Microsoft Office 2010: The Odyssey Continues

by Sheri McLeish

Sequels never can match the thrill of the original. But the good ones offer a compelling story of their own, develop familiar characters, and introduce something new and exciting. Last week Microsoft gave developers a backstage pass to preview Office 2010, due out in the first half of next year. The drama unfolds with Microsoft and Google waging a multi-front war with each other in search, browsers, productivity tools, and, soon, operating systems. Glimpses of the fourteenth iteration of Office reveal Web-based lightweight apps along with capabilities geared at improving collaboration, multimedia content development, and email management.

Can Office 2010 save the franchise? Or will a simpler, better customer experience from Google draw in a bigger audience before next summer? And what does it mean for the bit players, independents, and sleepers like the Open Office suites from IBM/Lotus, Novell, and Sun, or for Adobe, Zoho, Thinkfree, Corel … that’s a lot of competition for a sluggish software market that Forrester sees as being down by 5% or more for the year.  The glimmer of hope for software vendors will likely come from subscriptions revenue for software-as-a-service (SaaS) products in 2010, which Forrester projects to grow by 7.5%.

Microsoft wants to lead that growing SaaS market. For enterprises, what’s notable about the Office 2010 story is that Office Web apps can be on-premise or hosted. The lightweight Web browser versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote will be free for consumers through Windows Live. Pow! But the bigger deal for enterprises is the option to host Office Web apps on-premises as annuity customers as well as via a hosted subscription through Microsoft Online Services. This option isn’t offered by Google today and, for the moment, may be what makes Office Web apps a hit in the enterprise.

To date, Microsoft’s dominance in large businesses remains mostly intact, with 57% of firms running Office 2007 and 80% supporting some version of Office.  Combined, the alternatives make up less than 8% of the enterprise market, according to Forrester’s March 2009 North America, Europe, And Asia Pacific Desktop Innovation Online Survey. And of those Forrester surveyed, 78% said they have no plans to look for an alternative to Microsoft Office. Real barriers remain for alternatives, from concerns about content control and security, sunk license costs, and online/offline issues for Web-based tools to fear of rejection by business users. Like it, love it, or not, people have a comfortable, familiar relationship with the Office apps. And that’s a critical edge Microsoft must maintain.

Technology Populism is fueling the collaboration and mobile collaboration markets and blurring the lines between work/life boundaries.  The influence of consumer experience can be equally powerful if harnessed by Google for email and productivity. Most enterprise IT departments rely on the feedback of their business users to measure the value of their productivity tools. Forrester data also shows upgrades generally driven by business demands (34%), because current tools are no longer supported (24%), are no longer compatible (16%), or because the culture demands it (15%). By promoting free access to Web-based tools, Microsoft seeks the sway of the public. Office 2000 ends support this month; Microsoft needs to get those firms on board with 2010 somehow. What will your firm do? What are your barriers to upgrading Office or moving to an alternative? Now is a good time to clarify your firm’s strategy, because 2010 looks like it could be a blockbuster year for buyers prepared to negotiate.

Can Open Text Turn The Page On Vignette's Recent History?

By Stephen Powers

ECM vendor Open Text announced this morning that it intends to acquire Vignette, provider of Web and transactional content management technologies. In some circles, the acquisition of Vignette has been a foregone conclusion for many months now. Vignette has been an established player for years, with an impressive customer base. But the company’s missteps (a major WCM upgrade that stranded longtime customers, questionable expansions into non-core areas, inconsistent customer service and contact) have left them weakened in a market where they should have been able to take advantage of the lack of size and/or stability of some of its competitors. As a result, Vignette’s license revenues have declined in a hot content management market, and the brand has been devalued despite its strong technology.

On the surface, this move appears to be a more understandable fit than Autonomy’s acquisition of longtime Vignette competitor Interwoven earlier this year. While Open Text’s current WCM product of choice (the former RedDot) has proven solid, particularly when compared to those of other ECM vendors, it doesn’t have the same demonstrated track record at the enterprise level as Vignette does. Vignette’s WCM technology – which the company re-architected a few years back – is more advanced. In addition, Vignette also has made good progress with its transactional management capabilities, courtesy of its Tower Technology acquisition, particularly in the medical and insurance verticals. Open Text could apply the LiveLink federation model to Vignette's transactional products and further extend its capabilities.

