It was always going to happen sooner rather than later. Apparently Alcatel has decided to go with MT for an intranet site, and one of the losers in this case, so Loic claims, is Lotus QuickPlace.
RedMonk has been arguing for a while that portal, content management and collaboration players will all be impacted by a new generation of lightweight syndication service-enabled frameworks. The Alcatel case is only one small departmental deal, and is certainly not clear evidence of a broad trend, but it does represent outlier evidence.
Lotus is certainly positioned to respond to turbulence in the market, and could well spin a deal with MT as a partnering opportunity going forward. IBM and Microsoft are both at cultural and technical inflexion points with regard to their collaboration, messaging and presence strategies, though, which will create opportunities for new players. Firms like Zimbra, building the first mail and calendar program I know of built from the ground up around server-side indexing and open source AJAX, which is aiming to become the “enterprise gmail”. Stephen is quite enamoured of Hula, led by Novell.
But back to the syndication question.
To (awfully and clumsily) paraphrase Hot Chocolate:
It started with a blog, they never thought it would come to this…
Well done six apart.
I look forward to lots of vendors of more expensive, more complicated, software saying:
“yes but Moveable Type is not enterprise class software, its an on ramp…”
Josh Hallett says:
August 18, 2005 at 1:53 pm
So true. Show an end user the beast that is MS SharePoint and then show them a wiki. Guess which one they like better?
Before anybody piles on and says, “but SharePoint can do this, this, this….” I say, “that’s just the point, they don’t need all that”
It’s the old software shopping by bullet point.
Adrian Trenholm says:
August 18, 2005 at 2:43 pm
This reminds me of the conversation we had in April on our two blogs about JWT and Carat offering blogging services.
http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/archives/000610.html
http://www.trenholm.co.uk/?p=29
At that time, I said:
The challenge for JWT and Carat et al is going to be making sufficient money out of an approach to marketing which does not, at first sight, fit the big agency mould. Do the big agencies have to rely on the no-one ever got fired for buying IBM factor? And will their clients pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for what I created in five minutes with WordPress?
One could also say of the Alcatel MT intranet:
The challenge for Lotus, IBM and Microsoft et al is going to be making sufficient money out of an approach to intranets which does not, at first sight, fit the enterprise IT mould. Do the enterprise vendors have to rely on the no-one ever got fired for buying IBM factor? And will their clients pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for what an Alcatel department created in five minutes with MT?
Pierre says:
August 18, 2005 at 7:12 pm
(excuse my english ;-)) Interest to use MT in big firms is interest for end users when they CAN have/take the power/possibility to use what they want.
Microsoft and IBM sell very good tools but complicated tools for end users but tools that appreciate IT people because they can show their value with it.
Usually, IT and communicating people are not very fans of MT because with MT they loose some jobs and importance.
Then the key is not the tool but internal power of every corporation..
“Ragtime” waz/is much better than MS office but MS office feeds a lot of hotline/IT people in banks, industries and big firms ;-))
Richard Schwartz says:
August 19, 2005 at 8:19 am
re “the first mail and calendar program I know of built from the ground up around server-side indexing and open source AJAX”… Just want to point out that Domino Web Access is AJAX-based, and of course Domino has had a strong server-side indexing story for a dozen years. But not open source 🙂
On the syndication side, lightweight just doesn’t seem to be IBM’s style. They’re building some blog-related tools into Workplace, but I’m holding out hope for an IBM Workplace Syndication and Subscription Server product that would manage feeds and subscriptions inside and outside the firewall.
-rich
James Governor says:
August 19, 2005 at 11:51 am
i didnt put the open source qualifier in for nothing 😉
in terms of lightweight – that is surely not IBM’s core competence. i agree a syndication server would be very cool, and IBM should pursue Lotus modularity as agressively as it can, imho – “the great decomposition”
http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/archives/000832.html
pierre- you make a great point about software and services as a business model. as you say, consultants love complexity, it pays their salaries.