Most of the time

IBM acquires Bowstreet

IBM announced today they have acquired Bowstreet and will integrate it with Websphere Portal Server.

As more organizations move away from "one size fits all" software, demand for tailored, customizable software has dramatically increased. By adding Bowstreet technology to IBM's software portfolio, IBM customers can now quickly and easily develop tailored, integrated portal solutions designed to meet the specific business needs of their market or vertical industry. Based on results of more than 100 joint customer engagements over the last three years, customers using Bowstreet technology with IBM Rational software built portal applications between 2 to 12 times faster than when using other portlet tools, drastically reducing development costs and producing business benefits in less time.

Red Herring and Peter O'Kelly are among early posters, but there's not much analysis out there yet. Redd Herring pointed out:

IBM and Bowstreet will be facing competition in the portal market from other technology providers such as Vignette, Sun Microsystems, Tibco, Comergent, Portal Software, ClientPortals.com, and DigitalHarbor.

My take is that this is a necessary step to help IBM simplify portal development. IBM announced a partnership with Bowstreet almost exactly three years ago, based on this premise. However, since that time, Microsft Sharepoint has been growing fast and simplicity has been one of its major advantages over Websphere Portal Server.

In addition, Bowstreet has also helped IBM integrate between Domino and its replacement technology, Workplace (which is based on Websphere). Sharepoint is popular with Domino customers because of its strong Office integration, and its relative simplicity. This acqusition may also help IBM plug that leak.

My colleague Don Dodge used to work at Bowstreet, and I'm amazed he hasn't blogged about this yet. However, I'm sure he will, so watch this space.

ZDNet on the key aspects of RSS readers

I enjoyed this David Berlind post on ZDnet: Next-gen RSS reading platform (Attensa) demos power of Attention.xml 

In it, David discusses Newsgator and Attensa, and hit on the key aspects of good RSS aggregators and readers:

Integration within a familiar offline application

Personally, after trying a lot of RSS newsreaders, I think it makes the most sense to take receipt of RSS-delivered content in my e-mail client which is what I've been doing with Newsgator.  I spend so much of my day in Outlook (the officially supported email at my company)and the way Newsgator can shuttle content from specific RSS feeds directly into a specific Outlook folder is an organizational principal that's perfect for my style of consumption.

Access from broswer and phone

Both Attensa and Newsgator are doing something else that clearly position them as the catalyst for the next generation of RSS readers ...  Both also have a Web-based version as well.

...

Newsgator users can also access their subscriptions through their cell phones but the handset must have HTML-reading capability (some sort of mobile browser).  Not to be outdone by Newsgator, Attensa also has a mobile strategy as well.  According to Attensa's director of marketing Scott Niesen, the company will soon be releasing a mobile version of its technology that works across handsets such as cell phones and BlackBerry's

An enterprise version of the aggregator (currently a Newsgator exclusive)

Newsgator, by comparison, provides a self-hosting option. That design choice could affect the comfort level that some enterprises have with Attensa's approach. 

Intelligent prioritisation (currently unique to Attensa)

Attensa — whose co-founder and vice president of R&D Eric Hayes is a co-author of the Attention.xml specification — has figured out how to prioritize RSS items based on the what you're historically paying the most attention to.  In other words, subjects that are of the most interest to you or that have the highest relevance to your work (based on what you're reading and how you read it) rise to the top (or the mouth) of your RSS reader

One reason I liked this article was it pointed out that the future -- at least for RSS aggregation -- includes a balance of web 2.0 (hosted, web-accessed) and more traditional (familiar client, enterprise-based) capabilities and choices.

RIM, Blackberry and the patent troll -- should IP be protected?

Excellent article in this week's Economist -- The Real Lesson of Blackberry. An excerpt:

RIM is generally regarded as the victim of an injustice. Founded 21 years ago by two engineering students who still help run it, the company is being held for ransom by a “patent troll”. The monster emerging from under the bridge is an entity called NTP, which doesn't actually make or sell anything—it doesn't even have a website, for goodness sake. But it has hired a handful of lawyers to enforce its patents and in settlement talks this week, it was demanding almost 6% of RIM's sales in America until 2012 when its patents expire—about $1 billion. NTP's threat of a legal injunction to shut down BlackBerry unless it pays up is viewed as little short of extortion.

The easy conclusion is that the patent system is being cynically used to wreck the livelihoods of honest folks who are the true innovators. That's wrong. The chief lesson of the BlackBerry saga is that patents are there to be protected. If the system is to have any meaning, its integrity must be upheld for the sake of the businesses that rely on it and the public that benefits from innovation.