With Vignette in its stable, Open Text now has a stronger online technology foundation to build upon. And some interesting possibilities exist for integration – such as with Open Text’s digital asset management (DAM) product, and Vignette’s video analysis and delivery offering (from its Vidavee acquision). Of course, while this looks good on paper, execution in rationalizing the expanded portfolio will obviously be key to success. To Open Text’s credit, it has recently stepped up efforts to standardize and integrate its various offerings.

The other interesting question raised by this announcement: what to do about the Vignette brand? The press release states that Vignette will be run as a wholly-owned subsidiary. But will Open Text continue to invest in what some argue is a damaged brand? Or will they eventually go through a rebranding, as they did with their other ECM acquisitions, and retire the purple logo? Time will tell.

What does this mean for IKM professionals? For those using Vignette’s products, there is the comfort of knowing that Vignette has been acquired by a company that understands the content management business. In the short term, expect business as usual. And beware of fear-mongering by Vignette’s competitors. But Open Text will likely have to make some choices about which products to move forward with, and which to eventually sunset. In particular, for those using Open Text's current WCM, the question will be whether Open Text decides to position the former RedDot solution as a midmarket WCM, or consigns it to the Legacy Heap of WCMs Past (remember Gauss? IXOS? Obtree?). Be sure to keep a close eye on the news out of Open Text's Waterloo headquarters in the coming days and weeks.

After So Many Years Of Ballyhoo, Semantic Web Still Searching For Killer App

By James Kobielus

Cynics might call Semantic Web a technology looking for a solution. And they might have a point.

Semantic Web refers to a long-running World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) initiative that is working toward an ambitious--some might say hopelessly Utopian--goal. At heart, it is a vision for how the World Wide Web should evolve to realize its full interoperability potential.

People vary widely in how they interpret the scope of the Semantic Web initiative. The tech industries are swarming with a wide range of projects, products, and tools that implement different variants of this vision. What vision is that? In the broadest sense, Semantic Web refers to an all-encompassing metadata, description, and policy layer that can, potentially, support universal, automatic, comprehensive end-to-end interoperability across every macro or micro entity—including data, components, services, applications, and services—on every conceivable level.

Whew!!! If that’s not the working definition of “pie in the sky” or “boil the ocean” (pick your metaphor), I don’t know what is. In fact, I’m hard-pressed to refer to Semantic Web as a definable market or solution segment. However, it’s not entirely vacuous.

For starters, organizations can implement W3C-developed semantic description standards—such as Resource Description Framework (RDF) and Web Ontology Language (OWL)--to make the meaning of content unambiguously comprehensible to services, applications, bots, and other automated components. Second, there is a reasonably robust market for “ontology” tools to support RDF/OWL-based modeling of application semantics. Finally, there is some incremental adoption of these tools and concepts in established IT segments, such as:

• Enterprise content management (ECM): Semantic approaches can support more powerful discovery, indexing, search, classification, commentary, and navigation across heterogeneous stores of unstructured and semi-structured content. Semantic search—driven by concepts, not mere text strings--is regarded by some as a primary Semantic Web application. Indeed, many Semantic Web vendors are primarily implementing the technology in search engines that leverage ontology-based concepts to improve search accuracy and reduce spurious hits.

• Enterprise information integration (EII):Semantic approaches enable consolidated viewing, query, and update of structured data that has been retrieved from diverse sources. Indeed, most commercial EII environments present an abstract semantic layer that mediates access to heterogeneous data, such as enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management applications, converging it all to a common presentation-side schema. A handful of those EII vendors have begun to support Semantic Web standards, primarily through third-party software plug-ins

• Enterprise service bus (ESB):Semantic approaches can facilitate multilayered application, process, and service interoperability across disparate environments. To date, there has been little production implementation of Semantic Web standards in the ESB arena, though some vendors have adopted semantics, ontologies, and RDF to describe the conceptual models implemented by application endpoints, agents, and intermediary nodes within ESB-like middleware approaches such as event stream processing.

But Semantic Web approaches are still on the periphery of these markets. 10+ years into its inception, Semantic Web still has no clear killer app. It’s not clear if or when that app will emerge.

Lean Information Management Strategies for Lean Times

By James Kobielus

When the going gets tough, the tough get lean, focused, and flexible. To help organizations survive the bad times and thrive in all climates, their information management initiatives must remain agile and adaptable.

