Moving to InformationWeek

Image by Samuel Gazé via Flickr

Hey everyone,
Alex Wolfe has agreed to host my IT blog in the Digital Life channel of InformationWeek's blogger network.

For the time being, I won't have my own channel there, although that might come eventually, but please subscribe to that channel to keep reading my thoughts on Enterprise IT and how it connects to the world we live in.

My first blog, on how enterprise IT is affected by the stimulus bill, is up there now, and I'll be posting to that channel about ten times per month.

Looking forward to seeing you there--and thanks for your support.

--Michael

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Google Offline Gmail Arrives

Image via CrunchBase

One of the best things about the offline functionality for Gmail that Google is rolling out is that it won't require users to download any new applications.

Built with Google's Gears developer language, it works within the browser, which users can of course open even if they find themselves without an Internet connection.

As Google's official blog explains:

Gmail uses Gears to download a local cache of your mail. As long as you're connected to the network, that cache is synchronized with Gmail's servers. When you lose your connection, Gmail automatically switches to offline mode, and uses the data stored on your computer's hard drive instead of the information sent across the network. You can read messages, star and label them, and do all of the things you're used to doing while reading your webmail online. Any messages you send while offline will be placed in your outbox and automatically sent the next time Gmail detects a connection.

Not only does this level the playing field for corporate Google App users who have been eyeballing customers of Zoho and Yahoo Zimbra jealously for months, it also helps SMBs and SoHos which use free Google products and have been limping along with an online-only client.

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Govt. Regulations Good for This Business

Image via CrunchBaseAutonomy, a U.K.-based enterprise search firm that specializes in e-discovery, had a particularly good fourth quarter, according to the Financial Times.

Revenues for the year to December 31 rose 47 per cent to $503m (£366m), while pre-tax profit doubled to $185m. Basic earnings per share doubled to $0.61 and cash balances at the end of the year rose from $92.6m to $199m.

For all the railing about how Sarbanes-Oxley and other regulatory demands are a drain on corporate resources, it looks like they can be a boon if you're positioned to take advantage.

I'm joking (a little), because companies that aren't in the business of providing tech solutions to government hurdles do have to spend--but even there, I'd argue that more transparency is good for management and good for investors.

Back to Autonomy, things are going so well that it acquired Interwoven, a U.S.-based company with a strong position in the U.S. legal market.

The Obama administration is going to create even more opportunities for tech companies to provide services to other sectors of the economy, especially in the financial and health care sectors.

If you want your organization to get ahead, or if you want to get credit for showing it the way forward, think about what your organization can do to take advantage of this swing while the opportunity is still there.

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IBM Should Set Lotus Notes Free

Image via WikipediaIBM has tried to revive Lotus through many incarnations (Dual Highway, Workplace, Sametime) and has by many accounts (including mine) improved the product markedly.

The issue isn't whether the product is good. The issue is whether it's relevant. First, how many people outside IBM even use Lotus? Market share is a real issue. If your business partners use Facebook, what's the point of using Quickr or Connections? It strikes me as rather solipsistic.

The other, related, problem, is that Facebook (and LinkedIn, to name two) are free, and freely chosen by its intended audience--oh yeah, the users.

That is the essential problem for IBM--it has no users to speak of -- for Lotus.

Mike Gotta puts it nice and starkly for IBM, even as he paints this year's Lotusphere as a chance to make Lotus relevant to the larger enterprise market:

Yes, individual products are improving and individual teams behind those products are more energized (namely the Lotus Sametime and Connections teams) - but having a few products improve is not going to deliver the type of tipping point IBM needs in the market.

Even adding features like a LinkedIn plug-in is irrelevant when users will pluck tools off the Web like fruit from a tree, rather than getting stale versions at the supermarket.

IBM can continue to try and put lipstick on its software pig, but it will still smell like a piece of adjunct functionality to a legacy enterprise application of yore.

IBM should do the right thing and use next year's Lotusphere as a platform for selling Notes to a company capable of making it exciting and, most of all, free. Free from its IBM legacy and free of cost as well.

