Mobile operators have their roots firmly in the utility services space. Indeed, many business customers still think of them largely as providers of voice minutes, perhaps with a little bit of data access or mobile email thrown in as a peripheral part of the deal.
Yet while they sometimes struggle to get their efforts recognised, most mobile players today are capable of delivering far more than that. Their service offerings are typically now quite diverse and comprehensive.
When Josie and I were recently reviewing our plans for researching mobile operator propositions for the business sector, we therefore ended up looking at a number of different dimensions and solution areas, the main ones being:
• Convergence of fixed and mobile communications
• Mobile email and other forms of messaging
• Full blown unified communications
• Communications enabled business processes
• Remote access to corporate applications
• Operator hosted business solutions
• Communications management solutions
• Professional services in relation to the above
To one degree or another, we have seen initiatives from most of the larger mobile players in most of these areas over the past few years. Those part of a larger group have been collaborating more with their sister organisations in the fixed telecom business, consulting and managed service business, and so on, while others with more of a mobile pure-play background have grown into new areas either organically or by acquisition.
Across the board, we have also seen mobile operators partnering a lot more with players in the IT space in acknowledgement that activity in many of the areas mentioned crosses the traditional separation between the IT and communications domains.
This extension of capability and propositions is interesting when looking at the dynamics of the industry in general and the way in which the supply side of the equation is changing. From a customer perspective, it also raises the question of whether mobile operators have now evolved enough to be regarded as genuine strategic suppliers to the enterprises they serve.
Before continuing with this line of thinking, it’s probably worth defining what we mean by the term ‘strategic supplier’. It’s something I personally spent a lot of time looking at when writing the supplier management chapter of ‘The Technology Garden’ book.
While it is tempting to regard suppliers that you spend a lot of money with or rely upon heavily for operational purposes as strategic, we prefer to put the emphasis on organisational synergy. By this, we don’t mean some woolly ‘feel good’ factor, but the existence of a relationship based on genuine trust and mutual understanding at a level that matters in terms of overall business direction.
A good test of strategic status is whether you call a supplier and take their advice on key issues before making highly significant business or technology decisions – not necessarily in every case, but in the areas relevant to their sphere of experience and expertise.
With this definition in mind, it is not unusual for big IT incumbents such as SAP, IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, and so on, to be regarded as strategic. Large consulting and outsourcing firms also often acquire strategic status.
So what about mobile operators?
Well to date, I can’t recall an example of a senior manager proactively calling out a mobile operator when asked to name the top three or four strategic ITC suppliers to their business. This is clearly a function of the limited utility-centric relationship that has traditionally been place, but is it time to reconsider our view of the operator community?
When we consider that many of the organisations we speak with during our research highlight changing working patterns within the workforce and the impact of advanced communications on the way they operate as strategic front-of-mind issues, a convincing argument could be made to invite mobile operators more into the planning process. After all, on paper at least, they would seem to have a lot to contribute having gone through their own analysis of requirements, dependencies, practicalities, etc when constructing their portfolios of offerings.
In practical terms, however, we need realistic about what we can expect in terms of maturity. We have come across mobile operator initiatives, for example, that have started by pulling together a few talented guys from the existing business and asking the get up to speed from a standing start in a new area. The trouble is that teams such as this on a steep learning curve often don’t know what they don’t know, and this really isn’t a good starting point for developing even a tactical advisory relationship with the customer, let alone a strategic one.
In other cases, operators have been smart enough to hire good managers in from other domains, e.g. the IT sector, but even then, it can take time to assemble and optimise offerings, delivery processes, and so on. While the thinking might be quite mature, challenges might still exist at the execution level while experience is gained.
Of course many of the new offerings we see emerging have arisen from the acquisition of going-concerns, or the back-ending of products and services with resources from established sister companies or partners. Where this is the case, there is a better chance of robust thinking and delivery, but even this is not enough in my opinion.
To step up to the role of strategic supplier, mobile operators really need to demonstrate a clear understanding of the overall communications, collaboration and remote access landscape, how it is evolving, and how to help customers figure out which things to do in which order to move forward efficiently and effectively in the context of their businesses. This has to include both the customer internal view, e.g. how certain initiatives and systems are likely to impact others and vice versa, and the industry view, with a clear articulation of how the operator fits into the overall supplier landscape.
There are all kinds of other things we could point to, including coherency of offerings and operations across geographic boundaries and a proven track record of delivering on the basics, for example, but at the end of the day, it’s meeting minds on big picture philosophy, objectives and requirements that matters – and, of course, a willingness to do what is needed to establish and maintain a high level, trusted and open relationship.
So are they there yet? Well at an operator community level I would say no, mostly because their activities are not as mature and joined up as they need to be, though some are starting to get pretty close. Earning a seat at the top table is not going to be easy though, as there are plenty of other contenders and a range of incumbents who are already providing advice and guidance in the areas we have mentioned.
Having said this, perhaps there is an opportunity here for customers looking for fresh input and ideas to start developing stronger relationships with operators as they continue their journey from utility, through solution provider, to strategic partner. Different perspectives can, after all, sometimes be useful to shake up our thinking, and let’s not forget that those with something to prove are often willing to try a lot harder when it comes to relationship building.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Event review: IBM Information on Demand, Berlin
Organisations are accumulating information rapidly – a lot of information – and as research shows, the majority have challenges managing and exploiting it.
It was against this background that I recently attended IBM’s 2009 ‘Information on Demand’ event (IOD2009) in Berlin, designed to bring together customers, partners and industry analysts like me to discuss information management related matters and how IBM technology and services are relevant to them.
The danger with such end-user oriented gatherings is that they are so often designed primarily to cater for the immediate needs of ‘the faithful’, i.e. existing customers that are already committed the vendor’s offerings, and just want to know about the latest releases and roadmaps, and perhaps have an opportunity to network and party with their peers.
Now I am not going to say that IOD2009 didn’t have an element of this. Indeed, I would have been worried if it didn’t as it’s important to keep customers in the loop and gather their feedback at a detailed product level. It is also extremely valuable when a vendor facilitates networking and knowledge exchange within its user and partner community. Beyond such essentials, however, it is nice when events push the out the boundaries, tackle some of the bigger questions and issues, and even promote some thought leadership and best practice. IOD2009 delivered on these things too.
One of the enabling factors here is the breadth and depth of the IBM information management portfolio. Unlike niche vendors who can only address one part of the problem, and therefore sometimes define the world in a very blinkered manner and skew conversations accordingly, IBM has the luxury of considering the bigger picture holistically, in the knowledge that it has solutions relevant to most parts of it. In addition, the presence of its professional services divisions helps it to maintain solid bridges between the PowerPoint-centric world of product management and the real world in which solutions must be made to work in practice.
The only thing that gets in the way, at least for a pragmatic Brit like me with simple working class roots, is the amount of management consulting speak that American IBM executives insist on using when articulating visions, problems and solutions. Having said this, you can get a pretty good feel for the central theme of IOD2009, the ‘Information Agenda’, from some of the sound bites and phrases used in various keynotes:
* Leverage information for smarter business outcomes
* Move from information based projects to an information based enterprise
* Effective analysis and decision making starts with trusted information
* Creating meaningful business insights is what matters
* Put new intelligence to work to achieve ongoing differentiation and market leadership
* From application led transformation to information led transformation
* Right information at the right time at the right point in the business process
* The workplace is everywhere so data needs to be available everywhere
* Become an intelligent company
These are from my notes, and while I may not have jotted all of them down exactly right, the flavour and sentiment of what the audience heard should be pretty clear.
The overriding message was to move forward from the fragmented way in which information has typically been managed and exploited in the past, and start joining the dots. There is an organisational value perspective to this, which centres on a view of information as an enterprise level asset with the potential to contribute a lot more benefit than is being realised today. The key here is to break down barriers and open up silos to generate more coherent higher level insights into performance and operations.
Related to this is the functional dimension, based on the argument that we can manage and exploit information more effectively if we coordinate policy and practice across storage, backup, archival, description, discovery, retrieval, search, analytics, access, delivery, and so on. The cost and risk benefits of such a coordinated approach are particularly relevant against the backdrop of the current economic and regulatory environment.
The Information Agenda represents a step forward for IBM in the way it articulates information related challenges and how its various products and services work together to help tackle them. IBM is not telling us anything we don’t already know in terms of defining the problem, and is certainly not the only vendor waking up to what’s required. But now it is getting its own act together in terms of joined up thinking and offerings, which is something it has sometimes struggled with in the past, it’s got to the stage where it really can help its customers to define or review their thoughts, priorities and plans in the bigger picture context.
The maturing of IBM’s approach around the Information Agenda concept therefore has to be welcomed. Suppliers that can see beyond point products and have a grown up conversation about pulling the relevant threads together in a practical way have much more to contribute.
With this in mind, I found the detailed breakout sessions dealing with best practice and cross domain views of the world particularly interesting at IOD2009. The traditional product oriented content was still there, but set against the backdrop of the holistic Information Agenda concept, I am sure a lot of delegates couldn’t help but return to their organisations with bigger ideas and a motivation to put them into practice.
It was against this background that I recently attended IBM’s 2009 ‘Information on Demand’ event (IOD2009) in Berlin, designed to bring together customers, partners and industry analysts like me to discuss information management related matters and how IBM technology and services are relevant to them.
