ReadWriteWeb Enterprise

Why is Google Not Deploying Gears Aggressively?

Bernard Lunn — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 08:00:00 -0800

We recently had the opportunity to meet with two senior executives at Google. At the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, ReadWriteWeb editor Richard MacManus and I met with Dave Girouard, President of Google Enterprise. Then a few weeks later, I met with Vic Gundotra, VP of Engineering, via video conference. Both meetings provided some interesting background - but the one question that keeps returning and that was not so well answered is: why is Google not deploying Gears aggressively?

What Is Gears?

As explained on Google's FAQ:

"Gears is an open-source browser extension that lets developers create web applications that can run offline. Gears provides three key features:

A local server, to cache and serve application resources (HTML, JavaScript, images, etc.) without needing to contact a server;
A database, to store and access data from within the browser;
A worker thread pool, to make web applications more responsive by performing expensive operations in the background."

That is important. The biggest single hurdle to mass adoption of web-based office software is the inability to use it when online access is not possible (in airplanes and other fun places off the grid). Offline access is also reassuring for those times when the cloud platform is having trouble: at least you can work offline for a while. This is not a small feature. It is the big one.

We get the usual beta warnings from Google:

"Gears is currently a beta product; moreover, it is currently considered to be a developer-only release. When the developer community has had a chance to examine, critique, and improve Gears, a final version suitable for use with production applications will be made available."

But we learn to ignore these beta designations from Google. Gmail still says beta.

But in this case, Google really is being shy about fully bringing Gears to its own product line-up.

Zoho Is Using Gears. Why Not Google Apps?

Zoho started using Gears in Writer as early as August 2007, nearly 18 months ago. In October 2008, Zoho Mail went offline with Gears.

On March 31st, 2008, Google announced Gears for Docs. This was a step forward, albeit 8 months after its competition (Zoho) did it.

So, the big question is, "When will Gmail enable offline use via Gears?" I posed this question to Dave Grirouard, President of Google Enterprise. The response was along the lines of, making it work on the scale of Gmail is not a trivial engineering challenge. That sort of made sense. But Gears has been out for a long time; it is a critical feature, and Google has the best software engineering talent on the planet.

Ahem, What About Chrome?

Again, from Google's FAQ:

"Gears works on the following browsers:

Apple Mac OS X (10.4 or higher)
Firefox 1.5 or higher

Safari 3.1.1 or higher (requires OS X Tiger 10.4.11+ or Leopard 10.5.3+)

Linux (Requirements)
Firefox 1.5 or higher

Microsoft Windows (XP or higher)
Firefox 1.5 or higher

Internet Explorer 6 or higher

Microsoft Windows Mobile (5 or higher)
Internet Explorer 4.01 or higher

The following devices are not supported
Samsung i320 and i320N

Orange SPV C600

Motorola Q

Additionally, the team is working on supporting Safari on Mac OS X in a future release."

Notice the elephant not in the room? Yes, Gears does not work on Chrome. Is that because Chrome does not support extensions?

~~Is Google holding up Gears until Chrome can support Gears? We hope not. That seems contrary to its philosophy to date, which has been to couple them very loosely. So that is probably just coincidence.~~

Editor's update: we obviously got the above section totally wrong, so it's been struck out. Apologies for that error, but thanks to our commenters for quickly pointing it out!

"Gears for Mobile Is the Holy Grail"

I had a fascinating talk with Vic Gundotra (VP of Engineering) and Sumit Agarwal (Mobile Product Management). They laid out a mobile strategy that clearly shows that Google is thinking bigger and deeper than anyone else about the future of this huge market. They were also frank about the scale of the engineering challenge. Looking globally, there is no dominant mobile device. In fact, it is an extremely fragmented market. That is a problem when each user expects a native interface.

Vic Gundotra described how about a year ago Google bet that the mobile browser would be the unifying force. Specifically, the strategy was to standardize on Webkit-based browsers. That makes sense but still leaves out the all-important offline access question. So, I posed the "What about Gears?" question. I was told that Gears in a mobile browser was, of course, the "holy grail."

The Answer Given Is Probably Correct

Google is confirming that Gears is critically important to both its web apps and its mobile strategy, and that the delay is simply because deploying Gears on the scale that Google operates is a tough engineering challenge. That seems like the best explanation. But we would love to hear from our readers. Have you used Zoho Mail with Gears, and did it work well? Is it simply a scale issue that is delaying Google's more aggressive deployment of Gears?

Is SaaS Cheaper Than Licensed Software?