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Obama Health Care Plans Daunting, Inspiring

Image by The Opportunity Agenda via FlickrEveryone agrees (even right-wing doctors like my father-in-law) that the health care system is such a mess, it shouldn't even be called a system. It's more like a health-care dystopia.

People have to cart their hand-written health care records from one hospital to another, care-givers are sucked into a morass of complex and non-interoperable payment systems, and patients have little or no visibility into the chaos.

But every potential solution seems to have insurmountable obstacles to overcome.

It's refreshing to see that people like John Halamka, who is a practicing technologist in the health care field, is actually inspired rather than daunted by the challenge.

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Fusion Confusion Over?

Oracle VP Thomas Kurian tells InformationWeek that customers will soon be able to start testing Fusion.

Customers badly need Fusion in order to cobble together the patchwork of applications that Oracle has acquired over the years. Tellingly, Kurian also promises that "no customers will be pushed or forced to move to Fusion if they don't want to."

A software vendor that doesn't force its customers to do something--now that's a novelty! You wonder when Larry Ellison had the epiphany that customers actually have a say in these matters.

Kurian said Oracle has stayed consistent with its plan, and built applications -- including financial apps, human resources, supply change management, procurement, and human capital management -- that combine the best functionality from the many applications it now sells, including JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, and its own Oracle E-Business Suite.

The software will be offered in a full product suite sometime after the beta program is completed, but also can be adopted as individual apps. Kurian said Oracle hopes customers will adopt the full Fusion suite and gain application integration advantages in doing so, but that decision will be left to customers.

Despite all the goodness, though, "a 2009 beta likely means it will be at least 2010 or 2011 before Fusion is available to all of its customers."

Obama Hires Business Analyst

I'm amazed we didn't have one already. Barack Obama is hiring Nancy Killefer, a McKinsey consultant, as the country's first "chief performance officer" to see if she can't help rub out inefficiency in government.

According to CNN Money:

As chief performance officer, a newly created position, Killefer will work to restore fiscal order by scrubbing the federal budget and reforming government.

I thought that's what the Office of Management and Budget was for. I guess the founding fathers actually expected Congress to do that for itself, but government has gotten much bigger than 538 bickering reps can handle.

I'm sure the announcement has the likes of SAS and Oracle licking their chops, but as with any kind of BI implementation, the real challenge is going to be finding which systems contain which data and figuring out a way of centralizing and creating meaningful reports from all that.

So good luck Ms. Killefer--with all the tax dollars we're going to be spending in the next few years, we really wish you the best.

Of Web 2.0, Netbooks and the End of Software

Here is how cloud computing is going to swamp traditional software into irrelevance:

First came Web 2.0, followed closely by Enterprise 2.0.

Members of Generation Y are entering the workforce in increasing numbers, bringing with them a 21st century version of the work ethic. They believe in working hard for long hours, but also in mingling work with pleasure. Pleasure as in browsing videos or chatting with friends.

So Gen Y brought Web 2.0 into the workforce, and smart managers adapted rather than fight them. The iPhone phenomenon is only one example of this amalgamation of forces: it's popular because it integrates pleasure and utility more gracefully than any other smart phone.

The App Store is driving even more Web-based application development than ever--and that's an incredible statement in itself. The nascent software-as-a-service industry has grown from plucky upstart to business-as-usual in less than two years, creating enormous opportunity for Web developers on a plethora of platforms, from Silverlight to Air, not to mention Chrome and iTunes.

There is no doubt that the ubiquity of Web-based applications is causing end users to wonder why they need to lug heavy and expensive laptops around when everything they need is in the cloud. If only those Treos and BlackBerrys were a little bigger and a little more powerful...

I've already mentioned why I don't think Apple is going to come out with a Netbook--it already has one in the iPhone.

But with the combination of Chrome and Android, Google has finally lifted the veil on its strategy to take the desktop productivity fight to Microsoft: by creating a sub-environment within the Internet that makes online applications not only as good, but in many cases, better and more enjoyable to use than conventional desktop software.