The danger with such end-user oriented gatherings is that they are so often designed primarily to cater for the immediate needs of ‘the faithful’, i.e. existing customers that are already committed the vendor’s offerings, and just want to know about the latest releases and roadmaps, and perhaps have an opportunity to network and party with their peers.
Now I am not going to say that IOD2009 didn’t have an element of this. Indeed, I would have been worried if it didn’t as it’s important to keep customers in the loop and gather their feedback at a detailed product level. It is also extremely valuable when a vendor facilitates networking and knowledge exchange within its user and partner community. Beyond such essentials, however, it is nice when events push the out the boundaries, tackle some of the bigger questions and issues, and even promote some thought leadership and best practice. IOD2009 delivered on these things too.
One of the enabling factors here is the breadth and depth of the IBM information management portfolio. Unlike niche vendors who can only address one part of the problem, and therefore sometimes define the world in a very blinkered manner and skew conversations accordingly, IBM has the luxury of considering the bigger picture holistically, in the knowledge that it has solutions relevant to most parts of it. In addition, the presence of its professional services divisions helps it to maintain solid bridges between the PowerPoint-centric world of product management and the real world in which solutions must be made to work in practice.
The only thing that gets in the way, at least for a pragmatic Brit like me with simple working class roots, is the amount of management consulting speak that American IBM executives insist on using when articulating visions, problems and solutions. Having said this, you can get a pretty good feel for the central theme of IOD2009, the ‘Information Agenda’, from some of the sound bites and phrases used in various keynotes:
* Leverage information for smarter business outcomes
* Move from information based projects to an information based enterprise
* Effective analysis and decision making starts with trusted information
* Creating meaningful business insights is what matters
* Put new intelligence to work to achieve ongoing differentiation and market leadership
* From application led transformation to information led transformation
* Right information at the right time at the right point in the business process
* The workplace is everywhere so data needs to be available everywhere
* Become an intelligent company
These are from my notes, and while I may not have jotted all of them down exactly right, the flavour and sentiment of what the audience heard should be pretty clear.
The overriding message was to move forward from the fragmented way in which information has typically been managed and exploited in the past, and start joining the dots. There is an organisational value perspective to this, which centres on a view of information as an enterprise level asset with the potential to contribute a lot more benefit than is being realised today. The key here is to break down barriers and open up silos to generate more coherent higher level insights into performance and operations.
Related to this is the functional dimension, based on the argument that we can manage and exploit information more effectively if we coordinate policy and practice across storage, backup, archival, description, discovery, retrieval, search, analytics, access, delivery, and so on. The cost and risk benefits of such a coordinated approach are particularly relevant against the backdrop of the current economic and regulatory environment.
The Information Agenda represents a step forward for IBM in the way it articulates information related challenges and how its various products and services work together to help tackle them. IBM is not telling us anything we don’t already know in terms of defining the problem, and is certainly not the only vendor waking up to what’s required. But now it is getting its own act together in terms of joined up thinking and offerings, which is something it has sometimes struggled with in the past, it’s got to the stage where it really can help its customers to define or review their thoughts, priorities and plans in the bigger picture context.
The maturing of IBM’s approach around the Information Agenda concept therefore has to be welcomed. Suppliers that can see beyond point products and have a grown up conversation about pulling the relevant threads together in a practical way have much more to contribute.
With this in mind, I found the detailed breakout sessions dealing with best practice and cross domain views of the world particularly interesting at IOD2009. The traditional product oriented content was still there, but set against the backdrop of the holistic Information Agenda concept, I am sure a lot of delegates couldn’t help but return to their organisations with bigger ideas and a motivation to put them into practice.
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
A realistic exploration of the Desktop Linux opportunity
How often have you dismissed the views expressed by extremists because what they are saying is so far removed from your own position and perceptions? The problem is that while single issue activists can make a lot of noise, they often come across as being out of touch with the complexities of the real world. Indeed, the irony is that when idealism takes precedent over practicality, the cause being promoted is actually far less likely to strike a chord with the mainstream.
And so it has been with open source fundamentalists promoting desktop Linux as an alternative to the traditional Windows client platform. The starting point for the argument is typically that Windows is completely broken and the only reason people carry on using it is because they are lazy or have been brainwashed by the Redmond evil empire. Linux is then positioned as the answer to everyone’s problems based on technical superiority and the righteousness of open source.
It’s clear that a lot of evangelists espousing such views are enthusiasts that have adopted desktop Linux for their own personal use but have little experience of deploying it in a real world business environment. Indeed, locating objective information on the practicalities of using desktop Linux in a mainstream business context can be a challenge.
In order to tackle this problem, we at Freeform Dynamics tracked down over a thousand IT professionals who had done it for real and extracted a range of tips, tricks and traps from them – not at a techie level, but in relation to the scoping and targeting of activity, and how to work around things like application availability and compatibility constraints.
The feedback we received was received was remarkably candid, and confirmed that far from being perfect, desktop Linux brings with it a range of issues that need to be taken into account when considering its use. Nevertheless, there was a strong consensus that if deployed in the right way to the right kinds of user, Linux, and some of the open source applications that are typically used with it, can form a foundation for reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO) of the desktop computing environment.
One of the most interesting parts of the study was the light shed on the question of targeting. While experiences varied between organisations, it was clear that as of today, Linux is most appropriate for deployment to users with relatively simple and predictable requirements, such as transaction workers and general professional users. These groups tend to view the computer on their desk as simply a tool to get their jobs done, so are less likely to resist the change that Linux represents. They also tend to be dependent on a relatively small range of applications which keeps testing, porting and migration costs at a manageable level.
At the other end of the spectrum, the advice from those with experience was that groups to avoid are Windows power users, mobile workers and creative staff, who are much more of a challenge. This is because their needs are generally more demanding, more dynamic and less predictable, and there tends to be a higher degree of reliance on specific applications that not available on Linux.
While thinking about selective targeting based on such observations might seem pretty obvious, it’s all too common to hear desktop Linux being dismissed on the basis that it won’t work for those in finance who are addicted to Excel macros, or those in the marketing department who just couldn’t live without their PowerPoint animations.
The trick is to not to get distracted by such users and explore the possibilities associated with those, for example, who live in the ERP system or some other core application for most of their working day, with minimal requirements for sophisticated document authoring, etc. And in many organisations, these make up the majority of the user population.
If you’re interested in reading more, details of the study, which was sponsored by IBM as part of our Community Research Programme, are written up in a full report which is available for free download here.
And so it has been with open source fundamentalists promoting desktop Linux as an alternative to the traditional Windows client platform. The starting point for the argument is typically that Windows is completely broken and the only reason people carry on using it is because they are lazy or have been brainwashed by the Redmond evil empire. Linux is then positioned as the answer to everyone’s problems based on technical superiority and the righteousness of open source.
It’s clear that a lot of evangelists espousing such views are enthusiasts that have adopted desktop Linux for their own personal use but have little experience of deploying it in a real world business environment. Indeed, locating objective information on the practicalities of using desktop Linux in a mainstream business context can be a challenge.
In order to tackle this problem, we at Freeform Dynamics tracked down over a thousand IT professionals who had done it for real and extracted a range of tips, tricks and traps from them – not at a techie level, but in relation to the scoping and targeting of activity, and how to work around things like application availability and compatibility constraints.
The feedback we received was received was remarkably candid, and confirmed that far from being perfect, desktop Linux brings with it a range of issues that need to be taken into account when considering its use. Nevertheless, there was a strong consensus that if deployed in the right way to the right kinds of user, Linux, and some of the open source applications that are typically used with it, can form a foundation for reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO) of the desktop computing environment.
One of the most interesting parts of the study was the light shed on the question of targeting. While experiences varied between organisations, it was clear that as of today, Linux is most appropriate for deployment to users with relatively simple and predictable requirements, such as transaction workers and general professional users. These groups tend to view the computer on their desk as simply a tool to get their jobs done, so are less likely to resist the change that Linux represents. They also tend to be dependent on a relatively small range of applications which keeps testing, porting and migration costs at a manageable level.
At the other end of the spectrum, the advice from those with experience was that groups to avoid are Windows power users, mobile workers and creative staff, who are much more of a challenge. This is because their needs are generally more demanding, more dynamic and less predictable, and there tends to be a higher degree of reliance on specific applications that not available on Linux.
While thinking about selective targeting based on such observations might seem pretty obvious, it’s all too common to hear desktop Linux being dismissed on the basis that it won’t work for those in finance who are addicted to Excel macros, or those in the marketing department who just couldn’t live without their PowerPoint animations.
The trick is to not to get distracted by such users and explore the possibilities associated with those, for example, who live in the ERP system or some other core application for most of their working day, with minimal requirements for sophisticated document authoring, etc. And in many organisations, these make up the majority of the user population.
If you’re interested in reading more, details of the study, which was sponsored by IBM as part of our Community Research Programme, are written up in a full report which is available for free download here.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Two men say they’re Jesus....
I had a link to a short video entitled ‘Cloud Computing in Plain English’ sent to me yesterday, which I thought provided an useful overview of utility computing and the role virtualisation plays in that context.