If you feel your information management strategy is anything but lean, you’re not alone. Many organizations struggle to gain control over information infrastructures that have become too bloated, rigid, and slow to realign with new business drivers.

Lean information management practices are essential for corporate survival. They are far more than belt-tightening exercises. They also help you build analytic muscle for excelling in any business environment. Here are some basic pointers for keeping your information management strategy lean:

• Trim your information infrastructure of excess cost. Lean means you should cut excessive, budget-busting overhead from your information management environment. Careful cuts are best, because they optimize your existing operations without gutting the core information, analytics, and applications that underpin your core competencies. Silo, server, database, and application consolidation should be your principal approaches. Also, you should re-evaluate vendor-sourcing strategies and renegotiate licenses at more favorable terms. And you should investigate lower-cost alternatives, such as software-as-a-service, to address business intelligence, business performance solutions, enterprise data warehousing, master data management, enterprise content management, and other information management requirements.
• Fit information initiatives to key business imperatives. Lean also means you fit, focus, and fully align your information management initiatives to mission-critical business imperatives. Strategic alignment ensures that you leverage information assets across diverse application domains and business processes, rather than allow that intelligence to languish underutilized in silos. To sustain this approach, you should establish an information management framework, such as a Business Intelligence Solution Center, that enables ongoing collaboration between business and IT stakeholders. You should engage all key business and technical groups in information management planning discussions.
• Flex information architectures to changing circumstances. Finally, lean means maintaining an approach that is flexible and adaptable, able to shift course as your needs and environment change. In yoga terms, lean is all about building, toning, and stretching analytical muscle to keep it from tearing when you need to transition rapidly from one strategic alignment to the next. You need the flexibility to swing between centralized information management infrastructures and decentralized or federated environments. For end-to-end data management environments, Forrester has developed an architecture decision support tool that helps information managers to determine which of several topologies is best suited to their needs: centralized enterprise data warehouse, hub-and-spoke, independent data marts, data federation, and information-as-a-service.

Considered as a comprehensive strategy, these lean practices are true bloat-busters and recession-beaters. They allow organizations to deliver practical insights that address all pain points, even--especially!!!--within strict budgets.

Meet One-On-One With Forrester Analysts At Our Business & Technology Leadership Forum 2008

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B

William Band
Research coverage for Business Process & Applications professionals
Customer relationship management applications, customer experience management, stakeholder alignment, enterprise CRM
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Matthew Brown
Research coverage for Information & Knowledge Management professionals
Marketing and advertising, enterprise portals, intranets and extranets, information and knowledge management
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Peter Burris
Research coverage for Technology Product Management & Marketing professionals
Enterprise marketing platforms, marketing automation, high-tech, application development
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C

Bobby Cameron
Research coverage for CIOs
IT governance, risk, and compliance; the marketing of IT; serving the business; security and risk
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Marc Cecere
Research coverage for CIOs
Designing IT organizations, changing the culture of an IT organization, IT strategic planning
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Patrick M. Connaughton
Research coverage for Business Process & Applications professionals
Supply chain management services, supply chain management applications, enterprise mobility, RFID
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Alex Cullen
Research coverage for CIOs
IT organization; IT strategy, planning, and governance; organizational design and change management, IT management
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Boris Evelson
Research coverage for Information & Knowledge Management professionals
Information and knowledge management, business intelligence, OLAP, data warehousing
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Chip Gliedman
Research coverage for Business Process & Applications professionals
Customer relationship management, help desk/service desk, customer service and support, packaged applications
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H

