Collaboration and Content Strategies Blog

Is Bluenogs Use of Open Source Sustainable?

2009-07-17T07:05:10-07:00

Blogger: Larry Cannell

There have been some recent interesting posts discussing Bluenog, a company which sells the Bluenog ICE (integrated collaborative environment). This is a product consisting of a portal framework, content management system, a report generator, a wiki, and a calendar all working within a secured environment using a granular permission model and is capable of integrating with enterprise single sign-on systems. The system looks to be very Enterprise 2.0-ish and may provide a useful intranet environment that brings together the breadth of information needed by knowledge workers. I had a chance to look at the product at the recent Enterprise 2.0 conference and talk with the company in an extended briefing. The product should get the attention of many IT managers.

While the Bluenog ICE product itself looks interesting, it is the business model the company uses to develop it that is causing a controversy and, in my opinion, raises some flags. Bluenog advertises itself as an open source company (or, rather, that is what most people walk away thinking when they have seen or read about the company). To be precise, here is what Bluenog says about their use of open source:

Bluenog ICE leverages several open source CMS, open source collaboration, open source portal and open source BI projects. These projects provide the building blocks for Bluenog ICE and allow us to provide tightly integrated solutions at a fraction of the cost of traditional alternatives.

The web page linked above lists a total of 19 open source projects as being used within the Bluenog product so, clearly, Bluenog is a consumer open source software. However, although the distinction may be subtle, the way Bluenog uses open source is different than what most enterprise IT managers may be expecting.

First, let’s be clear, Bluenog sells a proprietary product. Bluenog does not make the resulting source code of their commercial product available via an open source license. Paying customers get a copy of the source code but this offers none of the benefits, such as transparency and choice, that enterprises can gain from leveraging open source. What can you do with a copy of the source code? Open source becomes powerful when it is out in a community, gaining new features, getting security flaws fixed, etc.

Second, the only company that has benefited from Bluenog’s approach to open source is Bluenog itself, not its customers. But the sustainability of that benefit is questionable. Let me explain.

A number of the open source products used, which provide core ICE features, require significant changes to work in the Bluenog framework and these changes are not contributed to any sort of open source community. In essence, major parts of Bluenog are built from forks of open source products that are folded into their proprietary framework. Any enhancements or security patches from the originating open source community would have to be manually integrated into Bluenog because they are now separate products. For example, Bluenog is built with a version of the Hippo CMS that is one major version behind the main project.

So the question enterprises should be asking is this: Is Bluenog’s development model sustainable? Arguably, other companies have used open source this way. For example, IBM’s Lotus Symphony is based off an old version of Open Office. However, Bluenog is different for two reasons. First, Bluenog isn’t IBM. They are a startup and have limited resources. Second, they are creating a whole new integrated product based off of the amalgamation of several open source products, which sounds like a big integration challenge. IBM is re-basing the next release of Lotus Symphony on Open Office 3. Can Bluenog say the same about Hippo CMS? Do they care about future versions of Hippo CMS or are they content with keeping the older code, essentially turning these pieces into their own proprietary code?

If I were an enterprise IT manager considering Bluenog I wouldn’t let their use of open source sway me at all and evaluate them as a proprietary software vendor. I would also start asking questions about how they plan on sustaining the development of the product. Bluenog’s approach to using open source may have helped initially to get the first product out the door faster. However, the enterprise software market is a marathon not a sprint.

Cisco: Great Expectations But "Where's The (Collaboration) Beef"?

2009-07-15T05:41:33-07:00

Blogger: Mike Gotta (Cross-posted at Collaborative Thinking)

Over the past several weeks, two Cisco events generated a great deal of media coverage (refer to “In The News” below). For those that have not been paying close attention, for some time now Cisco has actively been playing a grand chess game. The company has already made several moves in terms of acquisitions (WebEx, PostPath, Jabber) and strategy (describing a general direction regarding collaboration and SaaS/Cloud computing via WebEx Connect). It has also been busy integrating WebEx with its other assets (Unified Communications Manager, Telepresence, Unified MeetingPlace) – yes, the integration has not always been terribly deep but the work is ongoing and will continue to improve.