While I thought some other parts of the video were a bit confused, the thing that really struck me about it was the way in which the term ‘cloud computing’ was used to refer to the utility computing model only. Indeed, within the video, cloud was differentiated against Software as a Service (SaaS), which was positioned almost as being an old-hat way of doing things with some undesirable restrictions that ‘cloud’ overcomes.
I couldn’t help thinking of a similar ‘back to basics’ video from Salesforce.com that talks about cloud computing in reference to the SaaS and Platform as a Service (PaaS) models. The view expressed there is very similar to the messages heard from other SaaS/PaaS players and wannabes, from Google to the myriad of smaller application service providers that have sprung up in recent times.
So, we have two conflicting views here, and as the old Dire Straits lyric goes: “Two men say they’re Jesus; one of them must be wrong”.
It seems as if we are moving from a situation in which the term ‘cloud’ was so ill-defined that it could pretty much mean anything, to one in which certain factions are attempting to assume ownership and exclude definitions that don’t fit their requirements. Not sure if this is progress or just adding to the confusion.
While I personally detest the word ‘cloud’ in the IT context because it is so ambiguous and I am a bit of an obsessive about precision, I have grudgingly accepted it on the basis that it is not going away, and have learned to work with it. The only way to make sense of a lot of discussions in this space, however, is to begin each conversation or review by establishing which flavour of cloud is actually being talked about.
In order to facilitate this, the Freeform Dynamics team analysed all the things that cloud could potentially mean and came up with quite a few categories that we now use as a starting point for interaction. These cloud categories are explained here if you are interested, and as you’ll see, we take quite an inclusive approach, regarding cloud as an umbrella term (if you’ll forgive the pun), which breaks out into multiple offerings from vendors and service providers, some of which are very different.
With this in mind, it’ll be interesting to see where all this ends up at an industry level. I guess it will either come down to who has the deepest pockets to promote their definition of cloud from a marketing perspective, or the industry actually cooperating to unravel the tangled mess of terminology, ideas and ideologies that exists out there at the moment.
In the meantime, it's important to be on your guard and be careful about making assumptions on the language you encounter when on the receiving end of marketing messages, media coverage and analyst advice.
While I thought some other parts of the video were a bit confused, the thing that really struck me about it was the way in which the term ‘cloud computing’ was used to refer to the utility computing model only. Indeed, within the video, cloud was differentiated against Software as a Service (SaaS), which was positioned almost as being an old-hat way of doing things with some undesirable restrictions that ‘cloud’ overcomes.
I couldn’t help thinking of a similar ‘back to basics’ video from Salesforce.com that talks about cloud computing in reference to the SaaS and Platform as a Service (PaaS) models. The view expressed there is very similar to the messages heard from other SaaS/PaaS players and wannabes, from Google to the myriad of smaller application service providers that have sprung up in recent times.
So, we have two conflicting views here, and as the old Dire Straits lyric goes: “Two men say they’re Jesus; one of them must be wrong”.
It seems as if we are moving from a situation in which the term ‘cloud’ was so ill-defined that it could pretty much mean anything, to one in which certain factions are attempting to assume ownership and exclude definitions that don’t fit their requirements. Not sure if this is progress or just adding to the confusion.
While I personally detest the word ‘cloud’ in the IT context because it is so ambiguous and I am a bit of an obsessive about precision, I have grudgingly accepted it on the basis that it is not going away, and have learned to work with it. The only way to make sense of a lot of discussions in this space, however, is to begin each conversation or review by establishing which flavour of cloud is actually being talked about.
In order to facilitate this, the Freeform Dynamics team analysed all the things that cloud could potentially mean and came up with quite a few categories that we now use as a starting point for interaction. These cloud categories are explained here if you are interested, and as you’ll see, we take quite an inclusive approach, regarding cloud as an umbrella term (if you’ll forgive the pun), which breaks out into multiple offerings from vendors and service providers, some of which are very different.
With this in mind, it’ll be interesting to see where all this ends up at an industry level. I guess it will either come down to who has the deepest pockets to promote their definition of cloud from a marketing perspective, or the industry actually cooperating to unravel the tangled mess of terminology, ideas and ideologies that exists out there at the moment.
In the meantime, it's important to be on your guard and be careful about making assumptions on the language you encounter when on the receiving end of marketing messages, media coverage and analyst advice.
Thursday, May 07, 2009
Integrated solutions as a service - iSaaS anyone?
Against the background of ever increasing hype around cloud computing, it’s interesting listening to keynotes from senior executives on the supplier side of the equation. I was watching a video of Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff speaking at the company’s recent Cloudforce event in the UK, for example. Stirring stuff, and some great material explaining the value proposition for ‘Software as a Service’ (SaaS), or ‘enterprise cloud computing’ as Benioff and his disciples now call it. Well worth a watch.
If you took it all on face value, though, you could walk away with the impression that all of those headaches we have struggled with for years in IT have disappeared overnight, and that all you need to do is whip out your credit card, sign up for a few cloud services, then sit back with your feet up. In fact, if you were tuning in from your computer room sitting next to your racks of servers and other kit, you might even get a complex about being one of the backward few who aren’t already moving everything into ‘the cloud’
The trouble with all of this time shifting, i.e. talking as if activity in the mainstream is more advanced than it is in reality, is that it creates the impression that all of the problems have been solved. If we stick with our Salesforce.com example, while this particular supplier must be congratulated for creating a great proposition around a very specific application – sales force automation – when claims are made that this is an indicator of application requirements as a whole now shifting en masse the Software as a Service (SaaS) model, there is a danger of losing sight of some of the significant challenges that still exist.
Many of the questions to do with integration between services, and between in-house systems and service provider offerings, are yet to be resolved, for example. All the big players have views on this and can deliver great PowerPoint presentations and demos to illustrate how it will all work. But if you were to scale out your commitment to cloud computing today beyond a small number of discrete services, you would very likely end up in a unpredictable mess, at the mercy of a range of providers who are not yet mature enough to play nicely together from either a physical integration or commercial cooperation perspective. The reality is that we have a long way to go before real-world integration, support and maintenance requirements in even some of the simplest multi-provider scenarios will be dealt with to the satisfaction of most mainstream enterprises.
There are some examples of more mature thinking in the cloud computing arena, however, that acknowledges some of the practicalities. I recently attended a customer day run by Cobweb Solutions, a UK based provider that has been delivering hosted business services, predominantly to small and medium businesses (SMBs), for over a decade now. I was actually there in my capacity as a customer (we use Cobweb’s hosted Exchange service at Freeform Dynamics), but I couldn’t help listening as an industry analyst.
During his introduction, Mark Adams, the Managing Director of Cobweb, talked through the history of the company, from being labelled an ‘Internet Service Provider’ (ISP) in 1998, an ‘Application Service Provider’ (ASP) in 2001, and a ‘Managed Service Provider’ (MSP) in 2004 after the wheels fell off of the ASP bandwagon. More recently, people have referred to Cobweb as a SaaS or cloud service provider. As Mark explained, however, while the services offered have been evolving, extending and maturing over the years, the core Cobweb proposition hasn’t really changed. The fundamental components of this boil down to no capital investment, no hardware to maintain, and enterprise level security, resilience, recovery and compliance for the SMB customers served.
Having said this, the way in which the Cobweb service has been evolving is quite interesting. The pivotal hosted Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint offering has been gradually extended to include complementary services like mobile access, content filtering, archiving and retrieval, etc – all pre-integrated and presented as options that can be selected from a self provisioning portal. This approach, with Cobweb basically assembling pieces of an overall solution jigsaw and providing a single point of support for everything, has now been extended to include ‘Customer Relationship Management’ (CRM) based on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 software suite.
This integrated solution services model overcomes a lot of the integration and accountability related gotchas that can potentially trip customers up as they broaden their commitment to the cloud computing - if something goes wrong with the interfacing between your CRM and messaging system, there is no ambiguity about who is responsible for fixing it.
In acknowledgement of another often glossed-over practicality, Cobweb has teamed with ConsultCRM, a professional services firm that will help customers with everything from analysis and scoping of requirements, through configuration and data migration, to training and rollout of the CRM service. While other providers often give the impression of it just being a case of ‘subscribe and go’ with SaaS services, Cobweb is up front about the need for most customers to go through a traditional implementation cycle if they are to be successful.
In many ways, firms like Cobweb are setting the benchmark for delivery of genuinely integrated SaaS based solutions into the SMB space that bring together multiple packages and components in a way that minimises hassle and risk for the customer. The downside, however, is that the integration work required takes time, which may frustrate some customers who would prefer not to wait for new components and upgrades to be added to the service. This is something we at Freeform Dynamics had to deal with last year, for example, when we were forced to introduce a second provider into the equation to gain access to the latest version of SharePoint because it was so far out on Cobweb’s roadmap. And while Cobweb is now up-to-date in this area, the lag in delivery of new capability is still evident, e.g. it’s still going to be a while before a unified communications capability will be offered, which is a natural next step for its customers.
Ultimately, the emergence of standards and the maturing business practices within the cloud provider community will allow mixing and matching of services that need to work together coherently to be achieved more conveniently and with less risk. But for SMBs in particular, the broader solution approach will continue to have a place for those needing a relatively standard mix of pre-integrated capability, prioritising cost, coherency and risk management over always being smack-bang up to date.
