Talk to anyone who’s a regular on the conference circuit, and chances are good that they’ll tell you the real value lies not in the sessions themselves, but in conversations they have in the hallway. The chance to put faces to disembodied voices on conference calls. The serendipitous idea generation that comes from exchanging ideas with no electronic latency. Such was, in my opinion, the principle value of last week’s IBM Analyst Conference.
One of the difficulties analysts, customers, and media like have with IBM is the sheer size. As Steve Mills covered in the keynote, IBM Software Group (SWG) is 50 thousand employees working at 40 different development sites to produce – literally – thousands of products. That size is apparent at conferences like last week’s, where for at least a couple of days a year, everyone – and I do mean everyone – from the SWG side is under one roof, presenting side by side. With the rare exception here and there, SWG has their hand in most areas of enterprise infrastructure software in some form or fashion.
The simplest way that we’ve found to navigate that breadth, then, is on an individual basis. RedMonk has since our inception made it our mission to offer comprehensive coverage of the enterprise software industry, and IBM is no exception in this regard. While we make no claims to to high degrees of specialization in any particular category – we market quite the opposite, in fact – conferences like last week’s do offer us the opportunity to meet with representives from just about every aspect of SWG to explore areas of interest and opportunity. While I’d seen some of the content in the sessions previously, I got a huge benefit from the time spent with individuals from all over the company.
Herewith a quick summary of some of the more interesting meetings I had during my two days in Westchester. Standard customer disclaimer applies – IBM’s a RedMonk client.
- Michael Curry & Information as a Service:
I’ve been aware of Michael through his blog over at Ascential for some time, and he was kind enough to check in with some feedback on our COA concept on more than one occasion – as I discuss here. But until last week, we’d never had the opportunity to meet in person nor discuss how the transition from Ascential employee to IBMer was going (very well, by his account). But for those of you that have followed the development of COA over time, it should come as no surprise that I’m a believer in the idea of “Information as a Service,” pitched by Michael and Director of Information Management Strategy Andrew Warzecha – who I regrettably didn’t get the chance to catch up with. COA, after all, is essentially founded on the idea that information management principles such as auditing, access control, retention and the like can be delivered as services rather than aspects of a point solution. From talking to Michael, it’s clear that IBM gets this and is doing everything in its power to help enterprises do the same. It’s not a simple chore considering the volume of information management assets in the IBM stable, but the problem appears to be in good hands. - Mike Rhodin & Craig Hayman – Lotus and the Collaboration Story:
As an analyst, a big part of my job is to identify and digest the implications of new and emerging technologies within the various spaces that I cover. Because some of the technologies are quite new and unproven, however, it’s often difficult to convince customers of the importance of a new application type, industry trend, or what have you. Unsurprisingly, many businesses are conservative in their approach, preferring to stick with what works. This is the case often enough that when you encounter someone who’s not only aware of but appreciates some of these cutting edge apps, you remember it. I’m very pleased to say that Mike and Craig from Lotus both get it. Contrary to my expectations, I did not have to explain the value of wikis or why they were important, as I do so often. Our conversation skipped those preliminaries and instead focused on how and where wiki technologies might play a role within the existing product set, or as I recommended, outside it. I can’t comment too much further on what was discussed except to say that its good to see that Lotus is not evaluating emerging collaboration technologies defensively, but opportunistically. Incidentally, one suggestion that I did make to Mike & Craig, partially in response to studies like this one, was to consider decoupling the Workplace client piece from the server, and offering an open source Eclipse RCP based Workplace open source client. More on why later. - Bob Picciano & Jon Prial – Databases, Content Management & More:
Bob and Jon have always had my respect because they are utterly and totally pragmatic, and have respect for the dynamics of community interaction. The question that I posed to Bob during one session’s Q&A was this: IBM’s introduced some undoubtedly interesting XML datastore technologies in the Viper release, but to date it’s solely available as a hybrid product. In other words, if you want the XML piece you need to take DB2 along with it. But who’s going to be the MySQL of XML datastores, from a ubiquity perspective? While there are interesting XML related database technologies available from the likes of Ipedo, Sleepycat, and Software AG there is not – to date – a provider that has run away from the pack in terms of mindshare and marketshare. Part of this is demand: despite their frustrations, many if not most of the cutting edge developers I’m speaking with are choosing relational platforms to work off of, MySQL most frequently and, increasingly, Postgres. But the fact remains that there are reasons to work with datastores more friendly to XML, most notably if the application itself speaks XML. Can IBM be a player here? Remains to be seen, but I know it’s something that folks like Bob and Jon think about. - Adam Jollans & Jeff Smith – Open Source, Linux & More:
James and I had a fascinating chat with two of IBM’s more notable executives in the open source / Linux spaces, touching on topics ranging from Ruby’s convention-over-configuration paradigm, the actual value of source to end user customers, whether or not closed and open source can work in conjunction with each other, working effectively with communities, and software patents. Much of what was discussed needs to stay in house, but a couple of the examples that I discussed are worth relating here. First, that contrary to the beliefs of many, enterprises – some of them anyway – do care about access to source code. I related the content from one of the OSBC panels I attended, covered by Matt here. Second, that while conventional wisdom says that open source companies need to open source everything, there are credible examples to the contrary. At another OSBC session, SugarCRM’s John Roberts discussed the fact while the majority of their source is open and accessible – and they have an entire community dedicated to adding to that – some is not. While this offends some open source purists, Roberts was neither booed off stage nor pelted with rotten fruit. In my opinion, the community is becoming increasingly adept at determining whether or not open source firms are a net positive or net negative on the community, as opposed to measuring them on binary open or closed terms. For the Sun folks in the audience, I did mention Nexenta. For the Ubuntu folks, we also discussed this news.
So anyhow, while the scheduling could have been better – the last flight I could catch out of Westchester to get back to Denver necessitated me missing a couple of really intriguing interviews – it was a couple of days well spent. These were but a few of the more involved conversations that I had over the conference – I had another great chat with Scott Hebner that I’ll leave to my partner to relate. It’s also great to see some of the excellent AR folk we work with on a frequent basis, but see rarely; folks such as Amy Loomis, Cameron O’Connor, Christine Sterne, Christy Pappas, Diane Flis, Harvey Walseth, Jerrilyn Glanville, John Simonds, Karen Moore, Tim O’Malley, Tom Morrissey and doubtless a whole cast of characters I’m overlooking (my apologies).
Lastly, I wanted to say two more things. First, to join John in congratulating Sarita in her new role. We’ve worked with Sarita quite a bit over the past couple of years, and it’s clear based on our interactions that IBM’s AR program is in good hands. Second, a big thank you to the outgoing Dave Liddell for working with us over the years, and congratulation – he’s put together an excellent team over the years. You can take it with a grain of salt if you wish, considering IBM client’s status, but for my money IBM’s got one of the best AR staffs in the business. Dave and his staff’s willingness to work with smaller firms like ours – in stark contrast to some other firms in the industry – was not an insignificant factor in us being where we are today. Best of luck, sir.
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