Jason Rothbart — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:35:00 -0800

Most people quickly answer this question in the affirmative. I certainly do. However, there are people out there who aren't sure. They look at the monthly cost of a SaaS application and compare it to the equivalent licensed product over an extended period of time. Given enough time, you will eventually hit a point when the SaaS product appears to be more expensive. Let's look at it from the perspective of the total cost of ownership (TCO).

The true cost of a licensed product is much higher than just the software. Here are other things to factor in:

Hardware costs: You have to either buy machines or add your software to existing servers and manage them. If it is a mission-critical application, you will probably need dedicated machines and back-ups.
Additional software costs: You will most likely need an OS, application server software, a database, monitoring software, etc. Many of these products are open source now, but there are still associated costs.
Implementation costs: In my experience, the implementation costs associated with a behind-the-firewall solution are always higher than those of a SaaS application. There is simply more to do. You will either pay consultants or use your own valuable resources and time to worry about installing software, integrating it, building servers, configuration, etc.
Maintenance labor: If you have in-house software, there is going to be some level of effort required to keep it happy. Your IT people will need to take care of it, which will keep them from doing more value-added activities.

Another huge factor here is the ability to get the latest and greatest technology. Once you install software in a data center, it becomes more difficult to upgrade and maintain it (especially if you customize it). In such a case, you will be stuck with old software that you will have to replace in the same time frame described above. In other words, unless you are absolutely sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that your licensed software is going to meet your business needs for 5 years or more, then SaaS might make financial sense.

Let's look at a real-world example. A 100-person company has been sharing files via email and internal servers. The executives have finally concluded they need to join the 21st century and put a solution in place. One option is to implement SharePoint. Here is a rough estimate of what that might cost:

Year 1
MOSS server = $4,500
User client access license = $90
Hosting and maintenance = $5,000
Implementation and developer support = $20,000
Total = $29,590

Year 2 and on
Hosting and maintenance = $5,000
Developer support = $3,000
Total = $8,000

I know of a SaaS solution that has 80% of the file-collaboration functionality of SharePoint but charges $850 per month for 100 users.

Year 1
SaaS fees = $10,200
Implementation support = $10,000
Total = $20,200

Year 2 and on
SaaS fees = $10,200
Total = $10,200

It would take over 4 and a half years before the licensed software became cheaper. By that time, I'm quite sure there would be another solution that could replace SharePoint, and the cycle would start again. We can quibble about the numbers, but you get the point. Plus, the numbers don't reflect that the SaaS solution is likely to improve and innovate faster than the licensed software by a significant amount.

What do you think? Have you done this analysis, and what did you conclude?

10 Things to Know About Salesforce.com

Bernard Lunn — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 06:00:00 -0800

These are reflections from having spent a few days at the annual Salesforce.com event, Dreamforce. We hope they are valuable to people who need an executive summary-level understanding of the company and its position in the cloud and SaaS marketplace. Full disclosure, the company paid for my flight and hotel to attend Dreamforce.

1. They Are Ambitious

Salesforce wants to be the dominant cloud platform for business. Their view is that computing has seen two waves: the first was the mainframe, and then the PC client server, and now the third is cloud computing. They have been consistent about this since their inception in March 1999, so this is no recent bandwagon hopping.

2. They Have a Good Shot at Meeting This Ambition

They have a powerful mix of capability and relentless focus. They have the resources -- cash, cash flow, clients, track record, management team, and so on -- needed to execute on this vision. Their competitors are bigger, but Salesforce has the advantage of focus. They are pure play, and they have no legacy to protect.

3. They Are a Marketing Machine with Flair

Having attended a few big rah-rah events, such as Java One, I see that Dreamforce compares well on scale, details, and flair. Its messaging and visuals were consistent and powerful, and everything just worked well. This all costs a lot of money (which relates to the next point), but that money has to be well spent, and they seem to be doing that. The presentations had real flair and humor. Benioff knows how to be controversial to get press. They are a billion-dollar business that still acts like a start-up. Even the music was good.

4. Their Biggest Issue Is Maybe Price

There are many lower-cost competitors to their base CRM application. Now that SaaS is increasingly accepted, due in part to Salesforce's evangelical marketing, smaller competitors spending a tiny fraction of what they spend on marketing can undercut them. Their most visible competitor is Zoho, and it does not look like Zoho is going to shy away from this battle, and they have staying power. So Salesforce is fighting on two fronts. On the one hand they are competing with Oracle and SAP for big enterprise accounts. On the other hand they are fighting low-cost competitors, such as Zoho. This will require all their marketing and management skills.

5. They See Today's Troubled Economy as Their Moment to Win Big

They got their early big traction in the last downturn around 2001 and 2002 and have never looked back. They are greedy while others are fearful. They spend more, grow, and hire, while other firms lay off people. The basic economic advantages of cloud computing, such as lower capital expenditures and a faster time to market, resonate in a downturn to the point that they overcome the resistance of conservative buyers to cloud computing.