Ah yes, that word again: enjoyable. Just as with the iPhone, if enough people want to bring it into the office, IT will find a way to accommodate.

Apple to Introduce a Netbook?

Analyst Ezra Gottheil thinks Apple is going to introduce a netbook at next month's MacWorld expo and conference.

Gottheil argues that low-cost netbooks were gaining in popularity even before the recession sunk its teeth into consumer spending, leaving Apple vulnerable at the low end of the market.

He told InfoWorld, "It looks like netbooks are real, and getting a certain amount of traction. And this recession looks serious."

But I don't think Apple is about to jettison 10 years of successful marketing strategy and product launches to bolster a low end it hasn't cared about since Steve Jobs took back the reins in 1997.

Apple's strategy has been to make high-concept products for which people are willing to pay a premium. You could even argue that the products don't even have to be all that well-made (remember early iPods often had issues with screens, battery failures, and 'freezing').

Besides, Apple already has its highly-portable, Web-based computer ready to go. It's called the iPhone.

Video Conferencing Vendors: Make Your Move

This should be boom times for telepresence or video conferencing equipment vendors. Not since 9/11, when the double whammy of a recession and fear of travel combined to make a compelling case for virtual meetings.

Vendors did see a spike, but then video conferencing revenues tanked (see below the fold) by more than 200% between 2001 and 2006, showing that customers weren't convinced that the technology could replace face-to-face contact.

Things are different today. Despite a temporary drop, we all know that gas prices are only going to rise as OPEC cuts production and supplies dwindle. Airline prices and other travel costs remain high even while enterprises lay off workers by the tens of thousands.

Meanwhile, telepresence technology is improving by leaps and bounds, and vendors have gotten better at integrating it with productivity apps.

But vendors are still having trouble closing the deal.

My friend JS, who works for a large department at Columbia University, is doing due diligence and a feasibility study to determine whether or not to invest in a video conferencing system. There are a couple of hang-ups, of course, but the main one is her fear that equipment she recommends buying today will soon become obsolete.

This is bad news for companies like Cisco, IBM and Microsoft, who have invested quite heavily in unified communications suites that they'd like to build on for years to come. If they could talk to JS, they'd tell her that anything she buys today will be built on modern infrastructure; the only thing she's likely to have to upgrade is the end-point technology.

Their message is not coming across, perhaps because they've over-promised for so long that they've created a credibility gap that will take a lot of effort to overcome.

SaaS Customers Hold Hammer

Software-as-a-service vendors are exceptionally reliant on retaining accounts because they incur heavy up-front costs to sign up a new customer. They often don't turn a profit on a given account for several years.

Their competitors are well aware of this, and companies like Oracle put a full-court press on customers who have SaaS agreements up for renewal, knowing that even if they don't win the customer, they're costing the SaaS vendor that much more money to hold onto their account.

On the other side of the coin, SaaS vendors increase user fees and up-sell customers on new modules in the later years of their relationships with customers in order to make up the difference.

This is where an informed customer can help themselves. SaaS consultant Phil Wainewright makes the following points:

• Inevitably, there are bound to be some discontented customers who want to evaluate alternatives
• There will also be contented customers who are savvy enough to drive a harder bargain when renewal time comes around
• As a trend, customers presumably are getting more comfortable with the on-demand model and therefore may be signing shorter contracts than they did when first switching from conventional licensed software with its three to five year upgrade cycles — thus giving more frequent opportunities to renegotiate renewals.

So on the one hand, SaaS vendors have successfully entered the mainstream, and no longer have to evangelize their business model. It's understood and accepted that it works. They have convinced customers that they no longer have to put up with conventional on-premise vendors who abandon them once the license fees have been cashed.

The flip side of this turn of events is that customers are now just as comfortable switching SaaS vendors as they were with switching from on-premise to SaaS in the first place.

This state of affairs gives customers, finally, the hammer over vendors that had for too many years over-promised, under-delivered, and only bothered communicating with them when it was time to sell them a new module.

Does Apple Want an Enterprise-Friendly iPhone?