If you took it all on face value, though, you could walk away with the impression that all of those headaches we have struggled with for years in IT have disappeared overnight, and that all you need to do is whip out your credit card, sign up for a few cloud services, then sit back with your feet up. In fact, if you were tuning in from your computer room sitting next to your racks of servers and other kit, you might even get a complex about being one of the backward few who aren’t already moving everything into ‘the cloud’
The trouble with all of this time shifting, i.e. talking as if activity in the mainstream is more advanced than it is in reality, is that it creates the impression that all of the problems have been solved. If we stick with our Salesforce.com example, while this particular supplier must be congratulated for creating a great proposition around a very specific application – sales force automation – when claims are made that this is an indicator of application requirements as a whole now shifting en masse the Software as a Service (SaaS) model, there is a danger of losing sight of some of the significant challenges that still exist.
Many of the questions to do with integration between services, and between in-house systems and service provider offerings, are yet to be resolved, for example. All the big players have views on this and can deliver great PowerPoint presentations and demos to illustrate how it will all work. But if you were to scale out your commitment to cloud computing today beyond a small number of discrete services, you would very likely end up in a unpredictable mess, at the mercy of a range of providers who are not yet mature enough to play nicely together from either a physical integration or commercial cooperation perspective. The reality is that we have a long way to go before real-world integration, support and maintenance requirements in even some of the simplest multi-provider scenarios will be dealt with to the satisfaction of most mainstream enterprises.
There are some examples of more mature thinking in the cloud computing arena, however, that acknowledges some of the practicalities. I recently attended a customer day run by Cobweb Solutions, a UK based provider that has been delivering hosted business services, predominantly to small and medium businesses (SMBs), for over a decade now. I was actually there in my capacity as a customer (we use Cobweb’s hosted Exchange service at Freeform Dynamics), but I couldn’t help listening as an industry analyst.
During his introduction, Mark Adams, the Managing Director of Cobweb, talked through the history of the company, from being labelled an ‘Internet Service Provider’ (ISP) in 1998, an ‘Application Service Provider’ (ASP) in 2001, and a ‘Managed Service Provider’ (MSP) in 2004 after the wheels fell off of the ASP bandwagon. More recently, people have referred to Cobweb as a SaaS or cloud service provider. As Mark explained, however, while the services offered have been evolving, extending and maturing over the years, the core Cobweb proposition hasn’t really changed. The fundamental components of this boil down to no capital investment, no hardware to maintain, and enterprise level security, resilience, recovery and compliance for the SMB customers served.
Having said this, the way in which the Cobweb service has been evolving is quite interesting. The pivotal hosted Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint offering has been gradually extended to include complementary services like mobile access, content filtering, archiving and retrieval, etc – all pre-integrated and presented as options that can be selected from a self provisioning portal. This approach, with Cobweb basically assembling pieces of an overall solution jigsaw and providing a single point of support for everything, has now been extended to include ‘Customer Relationship Management’ (CRM) based on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 software suite.
This integrated solution services model overcomes a lot of the integration and accountability related gotchas that can potentially trip customers up as they broaden their commitment to the cloud computing - if something goes wrong with the interfacing between your CRM and messaging system, there is no ambiguity about who is responsible for fixing it.
In acknowledgement of another often glossed-over practicality, Cobweb has teamed with ConsultCRM, a professional services firm that will help customers with everything from analysis and scoping of requirements, through configuration and data migration, to training and rollout of the CRM service. While other providers often give the impression of it just being a case of ‘subscribe and go’ with SaaS services, Cobweb is up front about the need for most customers to go through a traditional implementation cycle if they are to be successful.
In many ways, firms like Cobweb are setting the benchmark for delivery of genuinely integrated SaaS based solutions into the SMB space that bring together multiple packages and components in a way that minimises hassle and risk for the customer. The downside, however, is that the integration work required takes time, which may frustrate some customers who would prefer not to wait for new components and upgrades to be added to the service. This is something we at Freeform Dynamics had to deal with last year, for example, when we were forced to introduce a second provider into the equation to gain access to the latest version of SharePoint because it was so far out on Cobweb’s roadmap. And while Cobweb is now up-to-date in this area, the lag in delivery of new capability is still evident, e.g. it’s still going to be a while before a unified communications capability will be offered, which is a natural next step for its customers.
Ultimately, the emergence of standards and the maturing business practices within the cloud provider community will allow mixing and matching of services that need to work together coherently to be achieved more conveniently and with less risk. But for SMBs in particular, the broader solution approach will continue to have a place for those needing a relatively standard mix of pre-integrated capability, prioritising cost, coherency and risk management over always being smack-bang up to date.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Big Blue ISV double-take
In comparison to many of its strategic competitors, IBM has been behind the curve in the small to medium enterprise (SME) space for many years now. Whether it’s hardware, email servers, platform software or development tools, IBM’s presence as a supplier tails off rapidly as we look below 5,000 employee mark in terms of company size.
So is it that IBM offerings are less suitable for smaller businesses than alternatives from Microsoft and others? Well not if you consider it on capability. IBM has invested a great deal in packaging and even designing solutions for SMEs under the Express umbrella, and doing a good job of making enterprise class technology accessible to those with more modest IT budgets and limited IT resources. So why the lack of market penetration?
There are a couple of contributors to this, the first being that other suppliers better managed the transition to commodity kit and software that swept the market during the 90s, while IBM was still focusing its efforts on higher margin proprietary platforms. The end result was a loss of position in the traditional reseller and integrator channel that serves the needs of the majority of smaller businesses when it comes to IT infrastructure. The likes of Microsoft and HP therefore largely took control of some important routes to market, and while IBM has been trying to catch up since, and nowadays has very much embraced commodity solutions as well as open standards within its portfolio of offerings, the gap that exists is still pretty big.
The other big contributing factor to IBM’s challenges in the SME space is the way in which technology is bought. Unlike large enterprises that make explicit investments in IT infrastructure improvement and evolution, the type of platform technology that IBM delivers tends to be pulled through more on the coat-tails of business application purchases in smaller organisations. This brings the companies who build and deliver those business applications, commonly referred to as ‘Independent Software Vendors’ (ISVs), into sharp focus. And when we look closely at these, the majority of them focused on SMEs are using non-IBM technology, e.g. from Microsoft and Oracle, to underpin their solutions at the moment.
In practical terms, the two factors we have been discussing are linked. If we think of it from a business perspective, ISVs generally need to focus on selling their own capability in the sales cycle. They really don’t want to waste time explaining to customers who are already familiar and comfortable with the Microsoft stack, for example, why the application they are offering is based on something else. To put it another way, if you are an ISV targeting the SME market, then building your application on Microsoft or Oracle technology has traditionally represented the path of least resistance and therefore the lowest cost of sale. This is a generalisation, of course, but it does lie at the root of why relatively few SME focused ISVs have bet their business on an IBM platform in recent years.
The exceptions are very interesting, though, and when you talk to IBM business partners you hear a couple of strong reasons as to why they ended up in the Big Blue camp. The first is technology and the feeling that IBM platform solutions are more open, standard, capable and scalable than the alternatives. The breadth of the portfolio is also a perceived strength for some, with solutions ranging from data warehousing at one end to systems management at the other. While Microsoft and Oracle could legitimately argue with most of these claims nowadays, it is clear that some ISVs believe the IBM foundation and backing provides them with a useful competitive differentiator.
The word ‘backing’ provides a clue as to the other big reason given for embracing IBM platforms as an ISV. While some we have spoken with allude to historical challenges interfacing with the complex machine that is Big Blue, they also highlight the rewards that are available if you can crack it from a partnering perspective. The general consensus also seems to be that while things are not perfect, the IBM partnership programmes are becoming progressively clearer and easier to access.
Against this background, it was interesting talking recently with three of the IBM executives responsible for overseeing ISV related activity in Northeast Europe – Robert Curran, VP General Business Channels, Melinda Matthews, Director of ISV and Developer Relations, and Aidan Troy, Director of Channel Sales. What struck me most about the conversation with these guys was that as they talked about their programmes and activities, the rationale for working with ISVs was consistently explained in terms of what was in it for the partner. This is in stark contrast to my discussions with people in similar positions within other IT vendors who are more inclined to talk in terms of partners being a route to market for product – a subtle but very important difference, implying a genuinely partner centric mindset.
Having said this, the IBM team were very clear about their objectives in business terms, and spoke in a realistic way about the need to ‘convert’ key ISVs in target industry sectors that are currently aligned with the competition, or at least get them to embrace elements of the IBM technology portfolio in a complementary manner.
The point was made that many of the acquisitions IBM has made over recent years is helping a great deal here. On the one hand, the broadening of the portfolio, often with products that already coexist and interoperate with other vendors’ technologies, provides more potential entry points into the partnership discussion. Then, of course, each acquired product has brought with it a partner base of its own, which provides potential win/win opportunities for some ISVs to extend their involvement with IBM through cross training and evolution of existing commercial arrangements.