6. Their Vendor Eco-System Is Making Money and Acting Bullish

Salesforce knows that this matters. This is the lesson they learned from Microsoft. Will they move into the spaces currently occupied by vendors? Of course they will. Vendors will have to be agile; that is just how the game works. But today, in these tough markets, we see vendors that are profitable, growing, hiring, and raising money. The winners in many segments are being defined now. It is a great time to be an entrepreneur in this space. Salesforce knows how to leverage all its capability to make a few winners do very well and then promote that success big time, thus inspiring others to come on board.

7. They Believe That Good Software Design Matters to the Core Economics of Cloud Computing

They refer constantly to their "multi-tenant kernel," which sounds very techie for a such a marketing-driven company. It does appear that they are not suffering from the scaling and reliability problems that we have seen affecting consumer Web 2.0 ventures such as Twitter and Facebook.

8. They Also Know How to Partner with Big Companies to Make Themselves Look Bigger

They wheeled out large companies, such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon, as partners. The message was, "We are at the center of an eco-system with big partners." This makes large conservative enterprise buyers feel comfortable.

9. Focused Research and Development

They have a predictable and focused R&D plan, with a major theme each year. This again makes large conservative buyers feel comfortable: they know what to expect.

10. They Will Need to be Careful About Usability Issues

They are adding so much functionality and so many partners that they face the danger of users getting confused and going to simpler point solutions. That "hairball-of-complexity" problem bedeviled Microsoft as it grew fast, but Microsoft enjoyed a lock-in that Salesforce cannot count on. The SaaS world is naturally lock-in resistant, with low switching costs. There is no sign of this being an immediate problem for the company, but it is something they will have to look out for.

See also our most recent story about Salesforce: Salesforce.com Says Hello World.

IT Must Learn to Bend or Business Will Break

Jason Rothbart — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 03:00:00 -0800

The current economic climate is having a devastating effect on almost every business around. In order to adapt to changing conditions and opportunities, businesses will need to use flexible, adaptable systems to survive. The days of expensive year-long implementations of behind-the-firewall software look to be behind us.

I recently attended a Forrester Briefing and listened to comments by analyst Peter Burris, a very smart guy. The company has done a host of studies showing that technology will be a growing part of how businesses compete and differentiate themselves in the future.

While systems and software used to be very "behind the scenes" and often transaction-based, that is the case no longer. Consumers and businesses alike buy differently, consume differently, and recommend differently. Trends such as social networking, video on demand, and e-commerce will continue to force businesses to adapt to keep up with their customers. They cannot rely on systems that take years to implement, and most don't have the budgets to make large investments, at least they won't for the next couple of years.

The growing focus on SaaS, cloud computing, application platforms, etc. are all responses to this growing trend in the market. There will be other solutions in the future for mobile, etc. that we haven't even imagined. They all drive businesses to use systems that they can deploy, change, and retire quickly. In my main job, I remember meeting a venture capitalist who talked about how his firm looks for opportunities in which it sees lots of "wiggling." He couldn't describe what that really meant, or how one gets paid for wiggling. I thought he was a lunatic.

In retrospect, he does make a good point. Things happen quickly on the Internet and in this changing global economy. When a business sees wiggling (or opportunities), either positive or negative, they need agile systems to respond. One-size-fits-all software and packaging are going the way of the VCR. I think this will continue to grow in importance and focus as enterprises evaluate new systems and invest in new technology. What do you think?

Report: Millennials Will Route Around IT Departments

Frederic Lardinois — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:20:15 -0800

According to a new report by Accenture, a large number of Millennials (those born between 1977 and 1997), expect their companies to accommodate their IT preferences, including their preferred computers and applications. More than a third of Millennials also indicated that they were dissatisfied with the technologies their employers currently provide.

Among other things, Millennials would prefer to use instant messaging, text messaging, and RSS feeds to communicate with their clients and customers, though very few companies currently support these technologies. The report also highlights that a lot of employees are simply bypassing corporate IT departments if those don't offer them the services they need.

Going Rogue

One of the most interesting results of this study is that this difference between expectations and reality has led over a quarter of the employees surveyed by Accenture to use technology that is unsupported and unsanctioned by their corporate IT departments. Almost half of all Millennials who use social networks, blogs, vlogs, or Twitter do so without support from their IT departments (and often against the IT policies of their companies). Millennials also see no problem with using unsupported mobile phones or instant messaging services at work.

Interestingly, a quarter of those who use online collaboration tools and open-source software also do so without support.