Arguably one of the most attractive features of the iPhone is the ability to pinch and drag items on the screen, but a report from ABI Research notes that "capacitive" technology is incompatible with many legacy enterprise applications.

ABI analysts conclude that this will put a significant hurdle in Apple's march to enterprise adoption.

But hold on now! Computerworld's Ryan Faas has a list of ten things Apple can do to make the iPhone more attractive to business users. Faas's doesn't directly address this issue, but several of his recommendations would require Apple to make significant changes to its underlying operating system. Faas notes:

The iPhone has a lot of potential as a business device, but its ultimate success will depend on how well it responds to the real-world needs of corporate users and IT managers. To succeed, Apple will need to prove that the iPhone is more than a media player or a toy.

But maybe Apple doesn't want to become yet another enterprise device. Maybe the whole point is that the iPhone is about enjoyment and style, and making it a work tool just isn't... cool.

Really, the whole push to make Apple more enterprise-friendly comes from executives who got the iPhone as a present and are putting pressure on IT admins to make it work with Exchange so they can ditch their uncool-looking BlackBerrys.

So customers would like to see the iPhone become more enterprise-friendly. But since when has Apple shown any interest in doing what its customers want?

Amazon iPhone App and the In-Store/Online Dichotomy

Amazon launched an iPhone app that lets customers mail the online retailer a picture of an item they see in a store, according to a story published by InformationWeek. Amazon tries to match the item with something in its inventory (and other participating retailers) and then sends the results back to its customers.

While self-serving for Amazon in its current incarnation, retailers should co-opt this kind of application to help customers and keep them loyal. Maybe using barcode information instead of pictures, retailers could help customers find apparel in the right size or a different color than what they have in stock in particular location.

This would beat the customer trying to find the same product at a competing retailer or, worse, dealing with returns and customer frustration because the item they ordered online from home wasn't what they thought they were looking for.

News Aggregation: Index Cards of the Present

Back in the early 1990s, my close friend Claude Meunier had an odd job working for French building magnate (and now telecom operator) Francis Bouygues.

Every morning at 7 AM, he got into Monsieur Bouygues' limo and handed him a stack of index cards Claude had put together over the past few hours.

Each card included a news item--ranging from serious news to the scores of important soccer matches or the amorous misadventures of a starlet.

In other words, bite-sized capsules of everything Monsieur Bouygues might need to know as he nagivated his day.

In the past we had index cards, today we have news aggregation.

News aggregation is clearly the future of journalism--not it's only future, but one of the permutations that will enjoy long-term success, if done right.

In an interesting twist to a meme that has been largely given over to automation, technology news aggregation site TechMeme--and it's political sister-site Memeorandum--is dumping its sophisticated algorithms in favor of--gasp--a human editor.

Until now, TechMeme aggregated news content using a sophisticated algorithm that many people feel does a better job of filtering news than, say, Google News.

That didn't stop some bloggers (mainly those frustrated because they weren't picked up by TechMeme's algorithm) from accusing the site of nursing a bias of some sort.

What will they think now that TechMeme's progenitor, Gabe Rivera, has decided that a human being can do a better job than the algorithm he created?

But subjective--and critical--thinking is exactly what readers need; someone who will help them cut through the noise and find the best information on the subjects they care about--at the frequency they want.

That sounds like great news--a victory for the humans against the borgs!

But before exulting too much, let's wait and see how well the new human editor does at keeping up with the volume of news.

My guess is that some automation will be needed to ensure that the editor doesn't ultimately gravitate towards the same set of sites.

Glimmers of Hope

Despite the roiling, interconnected world economy, Nokia has rolled out the N97, a new smartphone that, according to Forbes, will challenge not only its natural rival iPhone but netbook makers as well.

the real damage from the N97 could be to the emerging market for small, thin, cheap and connected laptop computers known as netbooks. After all, the Nokia N97 and even Apple's iPod Touch promise to do everything a netbook does with one key difference: You can actually slip these suckers into your pocket.

This should be hugely encouraging to anyone who either a) wants one of these 'suckers,' or b) cares to think about how this kind of competition will lower prices and improve productivity of so-called knowledge-workers.

