Big Vendors Scrap for Enterprise 2.0 Supremacy
A new Forrester report analyzes how the big IT vendors are utilizing Web 2.0 products in the enterprise. As with most Forrester reports, it overlooks the many innovative startups in the 'Web Office' space - focusing instead of the big fish such as Microsoft, IBM, Oracle. However there is a new report coming soon that will address what Forrester calls "pure play" vendors. And it must be said that the big vendors are the ones many enterprises look to for their IT solutions, including web 2.0 technology. So let's check out this report and see what it has to say.
The crux of the report is that each of the biggest IT vendors Forrester looked at - Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, SAP and BEA - has a unique perspective on the market. States Forrester:
- BEA, through acquisitions and new 2.0 products, now has numerous enterprise Web 2.0 capabilities, including blogs, wikis, communities, tagging, tag clouds, and a framework for building mash-up applications;
- IBM melds the world of application development with user experience with its WebSphere product family. It is a dominant player in the collaboration space and will deliver enterprise Web 2.0 functionality as part of its upcoming Lotus Quickr and Connections offerings;
- Microsoft's entry into the market is clear: if you want enterprise Web 2.0, you get it in Sharepoint;
- Oracle is a relevant infrastructure vendor and a thought leader in enterprise applications by offering Web 2.0 capabilities;
- SAP is looking to create end-to-end processes.
One company the report doesn't mention - at all - is Google. While not a traditional IT vendor for enterprise, Google is certainly a "big" vendor and making a lot of progress in enterprise. Forrester describes the enterprise 2.0 moves by big vendors like Microsoft and IBM as a "land grab". So Google should've been included, as it is grabbing its fair share of 'land' in the enterprise.
Having said that, traditional IT people will be quick to remind me that vendors like Google haven't necessarily got all the right solutions for enterprise yet: security and compliance are two areas where Google and other web 2.0 vendors have work to do. And the ability to integrate with existing business processes is another hot spot - the Forrester report points out that "line-of-business applications have traditionally been very focused on structured business processes", which is something that Microsoft, IBM et al have a lot of experience in.
Forrester came up with a good diagram showing how web 2.0 technologies could be implemented by the big vendors, to support business process:
Collaboration is the name of the game with Enterprise 2.0, so I agree with Forrester that web 2.0 tools can be very useful here. In my time as a corporate worker (I used to manage intranet and internet sites), collaboration was very difficult to achieve with traditional IT tools - so wikis, blogs and Web Office tools such as Google Apps have really raised the bar for collaboration in enterprises.
So which of the big vendors is making the most progress with Enterprise 2.0? According to Forrester, IBM has made "the boldest move into Enterprise 2.0 from any of the traditional vendors" - with Lotus Connections being their key product. Read/WriteWeb covered the launch of Connections in January 2007, noting also that Microsoft went on the defensive at that time with a press release touting SharePoint. Lotus Connections includes blogs, tagging, communities, profiles, and task management; Forrester wrote that it "represents a highly integrated platform that is enterprise-ready."
Forrester said of SharePoint that it "has had strong momentum in the market, and it’s installed and under evaluation in many enterprises serving a variety of purposes."
In conclusion, the big vendors are all well and truly part of the web 2.0 landscape now. The products, like Lotus Connections and SharePoint, remain complex and broad in scope - which in many respects goes against the grain of simple and easy-to-use web 2.0 products. However Forrester points out what many of us have been saying for a while: that the big vendors will "acquire best-of-breed vendors to augment, extend, and cover gaps in their own enterprise Web 2.0 portfolios." Google has been on such a buying spree over the past year or so, and the other big vendors will do the same.
IBM 2.0 pic by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid
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such a shame that all these web 2.0 companies today are building stuff for the consumers instead of businesses.
@Stefan,
A lot of applications are built for *people* - which are traditionally consumers, but when put in the context of big business, become enterprise end users, or employees.
Often times the product traction is just easier (cheaper?) to get in the B2C sector than the B2B which is a harder sell.
Blogs were once considered for consumers as well, now that's changed.
- Tara
As part of our service at "Search Free Apps" (www.SearchFreeApps.com), we monitor the release of new enterprise products related to document sharing, collaboration, and product management. I would estimate that our database of robust enterprise collaboration sites now numbers well over 20 separate Web 2.0 services. Many of these services are free for a small number of users (which is why they are included in our search engine) but charge for enterprise applications and deliver reliability and functionality which is appropriate for large businesses.
In this space in particular, a focus on the "majors" misses the vibrant innovation taking place at the other end of the spectrum. Moreover, I suspect that in all but a few instances, the enterprise services offered by these newer start-ups will meet or exceed the needs of most clients at a small portion of the price.
Bruce Judson
Founder, Search Free Apps
www.SearchFreeApps.com
Good point, Bruce, there is a huge amount of vibrant innovation taking place at the other end of the spectrum. And, these companies are providing line-of-business applications that have been the stock in trade of the "majors". Already, there are CRM and project management applications supporting the structured business processes that companies have come to expect. The innovators that build these applications move faster than the majors and are much more fun to watch.
From my perspective the major vendors are in charge of putting out blobs of functionality, standing behind it, marketing the hell out of it and seeing what sticks. Maybe they have enough compelling functionality, but their main job is to attract enough developers to flesh it out.
It's not the technology, its the ability to stand behind a core platform (or at least be sued :) that the innovators lack-- and why they will never succeed with big business. In fact, price is the least of big business worries (plenty of free platforms fill the computing dustbin).
Ask yourself, at this point what really distinguishes SharePoint from Lotus Connections from whatever BEA and Oracle are calling their solutions?
The innovators aren't selling to business, they're really selling to the large vendors-- hoping that the economics make it cheaper for a large vendor to buy them then to build it themselves. If they manage to get a few customers along the way, then it helps their valuation.
For truth in commenting, we've placed our bets with the SharePoint platform. It's big, large, complicated and needs a lot of work-- and it ships with millions of Windows Server machines.
In other words, it's perfect! :)
We use Drupal at Best Buy. It's killer, virtually nothing you can't do with it. It's free and flexible.
@5: Sharepoint may well ship with millions of Windows servers, but it is more departmental collaboration platform than Web2.0... MS is trying to add Web2.0 functionality, but much of this is coming from third-parties rather than MS itself.
IBM/Lotus, on the other hand, is really taking Web2.0 to the enterprise as part of its "Web2.0 Goes to Work" initiative. Connections is a valuable package of social networking functionality (shared bookmarks, blogs, communities, Linked-In style profiles etc.) which goes far beyond what Sharepoint currently offers.
@6: Drupal and many other Open Source collaboration platforms are indeed killer apps for certain SMB-level apps, but in many cases lack the enterprise-strength frameworks that would allow true collaboration and social networking across larger organisations. They definitely have their place, but I see BEA, IBM, MS etc. still having the lions share of the enterprise marketplace for a while to come.
Interesting report however. Nice one Forrester...
IBM could be the best, but it's not selling itself very well: no free product to test and share the results. Google is playing it so much well...
Hey, just an FYI. The follow-up to this doc will focus on smaller and newer vendors that have the potential to disrupt the major vendor plans. There is huge and really cool innovation going on among smaller firms. I agree that it's a shame that so many smaller vendor offerings will not hit the enterprise.
- Rob