Essentially :-

• It is silly to equate the PC market with the handset market
• Err… So “Unix” won did it? Now I thought Linux wasn’t Unix….
• So windows was successful because it provided a platform for other people to make money..and Apple has provided a way to help developers make money, and ensures consumers don’t install rubbish on their phones and that’s bad?
• WinMo isn’t comparable to Android – but Java is and that hardly created an exciting apps ecosystem
• Oh and Symbian is open sourced because its backers know it’s dead

It is silly to equate the PC market with the handset market

They are not the same – the handset is an appliance, the PC is not. Handsets are more readily likened to games consoles. So it’s immediately pointless to draw conclusions from the history of the PC market and apply them to the handset market.

Err… So “Unix” won did it? Now I thought Linux wasn’t Unix….

When Eric says:

And isn’t it entertaining, boys and girls, how thoroughly Unix won? Both OS X and Android are Unix underneath.

My second most immediate response was “Err…. actually the Android is based on Linux, which really is not Unix – but then you should know that? So are we all now going to say Linux is Unix ? Unix FAILED – it broke into different factions (initially dozens) and then we saw a slow consolidation then along came Linux which effectively wiped the board of all but a couple of Unix variants (And IMHO – AIX and HP-UX are the only two Unixes that have any legs on them). It’s important not to rewrite history by deluding ourselves that Linux = Unix and that that’s all good. Because it misses the fantastically important point that the success of Linux is that it does some very low level stuff, really well and there’s no point in differentiating your product on the basis of how pointer references are hashed in some obscure part of the kernel.

The success of Linux lies in people agreeing that having choice at the kernel level isn’t all that interesting.

[My first most immediate response was - "Don't patronise me you....."]

So windows was successful because it provided a platform for other people to make money..and Apple has provided a way to help developers make money, and ensures consumers don’t install rubbish on their phones and that’s bad?

Here’s the thing – Windows was successful because it provided a means for other people to make money – true. But SO HAS APPLE!!! The AppStore would not have the massive number of apps if Apple hadn’t provided a very clear mechanism through which people could publish and monetize their software.

WinMo isn’t comparable to Android – but Java ME is and that hardly created an exciting apps ecosystem

It’s not really fair to compare WinMo and Android, first let’s look at WinMo vs J2ME. Which was more successful? Well the numbers would indicate Java… it’s running on a hell of a lot more phones than WinMo, let’s face it. But again, – Has J2ME created a vibrant apps marketplace? No – because device vendors didn’t want to support an open market place – 1) because they wanted to control everything 2) they had genuine concerns about stability 3) App portability across phones is a nightmare

Android is much more analogous to J2ME than it is WinMO – WinMO (arrogantly) tries to mandate device function while J2ME tries (valiantly) to provide device flexibility – at the expense of app portablity. Android is trying to do a very similar thing to J2ME, and will suffer the same challenges as a result.

Oh and Symbian is open sourced because its backers know it’s dead

The competitive dynamic between Linux/Android and OS X can be understood in the same way. OS X is playing a control game and Android a ubiquity one. We can expect the outcome to be the same: when the bazaar meets the walled garden, the walls will eventually come down, crushing the life out of the garden.

This is why Symbian is now open-source in spite of having no inheritance from Unix-land; its backers have figured out that a control strategy collects short-term gains over a ubiquity strategy but simply cannot compete in the longer term against open-source Android and open-source

Aww puhlease …. Symbian open sourced because it’s backers have figured out that OSS is the way to go??? Nah… Symbian was dying so they took a wild punt at OSS’ing it (As Sun did with Solaris) and it’s not helped Symbian (or Solaris for that matter).

The key weakness in Eric’s post (and position) lies in the assumption that the Andoid vs iPhone battle can be understood in the same way as the PC vs Mac battle  – and it simply can’t be.

Oh I should add that I am an iPhone fanboy, and proud to be so

So, here’s the short version:-

• iPhone vs Android isn’t coke vs pepsi, it’s coke vs virgin cola
• It’s disingenuous to say that the iPhone is for “Play” and the Android for “Work”
• Today the iPhone strikes a much better balance between the desires of consumers vs developers
• Consumers don’t care about “open” they care about “now”
• Multiple Android distros is BAD for Android, not good
• Flexibility and choice are attractive to developers but often a nightmare for consumers
• Multiple formats and screen sizes represent too much choice
• I’m not sold on “Open Google” in the way that many commentators are
• Its just not clear which will win, but right now iPhone is still well ahead

iPhone vs Android isn’t coke vs pepsi, it’s coke vs virgin cola

The first point I disagree with is that the comparison, for basic users, between the iPhone and Android is like Coke vs Pepsi. While I think there’s a good chance that Android will close the gap (I don’t think it’s certain as I’ll explain) right now the comparison is Coke vs Virgin Cola.

