return.  But if spending on domains B, C, and D have an even higher return, spending on A wouldn't be a wise move without money to cover all four domains. 

So how do you do this right?  After hours of reading DTMW articles, it was a joy to finally find one that stated the case for its domain (web design) properly, succinctly, and with a professional level of humility.  This may not grab the attention of the CFO, but it will withstand reasonable scrutiny once investigated further:

Is web design really worth spending money on now, when money’s so short? It depends on your circumstances, but we think you should give it serious consideration.

Conclusion

So my conclusion is that, despite what DTMW articles say, smart companies are not the ones that blindly increase spending in one domain just because other companies do (it's a self-selecting sample) or because a logical argument can be made for the importance of spending in that domain (all domains have differing elasticity based on industry and individual factors). Recessions give smart companies an opportunity to gain an edge by selectively outspending their competition in key domains. They select the domains by digging harder into the data and applying portfolio management discipline.

Back to my domain of IT, I posted previously about a Diamond Management and Technology Consultants study. While it is from a company with a stake in IT spending, I like the fact that they looked at companies that underperformed as well as outperformed. And their high-level advice fits the "be selective" mantra:

The central lesson of our research is that at the very time when a leader is tempted to shorten his or her time horizon and make simple across-the-board cuts, superior performers dig into the data and act more intelligently than the competition.