Osterman Research

IBM’s IOD Conference

By Michael Osterman
in

Spent two days at IBM’s Information On Demand (iod2009) conference in Las Vegas and was quite impressed by a variety of things. Among them:

  • The Smart Archiving initiative that brings together a variety of technologies from various groups around the company to offer the most comprehensive approach to content archiving that I have seen to date.
  • The focus on content analytics across a wide range of areas. In the context of archiving, for example, IBM’s Content Analyzer can scan file servers and other data sources for information and provide deep analytics to determine what needs to be archived as a precursor to the archiving process itself. An important feature of this is the ability to analyze content from a variety of structured and unstructured information types to find patterns, anomalies, etc. in the data.
  • A significant commitment to cloud computing across virtually every area in the company.
  • Some interesting approaches that are being taken to expanding the uptake of LotusLive, as well as some new capabilities that will be introduced in 2010.

Plus, the conference was very well attended and seemed at least as crowded as last year’s, if not more so—always a good sign for any large conference.

Published January 4, 2010

Microsoft's Price Reductions

By Michael Osterman
in

Microsoft’s announcement recently that its hosted Exchange service would drop in price from $10 to $5 per seat per month, coupled with the announcement that BPOS would drop from $15 to $10 per month, has generated quite a bit of buzz in the hosted Exchange community.

Phil Wainewright on his “Software as Service” blog may be correct in that the pricing cut was designed to counter IBM LotusLive adoption. While I agree that some of the motivation may have been to counter LotusLive and the significant progress that IBM has made in generating new customers for its SaaS offering, I think there is more to the story:

  • Our research shows that there is a perception in the marketplace that on-premise management of Exchange is cheaper than it really is—many decision makers don’t sit down to calculate the actual cost of Exchange, and so often underestimate the actual cost of their on-premise deployment compared to a SaaS alternative.
  • As a result, there is a decent amount of education that needs to occur to help decision makers understand the cost differences that already exist between on-premise deployments of Exchange and hosted Exchange. The price drop may be an admission that the company has not convinced enough customers of the price deltas that already exist.
  • While Microsoft may be attempting to counter LotusLive, they are also trying to counter Google’s success at penetrating the SaaS market with their $50 per seat per year offering. Google has done quite well in this market.
  • I believe that Microsoft may also be expecting a move from Cisco in the enterprise SaaS market and the price drop may be an attempt to reduce the impact of a Cisco announcement in this area in the near future. Cisco is clearly a force with which to be reckoned given that they have the pieces of a formidable messaging and unified communications capability (PostPath, WebEx, IronPort, ScanSafe, etc.). I believe that long term, Cisco may be the company with which Microsoft competes most heavily in the communications market.

It will be interesting to see what impact the price reductions have on the hosted Exchange community. At a minimum, it will make Microsoft more competitive with them, force price reductions by some hosted Exchange providers, and motivate some to provide additional value added services (hosted SharePoint, hosted archiving, etc.) that offer them the ability to retain their margins. It may also motivate some to expand their offerings to include hosted Zimbra and other platforms.

Published December 29, 2009

Some Thoughts on Cisco WebEx Mail

By Michael Osterman
in

Cisco recently announced WebEx Mail.

What are the implications of Cisco’s entry into the hosted messaging business? Here are two cents on what I think this means:

  • I have maintained for a long time that Microsoft faces perhaps more competition from Cisco than it does from Google, despite the formidable competitor that the latter represents. Cisco’s focus on the enterprise with WebEx Mail reinforces that.
  • The length of time that Cisco took to introduce this offering has been somewhat surprising. Given that Cisco purchased PostPath nearly 15 months ago and Jabber 14 months ago, and that IronPort and WebEx have been in the Cisco stable for longer than that, I thought that Cisco’s announcement would have been made much earlier this year.
  • Cisco’s entry into this market will help decision makers to feel more comfortable about SaaS messaging. With each major new entrant into the market, the underlying objections to SaaS will diminish, albeit slowly, as prospective customers realize that major, trusted vendors are supporting corporate-grade SaaS capabilities.
  • The only piece really missing from the Cisco messaging lineup is an archiving capability. Although there are a number of good third party archiving solutions that can be used with WebEx Mail, it makes sense that Cisco would want to acquire its own archiving vendor to make the integration with its other capabilities in WebEx Mail easier. I have a guess as to who that might be, but haven’t heard definitively who might be acquired.
Published December 28, 2009

Communications Is All About…

By Michael Osterman
in

Communications is completely about surrogates, or the best available substitute when the better alternative is unavailable. For example, the telephone is a good surrogate for an in-person conversation when it would be impractical or impossible to be with the person to whom you’re speaking.

Email is a good surrogate for communicating with someone when they are (a.) not physically available and/or (b.) when it doesn’t matter if they are available in real time. Web conferencing is a good substitute for in-person meetings when it is not possible or practical to meet.

This leads us to communication tools like Twitter used in a business context.

While people who don’t really get Twitter think of it as little more than a way to tell people what you’re having for lunch or when you’re waiting for a flight, it really can be much more than that. If you use Twitter correctly, it’s really a surrogate for the people you think are likely to pass along useful information to you. For example, using Twitter is a surrogate for asking an industry veteran what he thinks of cloud-based computing. It’s a surrogate for overhearing an elevator conversation about an article on color theory in marketing materials. It’s a surrogate for asking a trusted contact what he or she thinks of a competitor’s recent announcement.

Twitter, like any surrogate technology, is not perfect. Deep insights normally can’t be conveyed in 140 characters. But it’s a good way to keep tabs on who and what you think might be important in your job and in your personal life.

Published December 21, 2009

The End of the Email Era (has been greatly exaggerated)

By Michael Osterman
in

There’s an interesting commentary in The Wall Street Journal entitled “Why Email No Longer Rules…And what that means for the way we communicate”. While the author clearly researched her piece, I disagree with her conclusions. Consider the following:

A survey report that we just published (available at no charge on our Web site) shows that 45% of individuals in the workplace report that their email use is greater now than it was a year ago.

While 82% of users check their work-related email from home on weekdays (and 100% do so from work) only 28% use Twitter at work.

More people check their work-related email on weekends and while on vacation than check social networking tools.

Further, it’s important to understand that email is not really competitive with instant messaging, Twitter, Facebook or other tools—for the most part, these tools are complementary. For example, if it’s 3:00am and I need to send a file to someone, I will have little expectation that the recipient will be available via IM, and I can’t send them a file on Twitter, but I can send them an email knowing they’ll receive it in the morning. If it’s 10:00am and I need a quick answer to a question, I can IM someone whose presence status I can see. If I want to follow the comments and news pointers from people whose opinion I consider valuable I will use Twitter. If I need to collaborate on a project via a shared workspace, I will use any of the growing number of tools built for that purpose.

In short, email, IM, social networking, collaboration and other tools are part of an array of communications choices that people use in ways that, for the most part, are additive rather than replacements for one another.

Published October 12, 2009