A staggering 60% of the employees surveyed by Accenture argue that they are unaware of their companies' IT policies or that they are simply not interested in following them.

The End of Email?

The report also highlights that the slow shift away from email as a preferred way to communicate continues. While older Millennials still spend around 9.5 hours a week writing and receiving work-related emails, younger Millennials in the workforce only spend about 7.7 hours on email. In contrast to this, high school and college students only spend about two hours a week on email and clearly prefer instant messaging, text messaging, or social networking sites to talk to their friends.

Of course, these are also exactly the forms of communication that most employers are not supporting yet.

Choices

The Accenture report argues that, in the long run, companies will have to adapt to their employees' technology preferences. After all, over half of the respondents in this study (52%) said that a company's use of technology was a major factor when they select an employer (though the current economic climate might turn this into a luxury for many employees).

This report definitely makes it clear that IT departments can either choose to adopt some of these technologies, or they will risk that a large number of their young employees will simply go rogue.

Mobile Messaging Reaches Record-Breaking Numbers

Sarah Perez — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 06:45:29 -0800

Mobile messaging is experiencing a period of record growth, according to some figures released from VeriSign earlier this week. Looking at the numbers more closely, some interesting trends emerge. Those include the use of messaging for social and political change, marketing, such as that done by U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's mobile campaign, and the use of mobile messaging for charitable donations. Other sectors experiencing significant increases are the enterprise and financial institutions. In those two areas alone, mobile messaging has seen a 115% increase in only a year's time, and much of that is thanks to the financial industry's adoption of the medium for business to consumer communication.

According to new numbers being released by VeriSign, Inc., mobile messaging is a fast-growing trend worldwide. The medium experienced a surge here in the U.S. thanks to the recent presidential elections as Obama utilized the platform for making announcements, but that isn't the only reason for the growth.

Explosive Growth

In Q3 2008, VeriSign Messaging and Mobile Media Divison's mobile messaging networks enabled more than 58.3 billion messages per day to travel through their pipes...10% more than in the previous quarter and up from 280 million per day in Q3. Based on these record-breaking numbers, VeriSign projects that their mobile messaging networks will enable close to 200 billion total messages by the end of the year.

Enterprises and financial institutions have seen growing numbers of mobile messages sent, too. From Q3 2007 to Q3 2008, the total number of messages delivered rose from 129 to 227 million - a 115% increase.

Much of that activity comes from SMS's new position as the preferred platform for mobile banking. VeriSign's Mobile Banking platform, which includes seven of the top ten banking brands and three of the top five credit card companies, has grown 35% since last quarter alone.

Mobile messaging, as defined by VeriSign, isn't just SMS, though. They take into account a number of different types of messages, including the following:

• SMS - Short Message Service. SMS is the most common form of mobile messaging, also referred to as "text" messaging.
• ICSMS - Inter-carrier Short Message Service. ICSMS messages are text messages exchanged between carrier networks.
• MMS - Multimedia Messaging Service. MMS allows users to send multimedia messages that include images, video and audio.
• ICMMS - Inter-carrier Multimedia Messaging Service. ICMMS messages are multimedia messages exchanged between carrier networks.
• P2P Messages - Person to person messages, or messages sent from one mobile user to another.
• A2P Messages - Application to person messages, or application-generated content such as news alerts, ring tones, promotional video clips, and enterprise messages that are sent to mobile users.

It's interesting that even as the iPhone and other app-filled devices grow in popularity, when it comes to getting information quickly, we're still turning to the mobile message - and now more than ever before. Will this trend ever level off as more people switch over to the smartphones whose "real internet" experiences no longer require text-based workarounds for getting the information needed? By the looks of these numbers, it doesn't appear that will be the case.

Image credit: enV by Nesster

When The Browser Doesn't Cut it: Basecamp's Lack of Mobility

Bernard Lunn — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 15:20:22 -0800

We at ReadWriteWeb are huge Basecamp fans. It raises the productivity of small, physically dispersed teams (like ours) to a level that enables new virtual companies to be be viable. Basecamp changes the traditional answer to the question: "can we operate virtually from around the world, or do we all need to live in the same place?" ReadWriteWeb, for example, lives on Basecamp; it is our office.

But there is one problem. Basecamp is browser native. I want mobile native. And ReadWriteWeb's VP of Content Dev Marshall Kirkpatrick tweeted today that he wants a Basecamp AIR app. Either way, it's clear that browser-only doesn't cut it anymore for Basecamp.