As Peter acknowledges, the iPhone app market place is dramatically larger and deeper. Although I’m sure that the Android marketplaces will continue to develop rapidly.

The Coke vs Cola analogy is interesting because we know that the essential ingredients (or features) of Coke and Cola are pretty much the same, Coke beat Virgin Cola on a host of levels that extend way beyond the simple features of the beverage but two of the reasons are particularly relevant -  Coke had brand (perhaps most important) and Coke had distribution. Android phones don’t have anything like the brand clarity of the Apple iPhone; Google is a fantastic brand, but that’s not the brand the device manufacturers are pushing, they’re selling their own brand – because they’re rightly worried about giving up their brand identity. The second issue, distribution, is also important. iTunes and the AppStore have a massive established base that right now is unrivallable.

It’s disingenuous to say that the iPhone is for “Play” and the Android for “Work”

I’m not convinced by the “style difference” that Peter says exists when it comes to apps for iPhone vs Android. To begin with, it’s a little disingenuous to imply that iPhone developers play on our baser instincts (by offering us porn) while Android developers feed our souls (by unlocking the power of the phone’s “inner” unix machine). There are many more business apps available on the iPhone (in addition to the games, and silliness) and indeed, my iPhone satisfies my inner geek immensly by giving me a VNC client, so that if my fingers were really tiny I could write this blog on my Ubuntu laptop via my iPhone – how cool would that be!!

Peter makes a sterling attempt to convince the reader that the ability to write your own ‘nix shell scripts is a boon for non-techies but I simply don’t buy the idea that “rough but workable tools” are for “all comers of the enterprise”.

Today the iPhone strikes a much better balance between the desires of consumers vs developers

Many developers hate the closed garden that Apple’s Appstore represents, and Apple seems not to mind giving them new reasons to dislike the restrictions that are imposed. But it’s a question of balance. Apple is trying to balance the provision of a great place for people to find nifty apps for their device, and the provision of a great place for developers to publish and monetize apps they sell. This isn’t an easy balance to strike, and Apple’s policy would seem to be to err on the side of the consumer rather than the developer.

So I find it difficult to beat Apple up for protecting the integrity of its appstore. It is possible, of course, to spin this by saying “Apple is cynically protecting it’s marketplace” but that would be a little bit like saying “Coke is cynically protecting it’s logo” or “The lion cynically killed the gazelle”. Of course Apple has to protect the integrity of the AppStore, and I’ve no doubt that there are plenty of parents across the globe who are delighted to see Apple moving against the smutty apps. I think Apple will need to adjust its stance over time, but right now there doesn’t seem to be a shortage of new apps in the queue for the app store.

Consumers don’t care about “open” they care about “now”

I’m not convinced that “open” ecosystems always produce more innovation than closed ones, but I certainly believe they’re more likely to. So I do believe that the relative openness of the Android platform offers greater potential for future innovation than Apple’s closed alternative, but the problem is that consumers don’t care. They wont pick an Android over an iPhone because it is based on a better moral framework, or because it offers a better path to choice and innovation, they’ll pick Android over an iPhone based on their current desires rather than their future needs.

Multiple Android distros is BAD for Android, not good

I also disagree with Peter when he says “it’s a java world”, and that the emergence of new android distros is a good thing. I agree that some folks are indeed “relentless tinkerers” – but the idea that it would ever be a good idea for an enterprise to put a nice custom interface on top of Android hardware is an absurd one for the vast, vast majority of enterprises. Yes, if you’re Fedex and you want the perfect UI for the 30,000 devices you give to your drivers, but for most organisations the  “tinkering” with the UI layer of an operating system should be punishable by death.

Flexibility and choice are attractive to developers but often a nightmare for consumers

In the early days of Linux the ability to control or modify absolutely anything was seen as a key selling point. But then the reality that only a tiny, tiny, minority of people actually do modify their o/s (Less than 1% of Linux users ever compile the kernel. I’ve compiled it 100’s of times – and have even successfully compiled it twice..).