While the media stories below fail to provide detailed product guidance as to where Cisco is going, the information does provide interesting insight as to how Cisco’s leadership team thinks about collaboration, cloud computing, and other market initiatives. Sometimes an event billed as having “no news” (in terms of technology announcements) is still valuable for analysts. In this case, it helps me better assess whether Cisco exhibits the level of business acumen necessary to successfully move into market adjacencies such as collaboration and Web 2.0.

We know that “the game” Cisco is playing has many fronts. Cisco is making forays into numerous adjacent markets. Evolution of channels and partner relationships will be inevitable as Cisco and its ecosystem transform current business models. We should expect additional acquisitions to hasten penetration into some of these adjacent markets and/or to gain market coverage more quickly. We should also expect that Cisco will compete with former partners and cooperate with former competitors.

All of this means that "Cisco Watchers" need to broaden the breadth of events and activities they observe if they want to correlate Cisco’s strategic moves effectively. The actions Cisco takes may not have apparent synergies to anyone else but Cisco. Efforts that are seemingly unrelated may suddenly come together as markets consolidate in a manner Cisco expects (and is prepared for). Competitors need to pay close attention to seemingly un-related moves else they risk being caught off-guard when Cisco "connects the dots" in unexpected ways.

Where’s The (Collaboration) Beef?

However, in some areas - namely Collaboration/Web 2.0 – business and IT decision-makers should have a credible level of skepticism regarding Cisco's efforts. The message from Cisco has become repetitive with little new to say. Cisco has not described its strategy and value proposition in a way that would change people's mind vs. Microsoft and IBM. A coherent message regarding technology integration and post-acquisition roadmap has also been missing. Is it too late?

First, the good news: The company and its senior leadership team have done a very good job of selling the vision and marketing what solutions is has today as collaboration. Cisco has expanded the conversation of what comprises collaboration to include solutions such as telepresence. In terms of "talking to the talk", Cisco should receive high grades. Cisco has also been written-up multiple times in the media concerning progress internally when it comes to Web 2.0 and collaboration - that effort also deserves recognition. So in terms of 'walking the walk" internally (not externally in the market), Cisco should also receive high grades.

Now, for the bad news: At some point - a self-proclaimed collaboration vendor needs to show identifiable progress in terms of market performance and customer adoption. Cisco can no longer rely on unified communications, telepresence, and web conferencing to buttress its argument that it has become a collaboration player. The message has gotten old - very old actually. When Cisco does eventually start delivering on a broader collaboration and Web 2.0 platform (not just talking about it), it essentially should assume that it has to start all over again regarding its credibility as a collaboration vendor. So the vulnerability is fixable – but the inertia lost during this “dead zone” will not be as easily regained.

Cisco missed the credibility window between announcing that it was entering the collaboration market and actually delivering on basic, fundamental capabilities that a collaboration vendor needs to provide. Cisco actually has several of these capabilities (workspaces, e-mail, instant messaging/presence) but they are not contenders (outside telephony and web conferencing) in the enterprise market when matched against competing vendors and even the rhetoric of Cisco’s vision/marketing "talk". There has been little advancement of the WebEx Connect platform. There is a huge gap of public details from Cisco in terms of technical capabilities, product packaging, solution deliverables, future roadmap (timeline), and customer proof-points.

Next Steps

This blog post should be taken as more of an early-warning signal. What are some actions Cisco needs to consider to get back on the right track? A partial list might include the following:

Talk less about collaboration equating to UC and telepresence and talk more about the other forms of collaboration
Be specific about the role other collaboration tools and applications have in the portfolio, roadmap, and strategy
Identify customers and customer solutions
Outline where Cisco will play not only in the collaboration market but in the broader social realm (e.g., social media, social networks) – essential for defining the platform more holistically and creating business models for partners and third parties
Which leads to the absolute need to clearly define what the value of WebEx Connect as a platform for third-party vendors and other Cisco partners to come onboard to without fear that Cisco will end up competing with them – the platform needs to be co-created and co-owned by a broader community of stakeholders – Cisco needs a networked ecosystem to compete effectively
Describe how Cisco intends to build out a developer community around WebEx Connect – application development is key as well as other application delivery services (application store, etc)
Outline in detail how Cisco channels - unfamiliar with collaboration, Web 2.0 - are going to become literate in this area
Align other initiatives (e.g., Eos) with WebEx Connect – Cisco cannot afford to have wayward efforts that take-away from its central theme
Longer-term, Cisco will have to establish a message related to identity as it moves into Web 2.0 / Enterprise 2.0 (social networking) and become involved in efforts such as OpenSocial, Facebook Connect, etc.