The article goes on to point out that RIM had plenty of inexpensive opportunities to settle when NTP first brought the suit in 2000, and again when they lost convincingly to NTP in court in 2002.

The article acknowledges that the US patent system has its flaws, but concludes with this sharply-made point:

Distressed BlackBerry users argue that too many of the world's workers rely on the device for the service to be shut down. But many of their jobs depend on the principle at stake in this case—that the courts should protect intellectual property because it rewards inventors by conferring a real title to an intangible asset. Business requires confidence that intellectual property will be respected and infringers brought to justice, regardless of whether the litigant is using the patent or not. Only with that security will firms patent and license their inventions, thus allowing others to use their ideas.

SAP to release 'Mendocino' for testing

On Monday, CNet ran an article about the upcoming Mendocino project:

Next week customers can begin testing software that links Microsoft's e-mail and calendar programs with SAP's back-office business applications, the companies said.

The new program, code-named Mendocino, has been in development since last spring. It's the first major product the two software titans have built and sold together.

The companies said they plan to ship Mendocino 1.0 to 50 customers and partners on Dec. 23 for testing before its general release in July. The program is designed to let workers use the familiar Microsoft Office interface to access and manipulate budgeting, personnel and billing information that resides in a company's SAP databases.

For instance, managers can view and update detailed budget data from an SAP system using a Microsoft Outlook e-mail attachment. A manager can adjust her budget without leaving the e-mail program, and changes are reflected automatically in a company's SAP budgeting application.

Mendocino offers a relatively modest set of functions so far, as the same article concludes:

But the companies need to put a little more meat on the product first, according to AMR Research. "The joint project shows a lot of promise, but the current scope of Mendocino is limited to a few transactions," the IT analyst firm said in a recent report.

However, Mendocino is just the beginning of what I think will be a major change in how users work with back-end systems. IMHO, this is the real news in Office 12.

The dust is settling a little around the document standards debate

CNet reports today that legislators at the State of Massachusetts are open to multiple formats in the highly publicised debate over document retention standards. In other words, they wouldn't object to Microsoft's Open XML format in addition to ODF.

I've been following this subject for a while, and blogged on it a couple of times, most recently here.

While you can argue that the State of Massachusetts has played an unusually activist role, the State has a requirement -- long-term document access -- that is undeniably important. The two formats they have adopted so far -- PDF and ODF -- met the requirements of being standards-based. In addition PDF met the requirement of being widely (almost universally) used, and ODF is at least broadly endorsed.

You can argue also that Microsoft should have taken the ECMA/ISO path sooner and avoided some of the vitriol. However, better late than never. If the standards and approval processes go as expected, the State's users will be able to continue to use  Microsoft Office after 2007. Good news for Micrsoft, for sure, but also continuity for the State's employees.

It's worth noting that IBM lobbied heavily to prevent ECMA from working on Open XML. It's possible that IBM's motives have little to do with long-term document access and the pursuit of standards. Exclusive support for ODF (thus blocking the use of Microsoft Office) would provide a much-needed market lift for IBM's new Workplace product, which relies entirely on ODF and Open Office.

There's nothing wrong with competing, but Is that what standards leadership is for?

Patent Cross-Licensing with IBM -- is this really a good deal?

IBM Venture Capital Group just announced a cross-licensing program for  VCs and startups.

Start-ups with annual revenues under $10 million will receive a standard, three-year cross-licensing contract for $25,000, said Michelle McIntyre, a spokeswoman for IBM Venture Capital Group.

Companies with more than $10 million in annual revenues that are in the process of bringing their products to market receive a custom, five-year cross-licensing contract and pay 1 percent in royalties. There is no revenue cap on a company's eligibility, McIntyre said.

My initial reaction was that IBM has a huge patent portfolio and this is a real bargain, plus good PR. Then I had second thoughts: How many startups would cross-license their patents? Aren’t these their crown jewels?

Rather than a program to remove barriers to startups, it could be seen as a way for IBM to:

1)       collect a fee and royalty from potential patent infringers, saving IBM the cost of litigation. An attorney told me that "It costs $3M a year to sue someone for patent infringement if you’re a company like IBM.  If a start-up is only making $10M a year, there’s no money to collect, so no point in suing."
2)       Strengthen even further its own patent portfolio.

Obviously IBM’s patent library is extremely valuable, but is this really a valuable offer or is IBM giving startups the sleeves out of its vest?

I really don't know the answer. I'd welcome opinions.