My development experience does, however, echo Peter’s – TTHW (Time to Hello World) is a really significant factor in establishing developer affection for a platform or technology, and the openness of the Android platform does mean that TTHW is shorter than for the iPhone. If the world were exclusively populated by developers then the iPhone would be dead and we’d all be using Droids, although as one of my developers pointed out, if the world were exclusively populated by developers we wouldn’t need phones at all – We’d all be communicating via the WOW forums.

Multiple formats and screen sizes represent too much choice

Apple has the good fortune to know precisely what screen format and size it needs to address, but the Android O/S doesn’t – so the Android has to provide support to different device formats and capabilities. Again, I have to agree that this leads to greater choice, but I worry that it inevitably leads to too much of it. Writing Java Apps for phones is made so horrid and unpleasant precisely because of the differences between devices – so on one hand you have the school that tries to implement support for this, while on the other you have the (Microsoft) school that effectively mandates device characteristics – neither of which results in much success. As Peter points out in his blog there are already Android apps that will run on some devices and not others and we all know how awful Win ME phones are…

Apple, of course, controls both the o/s and device.

I’m not sold on “Open Google” in the way that many commentators are

Again, Peter points out some of the issues here in his blog, but takes a slightly more generous view of Google’s motives and likely plans. Google has shown (as per the Google Maps example in Peter’s blog) that it’s not as keen on “open” as some of its cheerleaders would have you believe.

Ultimately, it’s the ecosystem that will keep Google open, and (I believe) it’s the ecosystem that will force Apple to be more open over time.

Its just not clear which will win, but right now iPhone is still well ahead

If I really did know who would win, I wouldn’t be blogging, I’d be sipping a marguerita on my private island.

But my wild stab is this.

• The Android platform needs to offer less choice, not more if it is to win.
• Apple will need to offer more choice not less if it is to extend its lead.
• There is an opportunity for Adobe to offer an easy to develop, app store enabled, Android client platform for bizapps (Air for mobile)
• If there were any justice in the world we’ll be writing most of our rich internet apps using HTML 5 in the near future (To paraphrase Captain Sensible – you gotta have a dream.

This post may be read to the strains of the wonderful Ella Fiztgerald singing “There may be trouble ahead”.

Having slogged through the marathon that was the Oracle-Sun announcement day, we’re left with two immediate impressions:
1.They took a heck of a lot of time to say so little
2.Oracle’s back to the future pitch, while nothing like as badly thought out as some people say, just isn’t going to cut it.

If you’re in a hurry, here are the headlines:

• The back to the 60’s mantra is both more and less nuanced than you might think
• But the integrated stack pitch simply isn’t well enough thought out
• There are two killer reasons why the “single stack” pitch fails: Innovation, and Focus
• Ultimately Oracle’s hardware strategy is simply not convincing enough
• Oracle’s software strategy is much more coherent but Sun brings a mixed bag
• The absence of a services story is the elephant in the room

We’ll be thinking, talking and writing in much more detail about this – so if you’re interested in knowing more, drop me a line – gary@bathwick.com

The back to the 60’s mantra is both more and less nuanced than you might think
Perhaps the most headline grabbing component of the strategy is the notion that Oracle is planning to emulate the IBM of the 1960’s by delivering a highly integrated stack from top to bottom.

Superficially this seems like total nonsense and no doubt the die-hard Oracle knockers will make much of this “backward thinking”. But you have to remember that when Charles Phillips presented the idea he added the caveat “…but built on open standards”. Oracle isn’t advocating a return to the tightly closed proprietary systems of the 60’s; the company is focussing on the “up-side” that came with those integrated systems – improved reliability, better integration, and a single source of support.

The problem with this guiding strategy is that it isn’t anything like as revolutionary as the sound bite might appear. Of course clients want things that are more reliable, offer better performance and deliver better economics (can you imagine anyone saying they want less?). This may be why IBM has been offering tightly integrated hardware and software bundles for a long time, even before it became necessary to describe them as “appliances”.

But the integrated stack pitch simply isn’t well enough thought out
The “integrated from top to bottom” story is superficially appealing, but doesn’t stand up to scrutiny particularly well.