Cisco In The News

The following are media stories prefaced by a my view of what they mean.

Cisco only enters markets where it can gain a Number 1 position and gain 40% market share - Cisco is driving into 30 adjacent markets (some of which will converge).
- Source: http://www.thevarguy.com/2009/06/04/cisco-ceo-john-chambers-best-guess-on-economy/
Cisco will continue to acquire companies focusing on synergies across communication, video and "a connected life".
- Source: http://www.channelinsider.com/c/a/Cisco/Cisco-CEO-Video-to-Drive-Market-Expansion-Acquisitions-Likely-776474/
Cisco is moving quickly into multiple adjacent markets and may be spreading itself too thin. There has been little progress from some of the acquisitions (WebEx, Postpath, Jabber). However, now is the time to act re: moving into multiple adjacent markets simultaneously (inferred by CEO Chambers) - moving into adjacent markets does mean that Cisco may compete with former partners. Market leadership needs to be earned and Cisco's evolving portfolio just earns it a seat at the table.
Cisco has set limits on its overall cloud strategy and where it will play in the market. Cisco's CTO Padmasree Warrior denies that Cisco will get into external "Infrastructure As A Service" (IaaS) [as defined by Cisco] but will focus in "internal clouds" - Cisco will play at three levels, what it calls "IT Foundation", Platform as a Service (WebEx Connect) and SaaS (WebEx). Cisco sees the need, and wants to provide, an "inter-cloud" system for communications over the next few years.
At Cisco Live, CEO Chambers reiterated the strategic importance of collaboration and Web 2.0 to Cisco internally and externally (as part of its move into adjacent markets).
Cisco's SVP Doug Dennerline suggests that it might get into the office productivity game
Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior discusses inter-company collaboration, mobility, generational shifts, lifestyle computing, and voice-enabled search
- Source: http://www.thevarguy.com/2009/06/02/cisco-cto-talks-up-voice-enabled-search/
Cisco has a strategic vision for the Flip video recorder re: user generated content, social networking, video, and collaboration
- Source: http://www.channelinsider.com/c/a/Commentary/Behind-Ciscos-Flip-for-Video-Collaboration-314138/
Delivers a social messaging (micro-blogging) environment for use at its Partner Summit called "The Vibe" leveraging technology from PresentlyApp.
- Source: http://www.thevarguy.com/2009/05/21/cisco-partner-summit-2009-has-new-vibe/
Cisco's EOS efforts reflects its move into an adjacent market (digital media/entertainment) but the efforts are disconnected from its Cloud and collaboration/Web 2.0 initiatives.
- Source: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/168191/cisco_charts_new_paths_with_eos_media_platform.html
- Source: http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=178978
Cisco has a new Chief Strategy Officer, Ned Hooper, to focus on business strategies, acquisitions, and investment opportunities.
- Source: http://localtechwire.com/business/local_tech_wire/news/story/5528947

(By the way, for those too young to know, Wendy’s ran a famous ad campaign back in the 1980’s where it made fun of the small size of McDonald’s hamburger patties. A woman in the ad would lift up the bun, see a quarter-size piece of beef, and yell out, “Where’s the beef?”. Hence the post’s title.)

Google Goes After IBM Lotus Notes

2009-07-14T16:13:36-07:00

Blogger: Bill Pray

After shedding the beta label last week, Google announced today a migration tool – Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes. In order to win e-mail market share, a vendor needs migration tools. This addition to Google’s growing enterprise feature set for Google Apps demonstrates Google’s intent to seriously compete for enterprise market share. This kind of competition is good for the enterprise and will help mature SaaS e-mail offerings more rapidly.

