IBM Workplace: Sausage In The Making

Analysts are privy to many different conversations with vendors as they conduct research, strategize, formulate go-to-market messaging, define partnering tactics, evaluate competitors, round-out development plans, assess market/client trends, deliver products and organize for their launch events. And this is just an illustrative list of activities. At times it can become quite mind-boggling to track coherently over periods of time that may span years as strategies and products evolve and you multiply that by the number of vendors analysts need to track. Another factor that makes this type of vendor watching a challenge is to compare/contrast what vendors say historically as it often differs from what actually comes out when something is released or as positions evolve as strategies and products mature. In a way, it’s like watching sausage being made.

With this in mind, I came across the interview between CRN and Mike Rhodin, IBM Software's general manager for Workplace, Portal and Collaboration software courtesy of Ed Brill’s blog summary. For the most part I found the article interesting but was somewhat perplexed by one of Mike’s statements:

Various analysts have written some pretty nutty stuff. I can't believe we were in the same meetings. They keep trying to spin it back into "This is just a new definition of e-mail, new definition of instant messaging." My point is, no. Those things become services. They're commodities. No matter how you look at them, it's what you do with them that becomes interesting. And making those components available as part of this composite application model versus a separate e-mail system or separate IM system is what makes it interesting. Just as when Notes came out 15 years ago, no one knew what groupware or collaboration was. It was the first set of applications that were built that started to show people the way. We're heading into that phase.

The statement was in response to a question on confusion between Notes/Domino and Workplace Messaging.

As the portfolio of IBM products and services evolve, I agree with Mike that IBM will someday reach a point where the bits used for virtual workspaces, e-mail, calendaring and instant messaging are the same bits across the entire product line just packaged differently based on business needs and composite application engines. But that’s not the case today. Hopefully someday users will not require a gateway between different IBM IM products. Or have to rationalize different e-mail products. Hopefully there will be consolidation of the multiple products IBM has for document management, content management, search and workflow.

The point is that IBM did not originally articulate the type of SOA and convergence message now being adopted and presented in the CRN interview. The original explanation and vision IBM delivered to this analyst (and others I assume) was very different when these strategies and products were first presented. And the analysts I know from various firms were mostly correct in their critical assessment of IBM’s Workplace and Notes/Domino efforts over the years.

The Workplace message has improved. But it still has a ways to go. When I talk to clients I still hear a range of definitions at all levels (infrastructure, application, business solution, professional services engagement). I've also given IBM credit in my reports and client interactions for fixing the Notes/Domino roadmap and providing customers with long-term support without forced migration. The SOA and composite application theme is a good representation of how things will converge down the road.

It is perfectly fine and actually refreshing to see vendors adapt to changing market and technology conditions and not remain locked into old messages. It’s actually “ok” to say that something was a mistake (like the “dual highway” message of years ago). Clients prefer a vendor committed to getting it right than dealing with a vendor pretending to have always been right. The lesson here is that vendors cannot rewrite history or re-interpret the facts to spin them in a new way to avoid critical analysis of their efforts over time.

So call me nutty. But right. Pass the sausage please…