Objective data on Collaboration Platforms

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a short post about measuring the growth and share of collaboration platforms. I had found a UK website -- ITJobsWatch -- that tracks IT job postings by type of work, pay rates, technology used, and so on.

The data I pulled from the site compared the number of jobs available for the two leading collaboration platforms: IBM's Lotus Notes and Microsoft's Sharepoint and Exchange.

One shortcoming of that analysis is that it represented only the most recent three months, and so didn't show a trend.  Another is that it showed only contract positions. However, in digging further, I found that the site also shows data for the same period a year prior. There's a section on permanent positions also.

So, I extracted data on contracting and permanent IT positions  for the most recent three months, and for the same period in 2006:

• The total number of positions advertised for the category: Application Platform.
• The number of jobs for each of the three products: Notes, Sharepoint and Exchange. Those products  appear only in this category, so they are fully accounted for.

These charts show the results:

Contract Positions:

To summarize, this shows that  in the UK market:

• Over the past year, advertised contracting opportunities for Sharepoint and Exchange increased in both volume and share. Similar opportunities for Notes declined in both areas (also shown here).
• There are about three times as many contracting opportunities for Exchange as there are for Notes. There are also about three times as many contracting opportunities for Sharepoint as there are for Notes. For the Microsoft  Collaboration Platform (Exchange plus Sharepoint) the ratio is six times.

Permanent IT Positions:

To summarize, this shows that in the UK market:

• Over the past year, advertised permanent positions for Sharepoint and Exchange increased in both volume and share. Similar opportunities for Notes declined in both areas (also shown here).
• There are about 15 times as many permanent job advertisements for Exchange as there are for Notes.  For the Microsoft  Collaboration Platform (Exchange plus Sharepoint) the ratio is 17 times.

Some obvious caveats:

• this is just one source in one country and I haven't audited the site in any way. However, the site seems reputable. It has data going back about three years. With a base of about 40,000 positions  in this category alone, it's a pretty broad survey.
• I don't think this shows absolute share. The Exchange:Notes ratio is too high for that.

I do suspect this is a good indicator of both relative share and growth though.

Comments

[MIke Eckert]

I suspect that this also speaks somewhat to TCO of the platforms -- it takes more development staff to implement and maintain a solution with Exchange/Sharepoint, resulting in the higher contract and permanant positions.

[Cliff Reeves]

Thanks, Mike. I did consider this.

1) IBM paid Ferris research to compare Total Cost of Ownership differences between Notes and Exchange. http://www-306.ibm.com/software/swnews/swnews.nsf/n/nhan6fyn7f?OpenDocument&Site=lotus The difference was between 8% and 22%. The differences in job postings are one to two orders of magnitude larger.
2) For TCO differences to be the basis for this kind of difference, woudl require a persistent and profound market inefficiency.

In other words, all those customers have been making a serious and obvious mistake over the long term.

I think there are explanations that are more straightforward. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor

[MIke Eckert]

But the report you are citing was only comparing the email TCO, and didn't address the collaborative functionality that would encompass Sharepoint -- quote from the page you list above:

"Although this report focuses on email..."

So those Forrester numbers you cite really are only email to email TCO, not collaborative functionality, and nothing related to any Sharepoint or application (non-email) functionality.

I think that is not a minor point, and therefore it isn't possible to simply generalize way you did with the numbers you cite.

[Cliff Reeves]

Correct, the report I cited (Ferris, not Forrester) was focused on email. I referred to that simply to limit the discussion: "hey, we have objective measurements around email and they don't show a big difference. We must be talking about TCO differences elsewhere."

So, your point must be that this massive disparity in jobs is explained by a huge and long-term difference in application productivity. In other words, you seem to be saying:

1) Sharepoint or Exchange has a TCO that is several multiples of Notes and

2) Higher TCO = more jobs.

To your points specifically:

1) There's no objective data on the non-email aspects of TCO or productivity. That's simply an assertion on your part.

2) Concluding that higher TCO drives more jobs over the long term is like saying that overpriced beef drives up beef consumption. The market doesn't work that way. In fact it works the opposite way.

The only way to explain a long-term significant cost difference between products which compete successfully in roughly the same space is that most customers are irrational over the long term. That doesn't make any sense.

[MIke Eckert]

Well, my thoughts are more that with Sharepoint being newer to the market, the depth of staff skillsets is not nearly at the same level for the product as perhaps the Notes/Domino workforce that are already in place in companies today. As companies adopt Sharepoint, they have no staff in house that have those skills, hence they need to post job openings to fill that gap, and augment the staff they most likely have already administering Exchange. I think it would be a longshot to say an Exchange admin would make a great Sharepoint developer right out of the gate.

While in the Notes/Domino world, companies that have the product most likely have been using the applications and instant messaging aspects of the Lotus products for several years now, and therefore already have staff, and skills in place, resulting in the disparity in job postings you are discussing. And this is where in my opinion the TCO of the Sharepoint/Exchange combination is going to be higher than the Notes/Domino world -- maybe not over the long haul, but currently shops need new talent with Sharepoint skills to augment their existing staff, and that is going to cost them more dollars for FTE's today.

[Cliff Reeves]

Mike, I agree with you on that point. I think jobs are an indication of two things:

1) Product growth. This is exactly your point. Fast-growing (and new) software usage drives demand for new jobs.

2) Large installed base. The bigger an installed base, the more jobs you'll see. Attrition alone will drive that, but a large installed base also tends to drive new projects on that base.

You could argue that a large installed base with a very stable work force would drive few job postings. I agree that's possible, even likely.

That's why I see jobs as a measure of vibrancy (some combination of growth and share)