We also spoke about the resources, facilities and education/coaching available to ISVs to help them from initial porting/development of solutions, through go-to-market planning, and ultimately sales and marketing execution. This is something I will pick up on in more detail in the future, along with some of the internal mechanisms in place to coordinate between product, industry and partner groups across IBM on both a local and international basis. Suffice it to say in the meantime that when you speak to senior management and tour one of the facilities geared up to supporting business partners (‘Innovation Centres’) as I have a couple of times now, the level of commitment IBM is making to driving and enabling its ISV community leaves little to the imagination.
So, I will be watching with interest, and indeed tracking through market research, the impact IBM’s efforts through the ISV and other programmes on its SME market share over time. It appears to be doing all the right things to make itself more relevant, and with ISVs having to deal with ever more complex requirements, I can see many of them tempted into the IBM fold by the breadth and depth of both the products and support on offer.
It’s not going to be easy though, and I don’t imagine for a moment that Microsoft, Oracle, HP, and other competitors are going to allow IBM into their partner bases without a fight, but from what I have seen, it is definitely a case of ‘game on’, so any ISV looking to re-evaluate the foundation for their solution would do well to check out what’s on offer from IBM. After all, when someone is coming from behind, they are often willing to put in a lot more effort to catch up.
So is it that IBM offerings are less suitable for smaller businesses than alternatives from Microsoft and others? Well not if you consider it on capability. IBM has invested a great deal in packaging and even designing solutions for SMEs under the Express umbrella, and doing a good job of making enterprise class technology accessible to those with more modest IT budgets and limited IT resources. So why the lack of market penetration?
There are a couple of contributors to this, the first being that other suppliers better managed the transition to commodity kit and software that swept the market during the 90s, while IBM was still focusing its efforts on higher margin proprietary platforms. The end result was a loss of position in the traditional reseller and integrator channel that serves the needs of the majority of smaller businesses when it comes to IT infrastructure. The likes of Microsoft and HP therefore largely took control of some important routes to market, and while IBM has been trying to catch up since, and nowadays has very much embraced commodity solutions as well as open standards within its portfolio of offerings, the gap that exists is still pretty big.
The other big contributing factor to IBM’s challenges in the SME space is the way in which technology is bought. Unlike large enterprises that make explicit investments in IT infrastructure improvement and evolution, the type of platform technology that IBM delivers tends to be pulled through more on the coat-tails of business application purchases in smaller organisations. This brings the companies who build and deliver those business applications, commonly referred to as ‘Independent Software Vendors’ (ISVs), into sharp focus. And when we look closely at these, the majority of them focused on SMEs are using non-IBM technology, e.g. from Microsoft and Oracle, to underpin their solutions at the moment.
In practical terms, the two factors we have been discussing are linked. If we think of it from a business perspective, ISVs generally need to focus on selling their own capability in the sales cycle. They really don’t want to waste time explaining to customers who are already familiar and comfortable with the Microsoft stack, for example, why the application they are offering is based on something else. To put it another way, if you are an ISV targeting the SME market, then building your application on Microsoft or Oracle technology has traditionally represented the path of least resistance and therefore the lowest cost of sale. This is a generalisation, of course, but it does lie at the root of why relatively few SME focused ISVs have bet their business on an IBM platform in recent years.
The exceptions are very interesting, though, and when you talk to IBM business partners you hear a couple of strong reasons as to why they ended up in the Big Blue camp. The first is technology and the feeling that IBM platform solutions are more open, standard, capable and scalable than the alternatives. The breadth of the portfolio is also a perceived strength for some, with solutions ranging from data warehousing at one end to systems management at the other. While Microsoft and Oracle could legitimately argue with most of these claims nowadays, it is clear that some ISVs believe the IBM foundation and backing provides them with a useful competitive differentiator.
The word ‘backing’ provides a clue as to the other big reason given for embracing IBM platforms as an ISV. While some we have spoken with allude to historical challenges interfacing with the complex machine that is Big Blue, they also highlight the rewards that are available if you can crack it from a partnering perspective. The general consensus also seems to be that while things are not perfect, the IBM partnership programmes are becoming progressively clearer and easier to access.
Against this background, it was interesting talking recently with three of the IBM executives responsible for overseeing ISV related activity in Northeast Europe – Robert Curran, VP General Business Channels, Melinda Matthews, Director of ISV and Developer Relations, and Aidan Troy, Director of Channel Sales. What struck me most about the conversation with these guys was that as they talked about their programmes and activities, the rationale for working with ISVs was consistently explained in terms of what was in it for the partner. This is in stark contrast to my discussions with people in similar positions within other IT vendors who are more inclined to talk in terms of partners being a route to market for product – a subtle but very important difference, implying a genuinely partner centric mindset.
Having said this, the IBM team were very clear about their objectives in business terms, and spoke in a realistic way about the need to ‘convert’ key ISVs in target industry sectors that are currently aligned with the competition, or at least get them to embrace elements of the IBM technology portfolio in a complementary manner.
The point was made that many of the acquisitions IBM has made over recent years is helping a great deal here. On the one hand, the broadening of the portfolio, often with products that already coexist and interoperate with other vendors’ technologies, provides more potential entry points into the partnership discussion. Then, of course, each acquired product has brought with it a partner base of its own, which provides potential win/win opportunities for some ISVs to extend their involvement with IBM through cross training and evolution of existing commercial arrangements.
We also spoke about the resources, facilities and education/coaching available to ISVs to help them from initial porting/development of solutions, through go-to-market planning, and ultimately sales and marketing execution. This is something I will pick up on in more detail in the future, along with some of the internal mechanisms in place to coordinate between product, industry and partner groups across IBM on both a local and international basis. Suffice it to say in the meantime that when you speak to senior management and tour one of the facilities geared up to supporting business partners (‘Innovation Centres’) as I have a couple of times now, the level of commitment IBM is making to driving and enabling its ISV community leaves little to the imagination.
So, I will be watching with interest, and indeed tracking through market research, the impact IBM’s efforts through the ISV and other programmes on its SME market share over time. It appears to be doing all the right things to make itself more relevant, and with ISVs having to deal with ever more complex requirements, I can see many of them tempted into the IBM fold by the breadth and depth of both the products and support on offer.
It’s not going to be easy though, and I don’t imagine for a moment that Microsoft, Oracle, HP, and other competitors are going to allow IBM into their partner bases without a fight, but from what I have seen, it is definitely a case of ‘game on’, so any ISV looking to re-evaluate the foundation for their solution would do well to check out what’s on offer from IBM. After all, when someone is coming from behind, they are often willing to put in a lot more effort to catch up.
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Don’t let Microsoft timescales dictate your Windows migration schedule
There is a lot of talk at the moment about desktop migration schedules. With the majority of enterprises still managing XP estates, the big question is whether to make a short term move to Vista, hang on and wait for Windows 7, or dig in and not think about it until you really have to.
A minority - typically represented by small tech-savvy professional services firms in the IT, engineering and media sectors, in particular - will take the uncertainty as a cue to investigate alternatives such as Linux and Mac OS X. This is a perfectly legitimate thing to do, but outside the scope of this article.
For most, the key question remains about when and how to move forward in terms of Windows releases. Having looked at the options, there isn’t a single ‘right’ answer to this that applies to every organisation. So what’s the best way to think about the issue and come up an appropriate plan?
A couple of things are worth bearing in mind as a foundation for the discussion.
First: the physical deployment of the operating system itself, i.e. getting the new version of Windows onto target machines, can involve significant operational effort, but the real cost and pain of most previous Windows migrations has been associated with testing and remediating applications, utilities, drivers and so on. We know from those who have already made the move from XP to Vista that this is not a trivial task in that particular case. Real compatibility issues are typically encountered with both commercial and in-house developed software that need to be identified, understood and fixed methodically. Tools exist that can help with the process, but there is no getting away from the need to treat the exercise as a properly planned, resourced and funded project if you have anything more than a handful of PCs.
Second: from what we have seen and heard so far with the beta version, Windows 7 is largely an optimisation of Vista rather than a generational leap forward. I am sure that Microsoft and others might debate this throwaway comment from various different angles, but the pertinent point is that software designed to run on Vista will very likely run on Windows 7 with no compatibility issues.
Microsoft’s claims here seem to be corroborated by feedback from beta testers. Indeed, it seems every man and his dog has now given it a whirl and is reporting positive experiences in developer communities and social media circles.
The upshot is that the bulk of the effort put into the ‘hard bit’ of an XP to Vista migration i.e. the remedial compatibility work, will not need to be repeated during a subsequent move from Vista to Windows 7. Of course it’s unrealistic to expect perfection, and you would be mad to assume compatibility without going through a full re-test of everything. But the chances are that most things will pass and need no further action, making the whole thing much less costly, time-consuming and risky.
So how does this help when considering migration strategy and timing? Let’s not pretend the situation is ideal, but at least it puts control of the decision back in your hands. With early experiences and Microsoft promises indicating a relatively small difference in effort between a two step (via Vista) and one step (skipping it) migration, the consequences of choosing one route or the other are not that great.
So it’s up to you, really. If it suits you to move sooner rather than later, then there is no need to hold back from implementing Vista for fear of having to duplicate a huge amount of effort. Yes, there will be additional work involved in the two-step journey you will ultimately be taking, but the second refresh will be much less daunting.
If you plan to wait for Windows 7 before rolling out your next major upgrade, you can begin testing and remedial work in advance using Vista. Having said this, the stability of the current beta bodes well for the future, so working Windows 7 directly into your test and preparation activities may be possible sooner than we might expect, based on past experiences with new Windows releases.