Why Lack of Mobile Version is Such a Pain

Let's focus on the mobile issue in this post. Like many people, I don't live at my desk. I am up and about, meeting people. I like it that way. So I rely on my Blackberry to stay in touch. But here is the problem. I get an email notification of a post within Basecamp. I can read it fine, no problem. But when I want to reply, I have to use the Blackberry browser to log into Basecamp. That is kludgy to say the least. So I open an email thread, annoying everybody else on the team.

Sure I could switch to an iPhone with a better browser. But that still relies on good connectivity all the time and I don't want to be forced to make that switch. I want something like Twitterberry, a native Blackberry interface to Basecamp.

But when you look at the world through mobile eyes, you see that this is not an incremental change. It is as fundamental as moving from Client Server to browser-native. Browsers on small mobile screens are talking heads on early TV.

This Is a Hard Problem to Solve

Some problems are totally easy to define, such as a cure for cancer, longer lasting batteries or really cheap solar energy - but much, much, much harder to implement. So I am going to do the easy bit - define the problem - and hope that somebody comes up with the solution.

The needs are in 3 "buckets":

1. Mobile Native user interface
2. User centric, not project centric
3. Collaborative list building

Start With Mobile

My short-hand description is "like Basecamp but mobile native". That is easy to say, but tough to implement for 4 reasons:

1. Mobile native user interface. Ideally 90% of my actions are on a mobile device with a tiny screen and keyboard. I will do the more complex configuration and housekeeping type work on a browser in the 10% of my time when I am working on a fully fledged laptop/desktop. Most developers spend 90% of their time creating on a laptop/desktop and only 10% communicating in the "real world". For most of us, that ratio is different.

2. Offline syncing. Much of the time my mobile device is "off air". Those are opportunities to catch up on To Do Lists, Objectives, Milestones and the other planning type activities. You can do these sitting on an airplane, train or waiting in line at Starbucks. Syncing your personal planning to your group communication tool (Basecamp or whatever) is an annoying extra step that is a time sink.

3. Any mobile device. I use a Blackberry. I like it, but I may get seduced by the iPhone or may have something totally different in the future. More to the point, I cannot possibly predict what devices my collaborators will have and the vast majority of mobile devices are neither Blackberry nor iPhone. Communication has to work at the lowest common denominator but the user interface has to be native. As a Blackberry user, I don't care a hoot about the compromises the developer faces having to design for Blackberry, iPhone, Nokia, etc. The same is true for people with other devices, iPhone users being the most vehement about native user interfaces.

The SMS Lowest Common Denominator?

SMS without the interrupt or cost issues. "Lowest common denominator for communication" makes one think of SMS. But SMS has major costs - both time and money. Services that generate lots of email messages are bad enough, but lots of SMS messages are way worse.

Individual Centric, Not Project Centric

This may be even hard to solve than mobile native, but the issues are linked.

Like many people I multi-task across multiple projects, working with different teams in different companies. This is an increasingly common experience for many people, even if multiple projects/teams within one company is still more common. "Dipping in and out of" multiple Basecamp projects is a pain. My To Do List may be tagged by Project, but I want only one To Do List, that syncs with individual Projects To Do Lists.

Collaborative List Building

Many people use Excel for building lists - marketing lists, to do lists, feature lists and so on. It may be a hammer to crack a nut, not what it was designed for, but people do this. As list building requires collaboration we start using "web office" type spreadsheets such as Google Apps or Zoho. This is classic "hammer to crack a nut". Excel is still better than any web office competitor for heavy duty spreadsheet work, such as building a financial model for a venture, but relatively weak on collaboration. List building needs very simple features but needs to be very collaboration intensive. A slightly more sophisticated version of Tasks on a Blackberry that is collaborative might be close.

The Solution: a User Interface Maestro!

This may come as an extension to Basecamp or a totally different service that can use services such as Basecamp. Or even an alternative to Basecamp, much as I love them.

These problems cannot be solved at the technical level only. I am sure the architecture issues are important, but this is primarily a user interface challenge. This requires inspiration, a real user interface maestro.

Using Twitterberry shows some of the issues. It is a lot better than using SMS and the browser directly, but it is still sorely lacking (as 4 days of TweetPorting from Web 2.0 Expo made very clear). And Twittering is one simple task/feature. Doing this for the richness of tasks in Basecamp is an order of magnitude harder.

A short term fix for me could be a native Blackberry interface to Basecamp. If 37 Signals offered this I would be happier and if they also did iPhone and Symbian for Nokia and others they could crack the "mobile native" issue. but I suspect it would not solve my "individual centric, not project centric" issue.

Also Basecamp was "born on" the browser. I suspect that something "born on" the mobile phone could be the next generation.

Does this need resonate with you and have you seen anything like this in the wild? Or in Beta? Finally, is Basecamp really the best project management solution now in this increasingly mobile-based work world? We'd love to hear your suggestions for alternatives.