Let’s begin with the “complete systems” chart above. Firstly there is a pretty compelling argument (made by IBM) that there is significant benefit from not having an apps business. IBM argues that customers gain by using a platform that supports the widest possible applications ecosystem – Apps vendors and clients then both gain the best infrastructure expertise and the best industry expertise. When it comes to industry expertise IBM can argue that it offers a breadth of industry expertise that spans a wider range of verticals and runs deeper into the infrastructure than Oracle and Sun’s (with the possible exception of telecoms where Sun really does have deep roots). We were also entertained by Oracle’s characterisation of SAP – they will no doubt be a bit surprised in Walldorf to learn that they don’t have any vertically focussed apps.

Oracle’s primary assertion is that it’s easier to deliver an innovative stack if you own all the components – a point made repeatedly throughout the briefing. In his opening pitch Charles Phillips said this:-

“If you have separate companies at each layer, one company building the DB, another building the storage etc it’s very hard to get those engineers to work together”

He then nodded towards the “big” problem when he said this:

“It’s hard to get those engineers to work together even when they’re in the same company – ask IBM, they know.”

We choked on our collective coffee at this; because IBM does actually know really quite well how challenging it is to get engineers from different groups to work together, because IBM has been doing it for half a century.

In short, Oracle claims that everything will be better in Oracle stack-land because all of the release dates can be synchronised, and integration can be “engineered in ahead of time”. Well, we wish them the best of luck with that; but, saying “we know it’s hard” and even “believing” that it’s hard are a long way from experiencing the challenges associated with coordinating so many different technology life-cycles. All joking aside, as Oracle discovers that this kind of integration really is very hard to do, the company might be well advised to go and ask IBM.

The final point on the ‘total stack’ approach is that some parts of it simply aren’t core to ‘engineering in integration’ – like storage. There’s a reason IBM backed away from manufacturing hard disk drives – If IBM felt that retaining its manufacturing capability would have given it a competitive edge it would have done so. Instead the company sold it, and created a very close partnership with the company that bought it (Hitachi).

There are two killer reasons why the “single stack” pitch fails: Innovation, and Focus
The single stack pitch fails for two key reasons – It doesn’t mean that you can innovate more quickly, and a “focus” on a dozen things nets out as no focus at all.

Innovation first. Oracle is promising to invest $4.3 billion on R&D in 2011 to cover the apps business, middleware, servers, processor design, storage, workstations, and network equipment. By comparison, IBM spent $5.8billion on R&D in 2009, on middleware, servers, processor design, and storage. In other words, IBM is spending $1.5bn more, on fewer things. Oracle won’t be able to invest as much in server design, processor design or middleware development as IBM, either from an overall budget, or a return on investment point of view. IBM’s R&D is already bolstered by partnerships with vendors like Hitachi (hard disks and semiconductors) and Sony (processors) which exist because they deliver far more innovation than IBM (or Hitachi or Sony) could deliver alone.

The further point is that coordinating development to ‘engineer integration in’ means that the whole will generally advance at the speed of the slowest, which will by definition slow innovation down.

Second, the question of focus. Oracle’s acquisition strategy prior to the Sun purchase was absolutely focussed on augmenting Oracle’s already successful applications and middleware businesses. The justification and value creation arguments were clear, and more importantly were focussed on something that Oracle was already very good at. The addition of Sun with its mixture of businesses (and particularly hardware) creates too many areas for Oracle’s senior management to think about – which argues against the ability to focus at all.

Ultimately Oracle’s hardware strategy is simply not convincing enough
While we’re prepared to believe that Oracle will do a better job than Sun did of making their businesses more commercially focussed (although that’s not saying much), we think that at best Oracle will buy a temporary reprieve for the hardware business, rather than preventing a decline that we see as inevitable.

There’s a real danger that Oracle will come to discover, between 12 and 18 months from now, precisely why IBM’s strategy was to walk away from certain elements of the hardware stack and, indeed, why IBM chose not to acquire Sun when it had its chance. In the meantime, IBM (and HP for that matter) will continue to provide a warm welcome to those clients who decide that while the Sun platform isn’t yet “burning”, there’s a distinct whiff of smoke in the air, and they’d rather be on a platform with a clearer more secure future.