The last question that remains is how to decide if and when to move forward. Critics maintain that there is simply not a business case to migrate from Windows XP, so why bother at all?
I would not dispute the difficulty in justifying a Vista rollout from an end user value perspective, although larger organisations that have taken Vista fully on board report significant payback from operational improvements. I personally haven’t formed a strong view on whether Windows 7 will change the cost/value equation very much, though my own experimentation with the beta (admittedly just a single data point) has revealed a noticeably better user experience that could arguably make a difference to productivity - it’s too early to make a call on this, though.
But the cost/benefit calculation associated with the operating system per se is not the main issue. After all, the only reason Windows is there is to run applications. And with the relentless upgrade spiral among software vendors, practicality says you can’t fall too far behind without running into support and compatibility problems at the other end of the conveyor belt.
There’ll come a time when the latest releases of solutions that are important for your business will no longer run on XP, in the same way that vendors have gradually dropped support for pre-XP versions of Windows. So unless you are one of those looking to defect to Linux or OS X, the move from XP is inevitable at some point down the line. And it’s always better to act proactively than reactively.
So, whether you are an enthusiastic pioneer or a grudging pragmatist, the good thing is that you can largely set your own pace in terms of migration timing, which is exactly as it should be.
Republished on the The Register here.
A minority - typically represented by small tech-savvy professional services firms in the IT, engineering and media sectors, in particular - will take the uncertainty as a cue to investigate alternatives such as Linux and Mac OS X. This is a perfectly legitimate thing to do, but outside the scope of this article.
For most, the key question remains about when and how to move forward in terms of Windows releases. Having looked at the options, there isn’t a single ‘right’ answer to this that applies to every organisation. So what’s the best way to think about the issue and come up an appropriate plan?
A couple of things are worth bearing in mind as a foundation for the discussion.
First: the physical deployment of the operating system itself, i.e. getting the new version of Windows onto target machines, can involve significant operational effort, but the real cost and pain of most previous Windows migrations has been associated with testing and remediating applications, utilities, drivers and so on. We know from those who have already made the move from XP to Vista that this is not a trivial task in that particular case. Real compatibility issues are typically encountered with both commercial and in-house developed software that need to be identified, understood and fixed methodically. Tools exist that can help with the process, but there is no getting away from the need to treat the exercise as a properly planned, resourced and funded project if you have anything more than a handful of PCs.
Second: from what we have seen and heard so far with the beta version, Windows 7 is largely an optimisation of Vista rather than a generational leap forward. I am sure that Microsoft and others might debate this throwaway comment from various different angles, but the pertinent point is that software designed to run on Vista will very likely run on Windows 7 with no compatibility issues.
Microsoft’s claims here seem to be corroborated by feedback from beta testers. Indeed, it seems every man and his dog has now given it a whirl and is reporting positive experiences in developer communities and social media circles.
The upshot is that the bulk of the effort put into the ‘hard bit’ of an XP to Vista migration i.e. the remedial compatibility work, will not need to be repeated during a subsequent move from Vista to Windows 7. Of course it’s unrealistic to expect perfection, and you would be mad to assume compatibility without going through a full re-test of everything. But the chances are that most things will pass and need no further action, making the whole thing much less costly, time-consuming and risky.
So how does this help when considering migration strategy and timing? Let’s not pretend the situation is ideal, but at least it puts control of the decision back in your hands. With early experiences and Microsoft promises indicating a relatively small difference in effort between a two step (via Vista) and one step (skipping it) migration, the consequences of choosing one route or the other are not that great.
So it’s up to you, really. If it suits you to move sooner rather than later, then there is no need to hold back from implementing Vista for fear of having to duplicate a huge amount of effort. Yes, there will be additional work involved in the two-step journey you will ultimately be taking, but the second refresh will be much less daunting.
If you plan to wait for Windows 7 before rolling out your next major upgrade, you can begin testing and remedial work in advance using Vista. Having said this, the stability of the current beta bodes well for the future, so working Windows 7 directly into your test and preparation activities may be possible sooner than we might expect, based on past experiences with new Windows releases.
The last question that remains is how to decide if and when to move forward. Critics maintain that there is simply not a business case to migrate from Windows XP, so why bother at all?
I would not dispute the difficulty in justifying a Vista rollout from an end user value perspective, although larger organisations that have taken Vista fully on board report significant payback from operational improvements. I personally haven’t formed a strong view on whether Windows 7 will change the cost/value equation very much, though my own experimentation with the beta (admittedly just a single data point) has revealed a noticeably better user experience that could arguably make a difference to productivity - it’s too early to make a call on this, though.
But the cost/benefit calculation associated with the operating system per se is not the main issue. After all, the only reason Windows is there is to run applications. And with the relentless upgrade spiral among software vendors, practicality says you can’t fall too far behind without running into support and compatibility problems at the other end of the conveyor belt.
There’ll come a time when the latest releases of solutions that are important for your business will no longer run on XP, in the same way that vendors have gradually dropped support for pre-XP versions of Windows. So unless you are one of those looking to defect to Linux or OS X, the move from XP is inevitable at some point down the line. And it’s always better to act proactively than reactively.
So, whether you are an enthusiastic pioneer or a grudging pragmatist, the good thing is that you can largely set your own pace in terms of migration timing, which is exactly as it should be.
Republished on the The Register here.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Google gets real on Apps go-to-market
I was interested and encouraged to see the announcement this week from Google of its new initiative to create a reseller channel for its online office applications. While I still remain sceptical about the appeal of cloud based propositions in a core business environment as a replacement for traditional desktop suites, mainly because the feedback we get is that people have more pressing things to worry about than fixing something they don’t regard to be broken, if traction is to be gained in this space, then the channel is a key part of the equation.
This is something I have discussed in depth in my research note entitled ‘Taking Cloud to the Mainstream’, which can be downloaded from here if you are interested in a review of some of the market practicalities and realities.
In the meantime, while the cloud evangelists will no doubt get all excited about one of their darlings making this move, we have to be realistic about how long it takes for a supplier to develop a viable and productive indirect channel. Too often, I have seen reseller initiatives started then fade away after 6-12 months as patience is lost with the slowness of the process. The reality is that it takes at least a couple of years for a brand new channel programme, especially a volume one, to deliver consistently. Whether Google will have the staying power remains to be seen, though if it wants to penetrate the SMB market, it really has no choice for the reasons I outline in the abovementioned research note.
In many ways, this move by Google is a bit of a distraction when considering how the SMB market for SaaS based solutions is going to open up in the shorter term. The real player to watch here is Microsoft, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it already has the channel in place, and extending existing relationships and agreements is an order of magnitude easier and quicker than building new ones from scratch. Secondly, the Microsoft Software plus Services (S+S) philosophy is both more mature than the Google’s cloud centric play and resonates much better with the target audience. From a channel perspective, the S+S approach, potentially allowing bundles of pre-integrated on-premise and on-demand offerings to be sold together, is also more in tune with the cross-sell imperative that is ingrained in the reseller community.
Despite these market realities, though, I applaud this latest move from Google as a sign of it getting real about tackling the mainstream business sector effectively, rather than relying on posturing and media hype, which cuts little ice in that space. I also welcome the possibility of some serious competition for Microsoft in the office suite arena, which the market is desperately in need of. Will Google Apps provide this? I guess we’ll have to wait and see, as Google is now very much playing on someone else’s turf.
This is something I have discussed in depth in my research note entitled ‘Taking Cloud to the Mainstream’, which can be downloaded from here if you are interested in a review of some of the market practicalities and realities.
In the meantime, while the cloud evangelists will no doubt get all excited about one of their darlings making this move, we have to be realistic about how long it takes for a supplier to develop a viable and productive indirect channel. Too often, I have seen reseller initiatives started then fade away after 6-12 months as patience is lost with the slowness of the process. The reality is that it takes at least a couple of years for a brand new channel programme, especially a volume one, to deliver consistently. Whether Google will have the staying power remains to be seen, though if it wants to penetrate the SMB market, it really has no choice for the reasons I outline in the abovementioned research note.
In many ways, this move by Google is a bit of a distraction when considering how the SMB market for SaaS based solutions is going to open up in the shorter term. The real player to watch here is Microsoft, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it already has the channel in place, and extending existing relationships and agreements is an order of magnitude easier and quicker than building new ones from scratch. Secondly, the Microsoft Software plus Services (S+S) philosophy is both more mature than the Google’s cloud centric play and resonates much better with the target audience. From a channel perspective, the S+S approach, potentially allowing bundles of pre-integrated on-premise and on-demand offerings to be sold together, is also more in tune with the cross-sell imperative that is ingrained in the reseller community.
Despite these market realities, though, I applaud this latest move from Google as a sign of it getting real about tackling the mainstream business sector effectively, rather than relying on posturing and media hype, which cuts little ice in that space. I also welcome the possibility of some serious competition for Microsoft in the office suite arena, which the market is desperately in need of. Will Google Apps provide this? I guess we’ll have to wait and see, as Google is now very much playing on someone else’s turf.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
The role of Microsoft in the downturn
Towards the end of last year, I received an invitation from Microsoft to meet its UK Managing Director, Gordon Frazer, to discuss ways in which the company was able to help its customers deal with the impact of the economic downturn. Having already spent a lot of time researching how IT departments might respond to the squeeze (subsequently written up here), the topic was very much front of mind. Indeed, I had already looked quite closely at ways in which Microsoft and other major vendors could be of use in this context.