Etelos White Labels its Platform - Squarely Targeting Enterprise

Richard MacManus — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 18:55:43 -0800

Web Office vendor Etelos announced recently that it is enabling enterprise customers to white-label the Etelos platform, via a multi-product offering called the Etelos Platform Suite (detailed below). Up till now, Etelos has been a company that offers a wide range of apps and services to developers and vendors - it took care of everything from billing to customer management. Most of that service offering was done via a proprietary platform. Essentially, now Etelos is letting other companies use that platform to do the very same thing.

This is interesting, because Etelos has in many ways built a business off the back of other platforms - such as Google Apps, iPhone, Netvibes, Pageflakes and Windows Live. Now Etelos is a full-fledged platform itself.

The "Etelos Platform Suite" is squarely aimed at Enterprise. Etelos Founder and CEO Danny Kolke said in the announcement that "our larger partners want the opportunity to have their own marketplaces and tools to manage distribution channels." He also noted that large partners now have applications "that they need to move to the web for implementation and scalability."

This is precisely what IBM recently told us, when explaining why Big Blue is now making serious moves in the browser. IBM told us that their customers don't want to do installs anymore, that they want the rich experience that desktop apps have traditionally provided - but they want to have it in the browser. IBM is the biggest software services company in the world for enterprises, so if they are moving applications to the browser - it's clearly what most big enterprises want these days. Therefore we think this is a very smart move by Etelos, one that is sure to find good demand from enterprises.

Although the terminology is a bit confusing (over-use of the words 'platform' and 'SaaS', for a start), it's worth breaking down what makes up the Etelos Platform Suite. According to Etelos, it consists of four key products:

SaaS Application Platform: Technology that enables traditional ("shrink-wrapped") software to be distributed as Software as a Service.
SaaS Marketplace Platform: Easily managed Marketplace that integrates licensing, billing and account management that is designed for Web app distribution.
SaaS Distribution Platform: Turnkey Marketplace with a company's products or services integrated into it.
SaaS Syndication Platform: Application developers can publish their app via a network of distributors.

We will continue to track what innovative startups like Etelos, and bigcos like IBM, are doing in the Web Office space. See ReadWriteWeb's Enterprise channel for more news and analysis on these trends.

Google Maps Now Available For Blackberry Enterprise Server Distribution

Sarah Perez — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 07:22:49 -0800

The iPhone may have outsold RIM's Blackberry devices here in the U.S., but Google knows that getting their software in the hands of business execs still means building Blackberry apps. The company's recent offering in this arena is a new, deployable package of Google Maps for Mobile which IT admins can distribute using Blackberry Enterprise Server.

Although an end user may not understand why their IT admin won't let them use their iPhone at work, what they don't understand are the complexities behind the need for standardization of equipment. Once an IT shop standardizes on one platform, like the Blackberry for example, making the decision to support other devices is not something made lightly. Standardization means less training is required for IT support personnel, fewer problems due to less variables in play, cost savings by buying in bulk (equipment and/or licenses), as well as numerous other advantages, too.

In addition to the benefits provided by standardization, IT departments also have to take into account the investment in their current infrastructure technology. To date, that investment often includes BES, or Blackberry Enterprise Server, which supports the needs of email-on-the-go for millions of corporate users.

Now, BES admins can deploy Google Maps for Mobile to those millions of users with ease, thanks to Google's new packages designed specifically for this server technology.

IT admins can select one of the following methods to deploy the software:

Download the ALX package for BlackBerry Enterprise Server to give employees Google Maps for mobile.
Download the JAD/COD package if you would like to host the files internally and have your employees individually install Google Maps.
If you use access control policies to restrict installation of applications on corporate BlackBerry phones, download the workaround ALX package for BlackBerry Enterprise Server versions prior to 4.1.5 MR1. (More information is available in our discussion group.)

ALX packages for Google Web Search and GOOG-411 are also available.

Facebook Puts On Suit, Dances With Salesforce.com

Bernard Lunn — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 12:05:44 -0800

At big events, PR likes to put out some info prior to the event under embargo, but save something exciting for the Keynote. Well I guess that was Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO, joining Marc Benioff, Salesforce.com CEO, up on stage to announce their partnership. Facebook sent Sheryl Sandberg, not Mark Zuckerberg, as this was a business crowd with more Blackberries than iPhones and plenty of ties.

It was a big party. Amazon and Google were also invited. The message - all aligned with Salesforce.com in their quest to be the dominant Cloud Computing platform for business.

Who Was Not Invited?