Paul D. Hamerman
Research coverage for Business Process & Applications professionals
ERP, human capital management, financial management, business performance solutions
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Brian W. Hill
Research coverage for Information & Knowledge Management professionals
eDiscovery, archiving, records and retention management, enterprise content management (ECM)
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Bradford J. Holmes
Research coverage for Vendor Strategy professionals
Tech marketing tools and best practices; government, high-tech, tech marketing strategies
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Rob Karel
Research coverage for Information & Knowledge Management professionals
Information and knowledge management, integration technologies, metadata management, extract
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Rob Koplowitz
Research coverage for Information & Knowledge Management professionals
Information Workplace, collaboration strategy, collaborative platforms, SharePoint
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George Lawrie
Research coverage for Business Process & Applications professionals
Retail information technology; consumer goods supply chain; pricing, promotions, and revenue optimization; collaborative processes such as trade promotions management and sales; and operations planning
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Sharyn Leaver
Research coverage for Business Process & Applications professionals
Packaged applications, business process management, ERP, application strategy and selection
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Craig Le Clair
Research coverage for Information & Knowledge Management professionals
ECM, BPM, output management, document processing services
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Pete Marston
Research coverage for Business Process & Applications professionals
Customer relationship management, sales force management, software-as-a-service, outsourcing
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Kyle McNabb
Research coverage for Information & Knowledge Management professionals
Information and knowledge management, document imaging, eForms and information capture, enterprise content management
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Thomas Mendel, Ph.D.
Research coverage for Vendor Strategy professionals
Product portfolio strategies, mobile services, business service management, data center management
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Connie Moore
Research coverage for Information & Knowledge Management professionals
Information and knowledge management, business process optimization, IT organization, enterprise content management
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Leslie Owens
Research coverage for Information & Knowledge Management professionals
Information and knowledge management, taxonomy and classification, enterprise search platforms, text mining and analytics
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P

Natalie L. Petouhoff, Ph.D.
Research coverage for Business Process & Applications professionals
Customer service and support, customer experience, customer experience management, business strategy for customer experience
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Lisa Pierce
Research coverage for IT Infrastructure & Operations professionals
Voice services, telecommunications services by region, remote access infrastructure, networking
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Tom Pohlmann
Research coverage for CIOs
Business models, high-tech, corporate strategy, tech sector economics, product and solutions strategies
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Stephen Powers
Research coverage for Information & Knowledge Management professionals
Information and knowledge management, digital asset management, enterprise content management, Web content management
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R

Stefan Ried, Ph.D.
Research coverage for Vendor Strategy professionals
Enterprise architecture, Service-oriented architecture, application platforms and programming strategy; application development
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Ted Schadler
Research coverage for Information & Knowledge Management professionals
Real-time collaboration tools (instant messaging, presence, document sharing, etc.), cloud-based collaboration and email, mobile collaboration tools and applications, virtual worlds for the enterprise
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Claire Schooley
Research coverage for Information & Knowledge Management professionals
eLearning, information and knowledge management, videoconferencing, Web conferencing, enterprise collaboration, new workforce, retiring workforce
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Scott Tiazkun
Research coverage for Business Process & Applications professionals
Financial management; governance, risk, and compliance; financial management applications; security and risk
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Zach Thomas
Research coverage for Business Process & Applications professionals
Human resources management applications, compensation, recruitment strategies, packaged applications
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Tim Walters, Ph.D.
Research coverage for Information & Knowledge Management professionals
Web content management, enterprise content management, digital asset management, information and knowledge management
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R "Ray" Wang
Research coverage for Business Process & Applications professionals
Enterprise apps and ERP, software contract negotiations, software partnerships and ecosystems, customer data integration
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Doug Washburn
Research coverage for IT Infrastructure & Operations professionals
Green IT, IT organization, IT infrastructure and operations, IT management
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Gil Yehuda
Research coverage for Information & Knowledge Management professionals
Enterprise Web 2.0 and Social Computing; collaboration strategy, tools, and culture; virtual communities of practice; virtual team collaboration
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Quark Making A Dynamic Comeback?

By Sheri McLeish

Quark, Inc. has been undergoing a major strategic overhaul in the past two years. With its acquisition this month of In.Vision, the leading add-in to Microsoft Word for XML authoring, it appears poised to be taken seriously for enterprises wanting to empower their business units and be able to reuse content dynamically through a variety of channels.

Once the leading desktop publishing solution, Quark's star fell hard and fast as Adobe shattered its dominance with InDesign and its leading Creative Suite of products. In 2000, Quark's founder Tim Gill sold off his stake in the private company, and in subsequent dark years Quark looked to gain its footing in a dramatically changing publishing world. Off the radar and nearly forgotten, in 2006 Raymond Schiavone was brought in to serve as president and CEO. Schiavone, the former president and CEO of Arbortext, Inc. (which was acquired by PTC), brought to Quark a wealth of experience in XML-based authoring and publishing products – and a vision for a reinvented Quark.  He also brought his former colleagues over. Today's Quark executive team includes a CIO, Sr. VP of Corporate Marketing, and two Sr. VPs of Sales that did stints at Arbortext.