It might seem like a stretch to imagine that the N97 is the first step out of the second big depression, but a real estate bubble isn't the only thing that cured the recession of 2001-03. It was the ongoing gains in productivity that were driven by a host of new technologies.

Back in 2007, every analyst I spoke with predicted that mobility would be one of the three biggest trends of 2008 and 2009 (virtualization and green being the other two).

It stands to reason that a more mobile workforce with better access to information will help lift our economy from the bottom-up. As our new president is fond of saying, change starts with us.

Can Free Be Enterprise Class?

One of my early mentors, Jaz-Michael King, once explained to me that all "enterprise level" means is that the product includes various pricing levels.

It was not meant as a joke.

Josh Greenbaum, a terrific analyst who makes his money consulting in the world of enterprise software, notes that free software of the sort offered by Google doesn't always work properly, and that companies who rely on free software get what they pay for.

There are lots of other examples of getting what you pay for: I recently went on Facebook to actually try to conduct some business (as opposed to the unrepentant socializing I normally use Facebook for.) That happened to be one of the moments Facebook was performing like one of the kids it was originally intended to server: balky, recalcitrant, and, in the end, largely useless for the function I was trying to get it to perform. I’ve seen Gmail do some similarly amazing things, not-ready-for-primetime things, including resetting my password randomly and being plain unavailable at the very moment I need it the most.

There are several problems with that position, one of which being that I've never seen Gmail behave the way Josh describes. Earlier in his post, Josh also described a glitch involving Google Calendar that could just as easily been user error--which is what SAP would have said if the problem had occurred on its watch.

Which brings me to the next problem with Josh's argument: enterprise software vendors have done such a good job of proving that you don't, in fact, get what you pay form that SaaS vendors like Salesforce.com have been able to bust into the market with unexpected ease by exploiting the foibles of licensed software vendors, and the anger they have engendered in their customers.

No doubt that free software has its issues--but so does software that companies pay for. Customers need to ask themselves which form of troubleshooting they'd rather pay for.

Possibilities of Collaboration

If Web 2.0 technology can be used to change the way we govern our societies, then companies ignore these tools at their own peril (or rather, at the peril that their competitors will not ignore them).

Someone in this short promo on Wikinomics notes that it's the behavior rather than the tools that need to change, but that's giving short shrift to having the right tools, as anyone who has tried to implement knowledge management can attest.

Having the right Web 2.0 strategy and structure in place is, ironically, key to unleashing the full potential of this unstructured method of collaboration (and ultimately, innovation).

SAP Gouging Developers a Little Less

Let me get this straight.

SAP is slashing the price of developer subscriptions to its NetWeaver platform by 50%, from around $2300 per year to a little over $1100.

What ever happened to free?

Sure, developers would make money from creating new applications, and they wouldn't have to pay SAP a toll--the equivalent to ensuring all SAP offices have a year's supply of toilet paper.

But the bigger picture is that SAP's flagship products would be more attractive to customers. Why doesn't SAP get that?

This is taken from SAP's own filings: note that nowhere does SAP talk about the strategic importance of gouging software developers:

As part of our ESA strategy, we are currently working to transform the SAP NetWeaver platform as a business process platform. The business process platform will include enterprise services built into our own applications and the creation of a repository of enterprise services for use by customers and partners. The business process platform is intended to allow customers and partners to develop new composite business applications more easily using enterprise services, as well as allowing our software products and technology to provide greater flexibility and added value to customers. We expect this to create increased demand for our application software products and related technology and services. In addition, the business process platform will allow us to improve our efficiency and reduce time-to-market by allowing the reuse of software components in development, and by permitting the creation of composite applications more rapidly than traditional modes of application software development. Composite applications created by software partners will complement and extend our products, allowing us to reach a larger market.

CA Pushing Simplification

CA is responding to changes it sees in the market by offering customers easier-to-manage software bundles--and easier-to-manage pricing packages as well.

On the software front, CA is rolling out enhancements to its service desk application that focus on centralizing processes rather than piling on additional task-based tools.