LinkedIn was not at the party. The announcement of Force.com for Facebook, which you can see here, was illustrated with recruiting applications, which is LinkedIn's primary domain. This was designed to show that companies, i.e. the Salesforce.com customer base, could build Force.com applications and deploy them on Facebook.

Sheryl Sandberg told us why we should bother - 120m users on Facebook, 30m joined in the last 3 months (the same number that took them their first 3 years to build).

Oh, and Microsoft was not invited either. In any case they might have got upset at all the jokes about Sharepoint that Benioff used whenever he wanted to play to the gallery.

Benioff told a compelling big picture story that computing has gone through two waves, from mainframe to PC client server and that now we are in the third wave of Cloud Computing. Salesforce.com got into that game early and have the clout and the drive to imagine being the number one player in Cloud Computing for business - assuming that Google will be the number one for consumer.

Which Twitter-clone Should Your Company Consider?

Marshall Kirkpatrick — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 08:08:08 -0800

Twitter. It's either the stupidest thing on the internet or it's an essential tool in your workday. Most people feel one way or the other about the service and the biggest indicator of which direction anyone goes is whether they've spent more or less than a full day learning how to use the service.

For the scores of people now convinced that a group micromessaging service like Twitter can be powerfully useful, there are few prospects as interesting as the use of such a tool at work - for work. There are lots of different software options, though, and it's hard to know which one to select. Enter a new report from Pistachio Consulting, topic area experts and providers of an excellent new report on the options.

The report is titled "Enterprise Microsharing Tools Comparison: Nineteen Applications to Revolutionize Employee Effectiveness."

Pitsachio argues that these kinds of tools are good for everything from corporate intelligence to professional development, from bridging silos to reducing email clutter to harnessing loose ties in an organization. As serious "microsharing" users, we believe these benefits are intuitive, realistic and compelling.

The report includes a matrix comparison of nineteen different vendors, from the already commercialized Yammer to still-unlaunched mega app ESME. Data points on the matrix are: inside firewall, directory integration, twitter's functions, Groups, Location, Sharing, SMS, IM , Desktop Client, smartphone app, twitter integration, underlying software platform, API, twiter compatible API, largest company using, largest group and pricing.

Below is an embedded version of the matrix, read on for highlights.

Enterprise Micro Sharing Tools

Get your own at Scribd or explore others: US Federal Technology language data

Highlights

The report says that Twitter itself may soon offer an enterprise tool, based on statements by company CEO Evan Williams. That doesn't necessarily mean that it will be the best option, however. Benefits and reservations are listed for all the tools surveyed, though the ones specifically built by enterprises themselves are the least-reviewed. That's unfortunate.

Some lessons learned from three year-long deployments of these kinds of tools, from companies IBM, Guitar Center and HotTopic, are included in the report.

The Pistachio report is well written and enjoyable to read. It will answer many of your questions about this field and will help point you smartly toward some software options you likely didn't know about before.

Find the full report at the Pistachio website.

The Future of Enterprise 2.0 Technologies

Richard MacManus — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 07:00:00 -0800

In a couple of reports released today, Forrester Research makes projections on the future of enterprise web technologies. Forrester predicts that social networking tools and internal wikis "will have the greatest impact on workplace collaboration". It is bullish too on forums and RSS, which Forrester claims "have a future in the enterprise but are currently underused". Mashups are also mentioned in the report - previously they'd claimed it would be a $700 million market by 2013. As for which technologies will decline, Forrester says that podcasts have "a limited future as an enterprise tool".

Forrester is also skeptical about microblogging tools in the enterprise - such as Twitter, Socialcast and Yammer. The report rather cynically suggested that "microblogs appeal to both the egocentrism and the voyeurism of Web 2.0 aficionados." Nevertheless Forrester said that it expects enterprise microblogs to "become a feature, not a standalone product category".

Oliver Young, an analyst at Forrester Research, stated that despite there being a lot of buzz about the consumer market for web 2.0 applications, "the greatest opportunity today for vendors is in the business-to-business collaboration space".

For the technologies that Forrester is most bullish on, social networking and wikis, the report stated that the "cultural resistance" to social networks will "eventually break, allowing workers to connect with like-minded colleagues and enabling a collaboration channel that previously didn't exist in the enterprise." On wikis, Forrester noted that users have already reported success with wiki projects and it expects this to grow even more. Wikis are most successful, said Forrester, when sponsored by business leaders and connected to business processes.

Forrester estimated in April that the enterprise 2.0 market will hit $4.6 billion by 2013. They also predicted in October that enterprise 2.0 apps will fall dramatically in price. So while the overall value of enterprise web applications will increase, the amount vendors charge for them is expected to decline over time.