One particularly interesting point is that Oracle stated that it’s not all that interested in the X86 market, which implies a level of confidence in Sun’s proprietary processors that the market doesn’t share. Sun cannot ship the volume that is necessary to maintain a viable processor family. A focus on “high value, differentiated products” can easily turn into “unprofitable but expensive niche” unless Oracle can find a way to bankroll the ongoing development of the Sun processor technology similar to the one that IBM found in its deals with the games console suppliers. IBM has shipped tens of millions of processors for games consoles, all of which form part of, and help to fund, the Power family of processors.

Oracle’s software strategy is much more coherent but Sun brings a mixed bag
While Java is the big prize, there are some niche technologies (the identity management technology for example) that add value to Oracle’s software portfolio. Much of Sun’s Java middleware is to be positioned as the reference implementation (which much of it originally was).

Given Oracle’s stewardship of InnoDB we think Oracle will most likely provide a good home for MySQL. But we’re not convinced that technologies like NetBeans are going to enjoy much attention as time goes on.

The absence of a services story is the elephant in the room
For a while now we’ve been characterising this decade as the decade when the power shifts from software to services. In simple terms the 1970’s and 80’s were the decades of hardware, the 90’s and the 00’s the decades of software and we’re now into an era where services holds sway.

It’s a simplistic characterisation of an industry that’s too complex to be defined in such a pat way, but it was interesting to hear the word “solutions” used over and over again by Oracle – as so many others have for the past 20 years – just as vendors like IBM are beginning to talk about “business outcomes”.

Yes, Oracle will be able to find customers that want to buy hardware, and even “solutions”, but the real money, particularly in the high end of the market, increasingly lies in the ability to help customers deliver business outcomes.

This is why, even before Oracle started talking about a return to the 60’s, we felt that the acquisition of a hardware company was basically a retrograde step, and that Oracle’s long term success would have been better served if the company had bought a services organisation. Of course, there’s still plenty of time for Oracle to do that. Watch this space.

• Employee morale is at a deeply low point across Europe
• This is a far cry from Bill Thomas’s vision of Fun, Impact and Operational Excellence
• It is not to0 late but HP has got to work hard to re-engage with European Employees
• My advice – close the chapter, re-engage, retain some of the old EDS values while blending them with HP’s

Employee morale is at a deeply low point across Europe

HP Enterprise Services is having a gnarly time of it at the moment. The loss of the DWP desktop deal with Fujitsu (which also has one or two HR challenges to deal with) named as preferred bidder and tipped as most likely to replace HP could be spun as just a set-back, but combined with the level of employee unhappiness that going on strike implies it’s clear that HP’s most senior executives need to step in.

Morale within the former EDS organisation astonishingly low across Europe (most notably in the UK and Germany), with employees expressing a mixture of despair and anger at the scale of the redundancies in Europe and serious pressure on salaries.

This is a far cry from Bill Thomas’s vision of Fun, Impact and Operational Excellence
At HP’s annual analyst event in 2009, Bill Thomas (then the GM of Europe) characterised his vision using the four words “Fun, Impact and Operational Excellence”. It’s fair to say that EDS was never a “cosy” place to work, but the company managed to attract and retain some really formidable talent  in deal-making, service delivery and hard-core technology expertise.

One of the things that Bill Thomas, and his boss Ron Rittenmeyer, were absolutely focussed on was operational excellence. Bill was able to express his enthusiasm for operational excellence in more moderate terms than Ron, who was almost violent in his insistence on it – But it was always clear that both shared the same passion and both were very willing to reward employees that delivered.

Clients picked up on this. In 2008 I spent an evening in the company of a civil service mandarin who had nothing but good things to say about his EDS account director and the EDS relationship as a whole. He wasn’t interested in how “cool” EDS was, or how “exciting” their solutions were, he was happy that he had a partner that cared about his success.

It’s not the same today, despite the fact that HP Enterprise Services actually has more capabilities post-merger, and still cares every bit as much about client outcomes.

It is not too late but HP has got to work hard to re-engage with European Employees
HP’s services arm now has a European workforce which feels that is has been badly treated in terms of pay, conditions and empowerment.  If HP doesn’t take proactive steps to re-engage the company will find it increasingly difficult to replace the talent that it will inevitably lose.

Without some corrective action HP’s business will suffer.

My advice – close the chapter, re-connect, retain some of the old EDS values while blending them with HP’s
HP needs to move to close this chapter in its employee-relations history. First, the outstanding grievances need to be resolved. Next the company should cancel the pay freeze and provide a transparent process through which employees can see how their efforts will be rewarded. The company also needs to establish and fund a retention program.