CA Service Desk Manager 12 unifies service desk, change management, configuration management database, application dependency mapping, knowledge management, remote support automation and reporting capabilities. The product should help customers looking to adopt best-practices and move away from ad hoc tasks to more streamlined processes.

On the pricing front, CA is moving more applications to a service-based (SaaS) model in response to customer demand, according to InfoWorld.

InformationWeek notes that CA is also focusing on simplification when it comes to mainframes.

Ironically, the virtualization hype-cycle has helped reignite interest in mainframes, as customers realize that they already own some of the best virtualization technology the world has to offer.

Unfortunately, the generation of IT administrators who introduced and then managed mainframes in the enterprise is nearing retirement age en masse. CA sees this as an opportunity:

First, CA will introduce a consistent installation stack to make it easy to get software up and running. The company will also move to a more predictable release cycle, starting with a new round of releases in May, that will also help CA do better integration testing. New products will be more automated, with more set pre-configurations. It will also enlist partners to help with installation and care and feeding of mainframes.

Is this just part one of "the new adventures of old technology?"

Yang Yahoo Departure Leaves Unanswerable Questions

Jerry Yang and the Yahoo board of directors announced that Yang will resign his post as CEO once a successor is found, but will retain his seat on the board and reclaim the honorary title of "chief yahoo."

Kara Swisher, who broke the news, published the full text of Yang's email to Yahoo employees, in which Yang said, "since taking on the ceo role, i have had an ongoing dialogue with the board about succession timing."

So all this time, he was plotting his own departure? Oh, and Yang and the board talked about timing, but not about who would replace him?

In his most recent turn as CEO, Yang presided over the continued decline of the Yahoo brand while engaging in the kind of destructive behavior that, were Yahoo a person, would have friends recommending some form of therapy.

In the past year alone, Yahoo rejected the advances of Microsoft, spurned the hand of would-be savior Carl Icahn, and then engaged in a failed dalliance with Google.

Yahoo will now have to answer two questions: who next and, most importantly, what next?

Om Malik thinks Yahoo should get back to basics:

Hopefully they will bring on a no-nonsense, [HP CEO] Mark Hurd-style executive who can stabilize and revive the company by making it leaner, simpler and have it focus on its core competencies.

Rob Hof at BusinessWeek says that president Sue Decker shouldn't hold her breath, even if she wasn't too involved in the Microsoft fiasco:

But she also has been Yang’s chief lieutenant throughout a period in which Yahoo has been unable to inspire confidence among investors or many employees, who remain divided about her leadership. If she were chosen, investors no doubt would assume there will be little change in Yahoo’s direction—especially with Yang still on the board.

Erik Sherman at BNET notes that anyone taking the CEO role is walking into a no-win situation, given that the board isn't admitting it's done anything wrong, and that Yang remains on the board as well.

How will anything change? If the board is sure that it has been right, that the Microsoft and Google deals falling apart were just unfortunate circumstances, then who would it let a new CEO go in another direction? And what person, capable of running the company, would want to walk into a situation where his or her hands might be tied? Unless the egos on the board are willing to admit that they have badly erred and need to change course, there is no reason to think that anything will change for the better over the next few months.

Fred Vogelstein at Wired makes the point that Yahoo failed to make smart business decisions because it was more concerned with religious questions. "According to those who know him, Yang still won't use any device remotely associated with Microsoft technology. And so it is no surprise to anyone that he figured out a way to scuttle that deal."

There is also rampant speculation that Yang's departure will bring Microsoft back a'courtin', but Henry Boldget at Silicon Alley Insider opines that if this happens at all, it will only occur once a successor is in place.

This may seem like vapid speculation, but given that Yang will continue to hold sway over the Yahoo board, a Microsoft acquisition may be the only thing that could change the culture at Yahoo.

What any new CEO--or acquirer, for that matter--will have to address first and foremost is, what does Yahoo do better than anyone else? What purpose does it serve?

As someone who in 2001 used Yahoo for everything from email to gaming to news, and who now uses it exclusively as a junk mail folder, I couldn't say.