Always taken to task for its poor support and spotty integration capabilities, Quark has been trying to pull its support act together and opened up its platform and partnership approach. One of these strategic partners was In.Vision, a Microsoft Office Solution Builder grand prize winner. In.Vision's Xpress Author for Microsoft Word provided Quark with an easy-to-use authoring tool with XML capabilities. But Quark wants to bulk up and was hungry for more than a partnership. By purchasing the assets of In.Vision, Quark not only gains a leading XML authoring tool and related technologies, but a growing client base and existing partnerships and alliances.

While Quark's move won't send the competition scrambling (some may even be surprised it is still around), it is another step on the path toward providing a true solution for professional design and simplified XML authoring capabilities in a single integrated system. Quark's Dynamic Publishing Solution, combined with XML authoring and design, provide a system that will be of interest to content-heavy business units like marketing and sales. Of course, the catch here is that the integration isn't entirely seamless – yet. But given its recent measures to reinvent itself, Quark's pulse is quickening, and there is more than a glimmer of hope for a dynamic comeback.

To learn more about Forrester's take on dynamic publishing, please read "Drive Forward With Dynamic Publishing."

Open Text Makes A DAM SaaS-y Move

By Stephen Powers

I'll give you five seconds to recover from your pun-induced groaning [5...4...3...2...1] Now, on to the news: Open Text announced late last week that it has acquired eMotion, a software-as-a-service digital asset management (DAM) product, from Corbis. Open Text plans to rebrand eMotion as Artesia on Demand for Marketing, complementing its full-featured, installed Artesia DAM product.

This move into SaaS DAM is a smart move by Open Text. The installed version of Artesia has a reputation as one of the top DAM solutions out there, but its functionality and price tag may be daunting for those organizations just starting to dip their toes into the DAM waters. Some enterprises don't have the need for some of the high-end functionality - management of broadcast-quality video, for example - that "Classic Artesia" offers. Instead, many enterprises exploring DAM want to use it to manage rich media assets for use in the online channel.

In addition, marketers are now driving some of the demand for DAM, and they're not excited about waiting in the IT queue for another installed content management implementation. While other components of ECM (like Web content management) may need customizations that don't lend always themselves to the SaaS model, marketing requirements for DAM tend to be more a bit more straightforward: repository, workflow, search, metadata, permissions, and hooks into delivery mechanisms.

Now, Open Text has a DAM solution that can meet mid-level needs, and customers who want SaaS - without worrying about the stability of some of the niche DAM vendors - get the benefit of the relative stability of Open Text. Plus, this acquisition has the possibility of being an effective answer to North Plains' recent release of a SaaS version of its TeleScope product. Time will tell how much tinkering Open Text needs to do with its new acquisition, but this is a good first step into the SaaS world.

Oracle To Purchase Skywire Software – DOM And ECM Continue Pattern Of Convergence

By Craig LeClair

On June 24, 2008, Oracle announced its intent to purchase Skywire Software. This potential acquisition has three very strong positives:

Skywire enhances Oracle's ECM offering. Skywire Software has a document output management arsenal that includes Whitehill Technologies (InSystems) and Docucorp International, both of which the company acquired in 2007. Skywire's customer communication solution fills gaps and creates opportunities in Oracle's overall ECM suite. Universal Content Manager and Imaging and Process Manager can now provide complete structured solutions -- built for statements and bills for the print channel, and interactive output management -- creating direct marketing material, or collaboration and workflow for creating enrollment kits. In addition, pain points in customer communication can be addressed more broadly when Skywire's DOM solution is combined with Oracle's web content management products to provide a more complete multi-channel solution.

The acquisition enhances Oracle's reach into the insurance vertical. Oracle continues to expand its insurance industry assets. Insurance has always been a bit IBM-heavy on the software side -- perhaps reflecting thier conservative disposition -- so Oracle's collection of insurance assets makes perfect sense. Most of Skywire Software's DOM customers (1,400 of 2,000) are in insurance, and most others are in financial services. So even before any synergy with Oracle's Global Insurance business unit, Skywire provides document automation for more than 60 policy and administrative systems. The Whitehill product provides strength in Group Health and Life insurance, while the products acquired from Docucorp offer strong Property and Casualty solutions.