Finally, in order to move on HP needs to acknowledge those elements of the EDS values that won the company business – The Texan focus on “outcomes” (which helped to keep clients) and the suited conservatism (which helped to win larger clients who don’t want “funky” preferring “formal”) and then blend in HP’s  reputation for  innovation (something that EDS did a lot of but was never quite able to leverage).

HP Services has a level of capabiliy that is only matched by IBM in terms of its, depth, geographical coverage and basic pulling power. The key in services, unlike perhaps the hardware business, is to focus on profits as well as cost….

If you’re in a hurry;

• Overall the session ticked pretty much all of the boxes
• Guest speaker William Shatner did a nice job of talking about collaboration
• IBM’s approach to partners gets better and better
• IBM understands the value and importance of “Open” – even if there is still plenty to do
• But There wasn’t enough talk about how consumable lotus services are by other apps
• Project Vulcan offers a view into the future of the Lotus offering

Overall the session ticked pretty much all of the boxes

The session did a great job of covering all of the necessary bases. The session opened with the (now de rigeur) kick-ass drum and violin combo,  followed by a really superb pitch by Bob Picciano. I was especially pleased to see the extent to which Bob emphasised the role of partners and “openness”. Bob also announced his move to Director of Sales for Software Group (a role where his experience, and understanding of partners will be really valuable). Bob is succeeded by Alistair Rennie, who I first met (and was impressed by) over a decade ago in his days at Websphere.

The session also delivered a slew of key announcements, the most notable of these (for me) were;

• Lotus Connections 3.0 – Extended mobile access and Social Analytics
• Lotus Live – Now has 18 million users after only 18months.
• Lotus Symphony 3.0 due in Q2 – based on the OpenOffice 3.x codebase, contains improvements to the user experience, functionality and stability of Symphony as well as support for Visual Basic Macros in xls files.
• Lotus Traveller – Now available on a bunch of phones (including iPhone)

Guest speaker William Shatner did a nice job of talking about collaboration

Bob’s opening was followed by William Shatner, who gave a good pitch on Collaboration – nice to have an entertaining guest who can tie his piece into the theme of collaboration.

IBM’s approach to partners gets better and better

As it happens, I think that 2010 is going to be a hugely important year for partners. I’m writing a piece on the topic that (essentially) talks about – Redefining “we”. Traditionally when vendors say “We” they mean themselves… in the future “we” is going to have to mean them plus their partners.

You’d expect the GM of Lotus to be smart enough to acknowledge partners – especially when standing on a stage in front of 5,200 of them. But this was more than just lip service. The importance of partnership came up over a dozen times in the session, here are a couple of quotes:

“You should never doubt the role that YOU the lotus community have played…”
“Our strongest foundation is the technology that YOU have, the solutions YOU’ve built..”

IBM understands the value and importance of “Open” – even if there is still plenty to do

I was sitting next to Bob Sutor during the session, and couldn’t help nudging him and asking him if he felt a little bit of pride at the extent to which his decade of work on evangelising “openness” seems to be paying off.

IBM is really serious about openness – from open standards to ease of integration. IBM has made it very easy for third parties to create components and applications that can be plugged into the lotus foundation. This is good stuff for partners and customers.

Not enough talk about how consumable lotus services are by other apps

My only caveat where it comes to the open story is that much of the emphasis is on integration with Lotus – with lotus at the core. I’d like to see more discussion about how components from Lotus can be consumed by other apps – I’d like to use Quickr as the repository for an application we’re building for example.

Project Vulcan offers a view into the future of the Lotus offering

The final segment introduced us to project Vulcan pitched as the next generation of Lotus Notes combining email, calendaring, profiles, to do lists and social analytics. It will also include filtering and intelligence to increase the relevance of content as well as using social analytics to suggest content or actions.

The goal is to make Vulcan an open platform, supported by public services and APIs. Several bloggers have pointed out the apparent similarity with Google Wave, and there do indeed appear to be common ideas, which isn’t a bad thing by any means.