Against this background, I accepted the invitation, but stressed that I was mostly interested in a discussion of what Microsoft can do, or is doing, that is different to the pack, rather than covering the more obvious stuff we are hearing from the vendor community in general. I also thought it would be a good opportunity to get under the skin of how Microsoft is viewing the current economic situation and the spirit with which it will be operating as we look forward to 2009 and beyond.
Before getting into the discussion itself, it is probably worth recapping why it is relevant to pay particular attention to Microsoft. Quite simply, this boils down to the fact that it is the most prominent vendor in terms of incumbency. When we ask IT professionals about the suppliers that are important to them in our large scale research projects, Microsoft consistently comes top of the list, regardless of organisation size. Here, for example, is a plot of the results from a recent online survey (November 2008) of close to 1000 respondents.
This data happens to be based on an open, unprompted question. If you offer IT professionals, particularly more senior ones, a list of commonly incumbent vendors, you typically see Microsoft cited in over three quarters of cases as being important. This difference between prompted and unprompted in itself is interesting, in that even if you do not think of yourself as a ‘Microsoft shop’, so are not inclined to name Microsoft when asked an open question about important suppliers, as soon as you are prompted, it reminds you just how much of its stuff is embedded in your infrastructure. When considering how to respond to economic pressure, at some point, you are therefore likely to have to think about Microsoft and/or the solutions it provides that are relevant to your business.
If we turn this around, this places quite a bit of responsibility on Microsoft as a supplier as it touches so many organisations. And from a Microsoft perspective, one of the first things I discussed with Frazer was the challenge of responding to the needs of such a diverse customer base, which in the business sector ranges from self employed home workers to the largest multi-nationals in the world. There is then the variation in how and to what degree the squeeze is going to hit people, not just between different sectors and organisations, but even within them.
Given this, we agreed it was inappropriate to make the simplistic assumption that the blanket response to the down-turn will be obsessive cost cutting across the board. While it is true to say that most will have an eye on cost, many will also be looking to develop and invest in certain parts of their business to extend them or make them more effective. This will be particularly true if you see the economic climate as an opportunity to outmanoeuvre the competition or grab pieces of the market that are vacated by struggling incumbents. There are then fundamental imperatives such as ensuring the operation of your sales and marketing operation is as finely tuned as possible to make sure you win more than your fair share of business in a challenged market with fewer opportunities.
The point here is that it is necessary for us to think a bit more intelligently and holistically as IT professionals when considering how to respond to the squeeze, as summarised in the following chart from the abovementioned report:
This kind of view is useful to put some of the Microsoft related specifics I discussed with Frazer into perspective.
In terms of infrastructure optimisation, for instance, Microsoft’s recent emphasis on virtualisation is very relevant. It’s not so much that Microsoft has anything particularly new or innovative here by way of fundamental capability, especially on the server side of the equation. Indeed, there are more mature virtualisation players and solutions out there. The significance is that Microsoft is looking to lower the barrier to entry in terms of skills, complexity and economics, the idea being to not only deal with the requirements of large scale data centres, but to also bring simple cost effective virtualisation capability to the masses of small and mid-sized organisations that are yet to take advantage of this kind of technology.
The general theme of making things cheaper and more accessible also runs through some of the other plays highlighted by Frazer. Looking beyond IT operations to how technology can help the business deal with economic pressures, the spotlight quickly swings to mobile technology, unified communications, portal based collaboration, business intelligence, and so on. These are all areas in which Microsoft has attempted to provide easy ways for customers to ‘build out’ from their existing Microsoft infrastructure to improve workforce efficiency and effectiveness, both of which are important when the squeeze is on and getting the most from your people is a key imperative.
In practical terms, whether it’s extending access to Exchange with Windows Mobile devices, snuggling Office Communication Server (OCS) alongside Exchange to allow instant messaging, web conferencing, etc, or simply starting to make use of the embedded BI capability within SQL Server as the foundation for enabling better decisions, the spirit is one of delivering new capability in comfortable, incremental and ‘recession friendly’ steps.
These examples, and others around SharePoint, Office System and CRM, led to a discussion with Frazer about a couple of other things to consider.
Firstly, something that can be said about a lot of software solutions, but particularly applies to Microsoft products, is that only a fraction of the functionality they provide is actually exploited. We have already mentioned that SQL Server, for example, can do a lot more in terms of sophisticated information management and analysis than many IT professionals take notice of or even realise. And how many organisations out there are using Microsoft Office on the desktop as simply a collection of document editors, with SharePoint Services running in the network as a glorified file share? In this case, look beyond the obvious functionality and together these solutions represent a pretty capable authoring, workflow and collaboration environment.
The point here is that in the current climate, it is going to be worth a lot of organisations reviewing the degree to which they are getting the maximum value from their existing Microsoft infrastructure. With a little end user training or thought about policies and process, a lot can be achieved in terms of delivering incremental value to the business. With this in mind, Frazer highlighted the investment Microsoft has made in terms of online training, guides, templates, etc, much of which is available at no cost from www.microsoft.com. His view was that enabling customers to make the most of Microsoft technology represents a good win/win. The customer clearly benefits, but so does Microsoft, as organisations are much more likely to remain loyal and extend their investments in the future if they are getting good value from the solutions already in place.
The second discussion point that emerged from talking through specific propositions was around the way in which Microsoft products are often designed to work together. Frazer understandably highlighted the ‘synergies’ here, and I agree that there are many organisations out there that are happy to immerse themselves in a Microsoft-centric world to take advantage of the incremental value this can represent. However, our own research tells us there are probably as many organisations that are wary of selling their soul to Microsoft for fear of compromise and/or lock-in. It is not that they don’t see Microsoft as having strong solutions in specific areas, they just acknowledge that stronger solutions from competitors exist in others, and they like to qualify components objectively to ensure the optimum mix of technology.
With this in mind, my message to Frazer was therefore to make sure that the value of individual solutions was considered and articulated effectively so those looking to make decisions in a specific domain could compare like for like objectively. A good example here is virtualisation. While Microsoft has developed some decent server side technology in this space, it has a tendency to position an overall virtualisation proposition that encompasses the desktop also, all wrapped up in integrated management capability. It’s a great vision, but not particularly useful when server and desktop virtualisation plays are at different stages of maturity and acceptance, and are managed by different groups within the customer’s organisation anyway. As one response to the squeeze is to scope projects and investments even more tightly, trying to broaden the discussion is often going to be counterproductive.
The last topic I discussed with Frazer was less about the part played by technology per se and more about the mechanisms for acquiring it. We both saw a potentially important role for financing options and hosted solutions. We also agreed, however, that lack of awareness was one of the biggest challenges in both of these cases, particularly with regard to small and medium businesses. Here, though, Frazer highlighted one of Microsoft’s biggest assets, its channel of resellers, ISVs, etc, and alluded to efforts being made to enable partners in these areas. I am inclined to agree that solution providers on the front line dealing directly with the mainstream lower and mid-markets are critical to educating customers on the options. Given that a lot of the channel is so short on knowledge at the moment in these areas, however, and often even struggle with the more fundamental topic of Microsoft licensing options, it will be interesting to see how the channel enablement activity pans out.
Meanwhile, I have to say that I was pretty impressed with the down to earth and pragmatic nature of what I was hearing from Frazer. Quite a contrast to some of the idealistic, cliché and, quite frankly, ill-informed stuff we hear from some vendors on how best to respond to economic challenges. I guess as Managing Director, though, Frazer 'is that business leader’, who no doubt will have some challenges of his own to work through as Microsoft navigates its way through the difficult times ahead. Perhaps the empathy that stems from this is what keeps him grounded when it comes to discussing the hard stuff.
Against this background, I accepted the invitation, but stressed that I was mostly interested in a discussion of what Microsoft can do, or is doing, that is different to the pack, rather than covering the more obvious stuff we are hearing from the vendor community in general. I also thought it would be a good opportunity to get under the skin of how Microsoft is viewing the current economic situation and the spirit with which it will be operating as we look forward to 2009 and beyond.
Before getting into the discussion itself, it is probably worth recapping why it is relevant to pay particular attention to Microsoft. Quite simply, this boils down to the fact that it is the most prominent vendor in terms of incumbency. When we ask IT professionals about the suppliers that are important to them in our large scale research projects, Microsoft consistently comes top of the list, regardless of organisation size. Here, for example, is a plot of the results from a recent online survey (November 2008) of close to 1000 respondents.
This data happens to be based on an open, unprompted question. If you offer IT professionals, particularly more senior ones, a list of commonly incumbent vendors, you typically see Microsoft cited in over three quarters of cases as being important. This difference between prompted and unprompted in itself is interesting, in that even if you do not think of yourself as a ‘Microsoft shop’, so are not inclined to name Microsoft when asked an open question about important suppliers, as soon as you are prompted, it reminds you just how much of its stuff is embedded in your infrastructure. When considering how to respond to economic pressure, at some point, you are therefore likely to have to think about Microsoft and/or the solutions it provides that are relevant to your business.