When Skywire is viewed in the context of Oracle's Global Insurance assets -- incuding AdminServer, a licensed software suite for policy and administration -- the combination will be a formidable competitor to other DOM solutions in one of the strongest verticals. Over time, we expect Oracle to provide process integration packs within their Application Integration Architecture, leveraging Fusion Middleware and BPEL Process Manager -- a compelling solution for the insurance industry.

This makes sense for Oracle as a good defensive move. We have seen HP purchase Exstream Software and EMC purchase Document Sciences, so I will go out on the analyst limb and declare the ECM/DOM consolidation trend valid. Oracle picked up the strongest remaining DOM provider. Good move.

Other nice things include Skywire's Tracker insurance-compliance product that merges rating data with underwriting document production. The DOM products provide good coverage in insurance.

The acquisition is a real boost to Skywire as well. Oracle's R&D budget and experience in unifying software application will be a plus, as their diverse platforms will create road map and unification challenges. And any worries of having needed ECM support are now gone, as the suite can leverage UCM. This acquisition is all good news for Oracle and Skywire.

Microsoft Crashing The Party: Announces Intent To Support ODF And Join Standards Boards

By Sheri McLeish

Wow. Microsoft opened up today, taking a nearly 180-degree turn to announce its intent to support ODF, PDF, and XPS. Overall, this is a great, positive move. While unexpected, it's not surprising. Microsoft has been moving towards more open standards, like with its recent DAISY XML initiative. But it's also a no-brainer. Sticking exclusively with its competing Open XML was divisive, complicating IT's efforts to leverage the benefits that open source XML provides.

But before we get too warm and fuzzy about this change of heart, remember: It's only an announcement of intent. The relationships with the OASIS Technical Committee and the ISO/IEC are not official and confirmed. The success of this strategy will only be realized if there are no hard feelings, and Microsoft doesn't try to bully into the committees' efforts. I suspect that Microsoft will be welcomed aboard, however. Certainly because the resources will be welcomed, but also because these organizations would be hard-pressed to deny Microsoft a seat at the table without looking divisive themselves.

There are three major components to today's announcement:

1. 2007 Microsoft Office Service Pack 2 will add support for Open Document Format (ODF) 1.1, Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) and XML Paper Specification (XPS) within Word 2007, Excel 2007 and PowerPoint 2007. Support for these standards will be enhanced by the inclusion of ODF 1.0 and 1.1 under the Open Specification Promise.

2. Microsoft has previously expressed its commitment to supporting the Open XML specification that was recently approved by ISO/IEC members (IS 29500). In the next version of Office, codenamed O14, Microsoft will update the support it provides for IS29500, the Open XML specification that was recently approved by ISO/IEC members.

3. To ensure its products support the ongoing evolution of Open XML and ODF, Microsoft said it will take an active role in the development of both Open XML and ODF formats and in the SC34 working group designed to improve interoperability between the two. Microsoft said it also intends to join the OASIS Technical Committee for ODF that is currently developing ODF 1.2.

The impact of these initiatives will take years to be realized, and it remains to be seen if Microsoft can play nice and not try to overextend its influence. If it works, however, the open source XML party will be in full swing.

Alterian Goes Into The WCM Business

By Stephen Powers

A UK-based marketing software company, Alterian, has moved to acquire Mediasurface, maker of both installed and hosted Web content management (WCM) products. Given the state of the WCM market, an acquisition like this is not completely unexpected, since marketers increasingly have a say (if not the final say) in WCM purchasing decisions and strategies. And enterprise content management (ECM) remains disconnected from the other technologies that those marketers need to use in order to manage multichannel campaigns. My colleague, Craig Le Clair, and I are planning to publish some research that tackles this issue - how enterprises need to support their marketing teams through a combination of integrated ECM and marketing processes. We'll also be speaking on that topic at Forrester's IT Forum this week (OK - that was a blatant plug, but you have to admit the timing worked out pretty well).

Alterian's move is an interesting one, and helps move them towards an overall product suite that can better serve marketers. It certainly will make Alterian's competition think about the advantages of having some content management capabilities, and there are several pure play WCM vendors out there that are ripe for the picking. Stay tuned.