• RIM isn’t in immediate trouble but the writing is on the wall
• RIM will pay  the price for sitting on its laurels
• RIM’s only USP is the global Data deals it has in place
• Droid phones that are tied to Mobile Networks wont roam the way the Blackberry does but Google and Apple may be able to do some big deals..
• If you’re about to renew a blackberry deal or you’re considering signing up for RIM, then do the data roaming maths

RIM isn’t in immediate trouble, but the writing is on the wall

RIM isn’t going to fail in a spectacular fashion, the company’s installed base means that it will lose enterprise mobile market share relatively slowly.  But it will lose enterprise market share as users see the choices that are offered by open standards based alternatives and reject the proprietary,  environment that RIM has to offer.

RIM emerged when cellular data networks were in their infancy and the company provided a way  for enterprises to securely and reliably extend email to mobile devices. Frankly, it didn’t matter that the phones were ugly – that wasn’t the point RIM wasn’t selling sexy phones – it was selling a way to get email safely onto its clunky phones and access to a global data roaming agreement that meant that businesses weren’t bankrupted by data roaming charges.

RIM will pay the price for sitting on its laurels

RIM will fail because it took its privileged position for granted, and I think it’s now too late for the company to innovate it’s way out of the proprietary hole it’s sitting in

RIM’s only USP is the global Data deals it has in place

Secure, reliable email is available today on mobile devices. As an example, IBM announced support for encrypted email on the iPhone at Lotusphere today. RIM’s last USP lies in data roaming, and here the problem is that a lot has changed – Data networks are more available, and data costs are coming down.

<bad joke>
Little Boy – “Daddy, why do Buffalo always look so sad?”
Dad – “It’s the roaming charges, son, the roaming charges…”
</bad joke>

A client recently evaluated the iPhone vs RIM, and the only reason the iPhone lost out was the prohibitive cost of European data roaming with the iPhone. In 18 months time, the cost model is likely to have changed significantly.

Droid phones that are tied to Mobile Networks wont roam the way the Blackberry does but Google and Apple may be able to do some big deals..

The issue of roaming data means that I think it’s unlikely Android phones that are tied to one mobile network will be able to deliver data roaming at the right price – It’ll take players like Google or Apple to do those mega deals. Since  Apple began opening up the iPhone to competing mobile operators, the company may well have a head start.

If you’re about to renew a blackberry deal or you’re considering signing up for RIM, then do the data roaming maths

If you’re approaching a potential jumping off point, or you’re currently looking at mobile email, then the key lies in doing the data roaming maths – If most of your users are going to be using their devices within a single mobile network, then RIM may struggle to make an economic case even today….

• A good move by IBM
• the acquisition builds on IBM’s portfolio in a number of respects
• Lombardi gains access to IBM’s partner community
• Lombardi’s partners gain access to IBM’s sales channel
• Lombardi’s customers gain too
• But of course there’s overlap…
• To get the most IBM needs to do some hard integration
• The billion dollar question (which came from James Governor) is Lotus Live..

A good move by IBM
This is a good acquisition, it gives IBM a more complete story to tell (adding “People” to the Process (WebSphere) and Information (Filenet) triangle that IBM uses when talking about BPM.

The acquisition builds on IBM’s portfolio in a number of respects
But it’s not just the “addition” of more people-centric BPM tooling, Lombardi brings a portfolio of industry vertical expertise, and a methodology/coaching approach that goes down very well with clients.

As I (along with many many others) have been saying for a long old time – “Cool tools” are a fraction of what it takes to effectively “do” BPM, strong middleware gets you just a step closer and the rest is down to your behaviour; The methodology you choose (and how you choose to apply it) represents a big component of BPM success, followed by your organisation’s cultural ability (or willingness) to commit to it.

Lombardi gains access to IBM’s partner community
This move is good for Lombardi too, while the company has managed to gather an impressive customer list, from a broad range of verticals on its own. By becoming part of the IBM family Lombardi gets access to a customer base,  sales force, geographic reach and a partner network that very very few can boast of (I can only think of two tech co’s that come close – Microsoft and HP).

Lombardi’s partners gain access to IBM’s sales channel
I think it’s also good for Lombardi’s partners, who will also get access to geos, channels and potential customers that it would have taken Lombardi decades to develop.

Lombardi’s customers gain too
This acquisition makes Lombardi’s technology more secure not less. This isn’t an acquisition on a whim, Steve Mills has signed off on a few acquisitions over the years and he’s not one for spending IBM money just for laughs.

IBM clearly sees the acquisition as adding that essential “third element” – people-centric BPM where they admit they’ve not been overly strong in the past: IBM is not going to throw this technology away.