If we turn this around, this places quite a bit of responsibility on Microsoft as a supplier as it touches so many organisations. And from a Microsoft perspective, one of the first things I discussed with Frazer was the challenge of responding to the needs of such a diverse customer base, which in the business sector ranges from self employed home workers to the largest multi-nationals in the world. There is then the variation in how and to what degree the squeeze is going to hit people, not just between different sectors and organisations, but even within them.
Given this, we agreed it was inappropriate to make the simplistic assumption that the blanket response to the down-turn will be obsessive cost cutting across the board. While it is true to say that most will have an eye on cost, many will also be looking to develop and invest in certain parts of their business to extend them or make them more effective. This will be particularly true if you see the economic climate as an opportunity to outmanoeuvre the competition or grab pieces of the market that are vacated by struggling incumbents. There are then fundamental imperatives such as ensuring the operation of your sales and marketing operation is as finely tuned as possible to make sure you win more than your fair share of business in a challenged market with fewer opportunities.
The point here is that it is necessary for us to think a bit more intelligently and holistically as IT professionals when considering how to respond to the squeeze, as summarised in the following chart from the abovementioned report:
This kind of view is useful to put some of the Microsoft related specifics I discussed with Frazer into perspective.
In terms of infrastructure optimisation, for instance, Microsoft’s recent emphasis on virtualisation is very relevant. It’s not so much that Microsoft has anything particularly new or innovative here by way of fundamental capability, especially on the server side of the equation. Indeed, there are more mature virtualisation players and solutions out there. The significance is that Microsoft is looking to lower the barrier to entry in terms of skills, complexity and economics, the idea being to not only deal with the requirements of large scale data centres, but to also bring simple cost effective virtualisation capability to the masses of small and mid-sized organisations that are yet to take advantage of this kind of technology.
The general theme of making things cheaper and more accessible also runs through some of the other plays highlighted by Frazer. Looking beyond IT operations to how technology can help the business deal with economic pressures, the spotlight quickly swings to mobile technology, unified communications, portal based collaboration, business intelligence, and so on. These are all areas in which Microsoft has attempted to provide easy ways for customers to ‘build out’ from their existing Microsoft infrastructure to improve workforce efficiency and effectiveness, both of which are important when the squeeze is on and getting the most from your people is a key imperative.
In practical terms, whether it’s extending access to Exchange with Windows Mobile devices, snuggling Office Communication Server (OCS) alongside Exchange to allow instant messaging, web conferencing, etc, or simply starting to make use of the embedded BI capability within SQL Server as the foundation for enabling better decisions, the spirit is one of delivering new capability in comfortable, incremental and ‘recession friendly’ steps.
These examples, and others around SharePoint, Office System and CRM, led to a discussion with Frazer about a couple of other things to consider.
Firstly, something that can be said about a lot of software solutions, but particularly applies to Microsoft products, is that only a fraction of the functionality they provide is actually exploited. We have already mentioned that SQL Server, for example, can do a lot more in terms of sophisticated information management and analysis than many IT professionals take notice of or even realise. And how many organisations out there are using Microsoft Office on the desktop as simply a collection of document editors, with SharePoint Services running in the network as a glorified file share? In this case, look beyond the obvious functionality and together these solutions represent a pretty capable authoring, workflow and collaboration environment.
The point here is that in the current climate, it is going to be worth a lot of organisations reviewing the degree to which they are getting the maximum value from their existing Microsoft infrastructure. With a little end user training or thought about policies and process, a lot can be achieved in terms of delivering incremental value to the business. With this in mind, Frazer highlighted the investment Microsoft has made in terms of online training, guides, templates, etc, much of which is available at no cost from www.microsoft.com. His view was that enabling customers to make the most of Microsoft technology represents a good win/win. The customer clearly benefits, but so does Microsoft, as organisations are much more likely to remain loyal and extend their investments in the future if they are getting good value from the solutions already in place.
The second discussion point that emerged from talking through specific propositions was around the way in which Microsoft products are often designed to work together. Frazer understandably highlighted the ‘synergies’ here, and I agree that there are many organisations out there that are happy to immerse themselves in a Microsoft-centric world to take advantage of the incremental value this can represent. However, our own research tells us there are probably as many organisations that are wary of selling their soul to Microsoft for fear of compromise and/or lock-in. It is not that they don’t see Microsoft as having strong solutions in specific areas, they just acknowledge that stronger solutions from competitors exist in others, and they like to qualify components objectively to ensure the optimum mix of technology.
With this in mind, my message to Frazer was therefore to make sure that the value of individual solutions was considered and articulated effectively so those looking to make decisions in a specific domain could compare like for like objectively. A good example here is virtualisation. While Microsoft has developed some decent server side technology in this space, it has a tendency to position an overall virtualisation proposition that encompasses the desktop also, all wrapped up in integrated management capability. It’s a great vision, but not particularly useful when server and desktop virtualisation plays are at different stages of maturity and acceptance, and are managed by different groups within the customer’s organisation anyway. As one response to the squeeze is to scope projects and investments even more tightly, trying to broaden the discussion is often going to be counterproductive.
The last topic I discussed with Frazer was less about the part played by technology per se and more about the mechanisms for acquiring it. We both saw a potentially important role for financing options and hosted solutions. We also agreed, however, that lack of awareness was one of the biggest challenges in both of these cases, particularly with regard to small and medium businesses. Here, though, Frazer highlighted one of Microsoft’s biggest assets, its channel of resellers, ISVs, etc, and alluded to efforts being made to enable partners in these areas. I am inclined to agree that solution providers on the front line dealing directly with the mainstream lower and mid-markets are critical to educating customers on the options. Given that a lot of the channel is so short on knowledge at the moment in these areas, however, and often even struggle with the more fundamental topic of Microsoft licensing options, it will be interesting to see how the channel enablement activity pans out.
Meanwhile, I have to say that I was pretty impressed with the down to earth and pragmatic nature of what I was hearing from Frazer. Quite a contrast to some of the idealistic, cliché and, quite frankly, ill-informed stuff we hear from some vendors on how best to respond to economic challenges. I guess as Managing Director, though, Frazer 'is that business leader’, who no doubt will have some challenges of his own to work through as Microsoft navigates its way through the difficult times ahead. Perhaps the empathy that stems from this is what keeps him grounded when it comes to discussing the hard stuff.
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Justifying investment in collaboration technology
Having listened to a lot of vendors and advocates talk about the rationale for investment in technologies that enhance collaborative working, it is amazing how much the word ‘innovation’ comes up. The premise for adoption of everything from unified communications to Enterprise 2.0 (business oriented social media solutions) is so often to ‘unlock the potential of your people’, allowing them to get their heads together and come up with new ideas and new ways of doing things that take the business forward. As part of the discussion, it is common for an emphasis to be placed on new business models, improved processes, and similar.
While the consideration of how improved collaboration facilities can enhance innovation is completely appropriate (provided you are clear on the type of innovation you have in mind), it is important not to lose sight of how enhancing collaborative working can drive straightforward efficiencies within existing processes and models. In fact, improving workforce efficiency is a more common driver for investment.
The key here is appreciating that many business processes in place today already rely on interactions between people that can’t necessarily be captured in predefined workflows. Whether it is moving a deal forward in a sales context, resolving a customer support issue with input from different departments, or agreeing budgets across cost centres for the next financial year, such activities often involve a lot of paper and email flying around in an unstructured manner, not to mention phone calls, meetings, etc. And a similar set of interactions is evident when we look at more project oriented work.
There is a lot to be gained by greasing the wheels of all such activity through improved communication and collaboration facilities that can translate to direct and measurable benefits to the business, without getting into the whole innovation thing that is so difficult to translate into a tangible return when putting together a business case.
So, as a tip, particularly if you are looking to justify a collaboration related investment in these difficult times, centre your case on the efficiency angle. Depending on the environment, the benefits from enabling innovation may be significantly greater, but if you can’t pin down the return, getting approval to spend is going to be much more difficult.
While the consideration of how improved collaboration facilities can enhance innovation is completely appropriate (provided you are clear on the type of innovation you have in mind), it is important not to lose sight of how enhancing collaborative working can drive straightforward efficiencies within existing processes and models. In fact, improving workforce efficiency is a more common driver for investment.
The key here is appreciating that many business processes in place today already rely on interactions between people that can’t necessarily be captured in predefined workflows. Whether it is moving a deal forward in a sales context, resolving a customer support issue with input from different departments, or agreeing budgets across cost centres for the next financial year, such activities often involve a lot of paper and email flying around in an unstructured manner, not to mention phone calls, meetings, etc. And a similar set of interactions is evident when we look at more project oriented work.
There is a lot to be gained by greasing the wheels of all such activity through improved communication and collaboration facilities that can translate to direct and measurable benefits to the business, without getting into the whole innovation thing that is so difficult to translate into a tangible return when putting together a business case.
So, as a tip, particularly if you are looking to justify a collaboration related investment in these difficult times, centre your case on the efficiency angle. Depending on the environment, the benefits from enabling innovation may be significantly greater, but if you can’t pin down the return, getting approval to spend is going to be much more difficult.
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