Lotusphere 2006: a disappointing decision

IBM and Microsoft compete vigorously in the collaborative software arena (email, IM, workflow, doc management, ...) yet most companies have a mix of IBM (often Notes/Domino) and Microsoft (Exchange, Sharepoint, Office, Windows, ...) products.

As a result, what customers really need to know is how to make them work together.

Gary Devendorf (a colleague of mine from IBM/Lotus -- now at Microsoft) has continually focused on that. He is personally committed to helping customers use these technologies together and he's traditionally attended the annual Lotus conference in January -- Lotusphere -- to do just that, as an exhibitor.

This year, however, Volker Weber reminded me that IBM has decided for the first time not to allow Gary to set up his humble booth on the Lotusphere event floor.

narrow-mindedness 1 -- Customers 0

Colligo -- Sharepoint support is in Beta Test

I posted some time back on Colligo, and their support for Sharepoint. That release is in Beta test now and folks are getting the word out. Sharepoint MVP MIchael Greth and Romeo Pruno both noted key features of the product:

• A rich offline client that emulates the functions of SharePoint team spaces. The client enables users to download, create, organize, view, edit and save content on their laptop much like they can on a SharePoint server. Colligo for SharePoint 1.0 is tightly coupled with Microsoft Office® 2003
• Enforcement of SharePoint authentication, permissions and security. Users can only access sites and create, view, edit and delete content that the site administrator has authorized.
• Two-way synchronization of SharePoint document libraries and lists, including links, announcements, contacts and tasks. One important note here: Colligo for SharePoint offers robust synchronization conflict resolution that eliminates the need for a user to “check out”, and hence tie up, content in a team space when they go offline. This enables teams to work on the same item offline and then synchronize later.
• Support for custom properties (metadata) and the ability to view, edit and synchronize changes to properties. Properties are used to manage such things as document approval processes.
• Support for custom SharePoint views – Colligo for SharePoint enables users to view list and document library items using custom views downloaded from the SharePoint server. The ability to organize content through custom views is a key feature used extensively by SharePoint site designers to simplify and personalize the presentation of information.

The first version of Colligo for SharePoint is in beta this month and will be released in February next year

Romeo also provided screenshots:

Infoworld interviewed the folks at Colligo, and published this article.

Definitely worth a look if you are a Sharepoint user or developer.

Coveo: search that "... just seems right"

I have the best job in town. I get to work with smaller software companies that are delivering unique innovation and value. They sometimes introduce a sort of conflict, too. These nimble companies often showcase Microsoft technology more quickly and better than larger, more established firms, but they also show how much better the products from established companies (including Microsoft) could -- or should -- be.

Coveo is a case in point. Coveo does a far better job of enterprise search than the big guys: Verity, Google and Microsoft. In addition, Coveo provides a special focus on Sharepoint, which is quickly becoming the de facto document store in enterprises. Coveo is a part of Microsoft's private beta program for Office 12, so they'll likely retain and even improve that lead.

Don Dodge and I spoke recently with Eric Negler, Coveo's EVP of Sales, and Dan Bauhaus, their Director of Technical Sales. They took us through the product and emphasised these points:

Some aspects of search are universal: users typically enter ony a word or two, they seldom use sophisticated search terms (even quotation marks), and they rarely click deeper than the first three results (so relevance is king).

Enterprise search is not the same as web search.

Hyperlinks are less-used (and so are less valuable in ranking -- which largely defeats Google's value proposition)

Data sources and types are more diverse (they include databases,  metadata or properites such as authoor and date, ERPsystems, and even video) and ranked results must weight accurately results from all these sources

Crawling and indexing techniques need to take account of corporate network management (for example, Google's crawling is often seen by corporate networks as a denial of service attack).

Search must respect the complex security, rights and policies that surround enterprise documents and stores.

Coveo's support for Sharepoint was particularly impressive. I loved the feature that summarized a document, and extracted key concepts from it.

Coveo has a stellar customer list, including the CIA, Fannie Mae, the US Air Force, and Credit Lyonnais Suisse. A few days after my chat with Eric and Dan, I spoke to Steve Jackson at PRTM, a 500-person  consulting firm in Europe, US and Asia, who are major users of Coveo. Steve talked about their search requirements, and some limitations in Microsoft's search capability, that led PRTM to select Coveo. He made a couple of points that struck me:

The first class nature of Coveo's support. Steve said "they are responsive, and they take ownership of the problem from beginning to end."

Coveo's product " ... just feels right to me ... whoever designed it really knew what they were doing ... like the iPod."

Nice. If I'm going to recommend a company and a product to a Microsoft customer (and I absolutely will recommend Coveo), these are great attributes.

I may not mention the iPod though.