However, having a migration tool and winning market share are two different things. Google will be hard pressed to win seats from the IBM Lotus Notes faithful – just ask Microsoft. Even Lotus Notes accounts that migrate to another vendor’s e-mail solution tend to keep Lotus Notes for the custom applications. Furthermore, if IBM can get customers to their latest versions of Notes (8 or better), these customers are not likely to be shopping for another solution. IBM is aggressively working to move their customers to the latest version (8.5). Google has a small window of opportunity for those customers who haven’t upgraded yet.

Google also has to reassure the IBM enterprise customers they are targeting that Google is in the best position to solve some of the challenges of software-as-a-service e-mail – e.g. security, compliance, regulatory requirements, discovery, storage, bandwidth, management, and provisioning. IBM’s LotusLive gives IBM the inside track with IBM’s customer base on providing e-mail from the cloud – particularly if they can perfect a flexible, hybrid model of SaaS and on-premise delivery of the e-mail services.

Gartner and Burton Group SaaS Surveys: Same High-Level Findings, Different Conclusions

2009-07-13T13:53:28-07:00

Blogger: Craig Roth

Gartner just published a survey that “Shows Many Users are Underwhelmed by Their Experiences of SaaS.” I ran the survey Burton Group did on SaaS with Ziff Davis Enterprise, so I was interested to see how the stats and conclusions compared. Our high level stats are pretty comparable, but our survey asked those one or two more questions that changed my view of the findings and resulted in some very different conclusions.

Quick methodology note: Gartner’s SaaS survey was of 333 enterprises in the U.S. and U.K. in December, 2008. Burton Group’s SaaS survey was of 318 enterprises in the U.S. and Canada in April, 2008 and was supplemented by an executive panel discussion. This means our data is 8 months older than Gartner's, which could make a difference since the financial crisis hit right inbetween. I haven't seen the full survey doc from Gartner since it's client only (our full report is currently available for free download) so I can't compare the demographics of large/small companies and roles to see if they could account for different responses. But the fact that our results were very similar in some areas suggests they may be close.

Some interesting comparisons:

Their survey found organizations are “somewhat satisfied with SaaS … (4.74 on a 7-point scale).” That’s almost exactly what we found (4.60 if you translate our 4 point scale to 7 points). But satisfaction compared to what? Meeting business needs with software is tricky whether you do it with a SaaS or conventional distribution model. You have to ask one more question, which is how satisfaction compared to the main alternative (conventional in-house software). We did ask that question and found 21% thought it was superior compared to 12% inferior (the rest found it roughly equal). So when you ask “is it better?” rather than just “how did you like it?” SaaS comes out looking better in comparison to the status quo.
Gartner asked for “the top three factors that they would consider in making their decision to deploy SaaS” and found “meeting technical requirements was the top overall consideration at 46 percent, followed by security, privacy and/or confidentiality at 33% and ease of integration and functionality needed for business unit owners, both at 29%.” Our respondents said the top 3 pros were no in-house maintenance (57%), shorter rollout (49%), and usable anywhere via internet (46%).
We both asked companies that had decided against SaaS "why not?". Gartner said “42% cited high cost of service, 38% said difficulty with integration and 33% percent said the solution didn’t meet technical requirements.” Our study showed information security for 48% of respondents, integration for 40%, and didn’t meet ROI requirements for 38%. I'm surprised information security didn't show up on Gartner's top 3 as it was the #1 issue for our respondents. In fact, I would think information security became only more important since we gathered our data.
When Gartner finds “SaaS is not quite the panacea it often promised to be”, I have to ask who is doing the promising? Sure, some vendors go overboard on promising the world, but a lot of the promising is being done by journalists, SaaS evangelists (often within enterprises), and (dare I say it) analysts.
Gartner stated “These findings contradict the general impression that SaaS could help alleviate costs …” Again, who is spreading that impression? Our survey found implementers were more interested in trying to skirt IT’s priority list than save money. Then Gartner reports goes on to state “Ms. Lo said that SaaS vendors must focus on truly delivering lower TCO …” Certainly, but how does that compare to expectations? We addressed the TCO question with our respondents. First we asked how TCO of SaaS compares with conventional software. 33% thought it was worse (somewhat higher), 24% the same, 26% better (somewhat lower). Doesn’t sound great, but ask one more question: did SaaS deliver the TCO you expected? An astounding 95.5% of respondents said “yes”! That’s because they were smarter than pundits give them credit for. They knew SaaS wasn’t like an ATM machine and it met their expectations – remember, they weren’t in it for the money in the first place.