But of course there’s overlap…
The natural first question (asked by Judith Hurwitz) related to the potential overlap between the Websphere BPM technology, Filenet and Lombardi. Craig did a sterling job of pointing out the fairly natural positioning of Websphere Dynamic Process Edition as “Process”, Filenet as “Information” and now Lombardi as “People”. But IBM is well aware that without some clear indications about how the overlaps will be dealt with, the “third leg on the stool” gambit will only get them so far.

I agree with IBM’s contention that these different “modes” or “styles” of BPM tend to be done by different people in different parts of the organisation – But if you really want to claim to be “end to end” your integration needs to be a whole lot stronger than BPMN or XPDL file exchange.

In fairness I ought to make a couple of points:

• there has been progress in doing integration between Filenet and Websphere , even if I’d like to see even more
• Lombardi is one of the longest standing WebSphere partners – the Lombardi platform has been running on WebSphere since the early 2000’s so a fair amount of integration already comes for free
• Craig did acknowledge that there’ll be integration work to do

To get the most IBM needs to do some hard integration
In the medium term the “three legs” pitch will work, but long term I’d like to see the links between the modelling tools and the underlying middleware become much more seamless – getting the middleware together should be straightforward, getting the modelling tools to integrate is likely to be gnarly.

The billion dollar question (which came from James Governor) is Lotus Live..
James asked about the integration with Lotus Live, which is closely related to other questions about the two companys’ online offerings (BlueWorks from IBM and Blueprint from Lombardi. As it happens BlueWorks runs on the Lotus Live infrastructure (the url is apps.lotuslive.com/bpmblueworks/), but isn’t all that integrated into the other Lotus Live offerings. Like James, I think there’s a big, big , opportunity here, perhaps more for Blueprint (which is simpler and easier to use than BlueWorks).

The implication being that they haven’t had that many direct complaints… so either there’s a bunch of us who have just been unlucky, or more people should complain!

Merseyside Police – I now have a crime mumber! – 20091204-0033

Sage Pay – A fairly standard email, but also – A tweet to my twitter account, and a personal comment on my blog – Really good start by Sage

123-reg – A personalised email, which – while they can’t do much, did involve the guys at 123-reg doing a little DNS digging for me – so thanks to them for that

Have also dropped an email to MoneyBox Live the BBC R4 program.

And it seems they’re STILL at it!

I received a comment today from someone who’d found my original blog entry (alas, after having problems)… so that was it… I’ve emailed the following organisations;

- 123-reg (the registrars of the domain)

- sage pay (the provider of the company’s payment service)

-Merseyside Police

- The liverpool echo

- http://www.consumerdirect.gov.uk/

- As well as the company that provides the e-commerce platform http://www.purplesheep.co.uk/

I’ll be posting the responses of the different organisations, as they come in to me!

In the meantime – this evening’s google search came up with :-

1. therning.org/ magnus » Blog Archive » ComputerWebstore—avoid them!

   I also did some digging and found out that the address to ComputerWebstore is actually a mail box rented from MBE Liverpool (they even replied to my email …
   therning.org/magnus/archives/66 – Cached – Similar –

2. Forums – Retailer Stalling Over Refund [Computerwebstore] – PC Advisor

   14 posts - 11 authors

   Computerwebstore Ltd Imperial Court Exchange Street East Liverpool … For all issues related to Computer Webstore orders and failure to receive any goods …
   www.pcadvisor.co.uk › Forums › Consumerwatch – Cached – Similar –

3. computerwebstore

   Re the comment left re Computerwebstore. Our experiences are pretty much the same except in our case we still haven’t got our money back and if you read the …
   computerwebstore.blogspot.com/ – Cached – Similar –

4. Computerwebstore reviews | Customer reviews of Computerwebstore

   19 reviews of Computerwebstore | Customers about Computerwebstore : »Rubbish« »DISGUSTING RIP OFF B*****DS!!« »Worst company I have ever dealt with« | Read …
   www.trustpilot.co.uk/review/www.computerwebstore.co.uk – Cached – Similar –

5. computer webstore – MoneySavingExpert.com Forums

   17 posts - 12 authors

   Bought an item from Computer Webstore on 27.10.2009. They claim it’s been shipped on 4th of November, but the item has not arrived yet. …
   forums.moneysavingexpert.com › … › Techie Stuff – Cached – Similar