All this reiterates the key findings we published in July of last year and unveiled at our Catalyst conference:

SaaS implementations aren’t all about saving money. They are mostly about avoiding IT, quicker rollouts, and adding predictability/clarity to pricing
SaaS implementers haven't saved a ton of money, but they didn’t expect to either – see #1
Sure SaaS satisfaction is just lukewarm, but that’s because complex software for complex (or undefined) business processes is a really tough thing to get right no matter how you do it. You have to compare to conventional in-house software to see if it’s the lesser of evils
Go beyond the stats – we did a panel in conjunction with the survey which pointed out nuances and feelings about SaaS that clarified the stats. Those stories clued us in to how frustrated end users are in dealing with the priority lists, long rollout times, and unpredictable costs of IT. If IT took on tasks instantly (without requests, budget cycles, and prioritization against other projects you don't care about), got new systems rolled out in a few weeks, and gave an exact cost estimate up front, you'd see a lot less interest in SaaS. So for those avoiding the media spin, avoiding IT (even for buyers already in IT that don't want to deal with one more complex project) is what gets people excited about SaaS, not saving a few bucks.

SharePoint Governance Workshop

2009-07-10T06:07:46-07:00

Blogger: Craig Roth

Our Catalyst conference in San Diego is just over two weeks away now and I'm looking forward to this annual gathering of my co-workers at Burton Group, clients, vendors, industry luminaries, and users of technology. Guy Creese and I will be giving our one day, advanced SharePoint workshop there (Tuesday, July 28, 2009) and there are still some slots open (it sold out when we gave this workshop in Scottsdale last year). This is the first time it's been offered at Catalyst North America and is separate material (only about 10 minutes of overlap) from the "Understanding Microsoft SharePoint v3/2007 in Context" workshop that we still offer as a private onsite workshop.

Governance is the largest section of the workshop, but I also want to point out the "SharePoint as an enterprise solution" section which applies an ITIL v3 model to SharePoint to structure our advice on offering SharePoint as a service rather than just dumping raw infrastructure on your users and divisional IT departments.

See the Catalyst website for more details.

SharePoint 2007: The Current Governance Nightmare—and Will It Get Better?

Craig Roth, and Guy Creese
SharePoint 2007 has been a runaway success, offering Office-centricity and ease-of-use to workers interested in storing and sharing information. However, its ease-of-use is also a snare and a delusion, in many cases fostering uncontrolled proliferation of thousands of SharePoint sites that have different navigation, taxonomy, and security models.
This workshop addresses SharePoint infrastructure planning and governance issues as well as the future of SharePoint with these modules:

SharePoint as an enterprise solution
SharePoint governance
SharePoint security
Deployment pre-work
Adoption of SharePoint in the enterprise
The future of SharePoint and a glimpse at Office 14

This just in: All attendees to the workshop will receive a free poster on "Creating a SharePoint Statement of Governance" that provides a handy reference to the section-by-section walkthrough I'll be doing on how to create a SharePoint SOG. This handsome poster is about 2.5 by 3.5 feet, full color, on thick paper:

Free Google Apps Comes Back: Why This Is Bad for Enterprises

2009-07-09T07:47:05-07:00

Blogger: Guy Creese

Um, that was another Google oopsie on July 7. After all the brouhaha about Google Apps Standard Edition going away, it turns out it isn't. The TechCrunch article has an update stating, "A Google spokesperson says, 'In experimenting with a number of different landing page layouts, the link to Standard Edition was inadvertently dropped from one of the variations. We are in the process of restoring it and you should see it soon. We have no intention of eliminating Google Apps Standard Edition, and are sorry for the confusion.'"

So take yesterday's post and turn it upside down. The Enterprise Division continues to be a hobby at Google: it's subsidized by ad revenue rather than standing on its own two feet. Bummer. I thought Google had finally seen the way to serving enterprises. Oopsie on my part.