Salesforce.com Says Hello World

Bernard Lunn — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 06:00:00 -0800

Salesforce.com was founded less than 10 years ago, in March 1999. This is hard to remember when you walk into the Dreamforce event at the Moscone and see all the companies, both large and small, proclaiming that they are part of their ecosystem. Salesforce.com, more than any other company, can claim to have popularized the SaaS concept with their catchy "No Software" logo. Today they are announcing their next step forward.

Dreamforce Annual Milestone Announcements

For many years, Salesforce.com has had the policy of announcing their next big move on the eve of their annual Dreamforce event (aka, where Salesforce partners get to pitch their stuff). In past years they announced internal facing applications, used by employees. Even if the employees were talking to customers, it was still an internal app. The news was simply that it was SaaS.

Today Salesforce.com Says Hello World

They are announcing a way to build apps that connect the internal facing processes that drive and account for transactions with the external public web based apps. This is a big move. The two examples they showed were travel and recruitment, but it does not take too much imagination to think of more. Given the size of the Dreamforce ecosystem on display in the convention center, one assumes that there is a big pipeline of apps under development.

Which Way Do You Face?

As with any new tool or API, there are other ways to achieve the same end. The question is simply which way is more efficient. It is really a question of which way you face. Do you look from the web into back end enterprise systems? That is the traditional way it is done today. The web developer asks the back end system how they want their data and how it will get data back. The Salesforce.com way looks the other way, from the back end systems out to the world.

Timing Is Good To Get Developers

They are likely to get a lot of traction with developers for three reasons:

1. Enterprise SaaS is going mainstream, it is a big market to get into right now.

2. Consumer services are facing a downturn, developers need something new.

3. Getting into back end processes is a better way to build long term client engagements.

Platforms Here, Platforms There

Platforms are everywhere. Developers love Amazon Web Services and Google App Engine looks so cool. There will be a bit of tug within the developers between what looks most technically elegant with least lock-in, versus what will make money quickly and reliably. It is possible that Salesforce will appeal to these more pragmatic types, the ones who have been the mainstay of the Microsoft ecosystem in the past.

Validas May Have The Perfect Recession Pitch

Bernard Lunn — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 19:25:57 -0800

Start-ups should have a simple value proposition that is easy to understand. In a recession, that proposition should be "we save you money, NOW". Or maybe, a tad harder, "we bring you new revenue, NOW". With the emphasis on urgency. You can always save money by making sacrifices. But if you can save money by simply reducing a bill, without reducing the service, who would not do that? That is what Validas says they can do: "lower your wireless cell phone bill". You can cut your landline bills by using Skype, but don't you just love figuring out all the ways your cell phone company manages to increase your bill?

This Is For Small Medium Business

Validas is ideal for the SMB (Small Medium Business) market. That includes all the bootstrapping Gritty Entrepreneurs as well as the VC funded start-ups that just got the "cut costs" memo from their pals at the VC fund. But it is also the 27 million Small Medium Businesses that employ 50% of Americans.

Validas can be used by a consumer. But an individual can probably spend a few minutes and figure it out themselves.

Nor is Validas ideal for Fortune 500. They can get the data from the carriers in a form that they can analyze any way they want, they can employ people to haggle with the carriers and have the clout to get results.

What if you are the CEO with 20 employees? You have other priorities. You can tell your Admin/Finance person to do it, but maybe his priority should be chasing receivables? You can tell all 20 of your people to figure out how to reduce all their cell phone bills? Well, if you are the kind of CEO that sprays employees with constant priorities that all get ignored, you could employ consultants to do it, but their fees might outweigh the savings.

Automating A Small Boring Job

Validas does what you would do if you took the trouble or if you employed somebody to do it. They just automate it, so they can do it fast and efficiently and thus make money in the process.

This is boring and it is small. So it should be really easy. It should fit into that quadrant that is Minor Impact/Easy To Do.

That is easy to say, but hard to pull off. Validas has the experience to deliver this. The founders, Tom Pepe and Todd Dunphy, left their safe jobs at Verizon Wireless to start Validas. They know all the tricks that carriers use to get those extra fees.

How It Works

To use Validas, you will need to be set up for online billing. Online billing is free from your carrier and you do not need to cancel your paper bill to use Validas. You can use Validas for bills from: AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, and US Cellular.

Then you upload to Validas and view your potential savings. You can download this information into Excel or print out the reports.

Validas claims that the Current Average Yearly Savings Per Customer = $505. Presumably that is not per user and is for a small business of some type.

Validas pricing is simple, with various plans. The one they promote as best value costs $24 for 24 reports, audited every month. So that would work for a 24 person company. You can test it out with a $5 One Time Audit.

Validas fits the trend we are seeing of a return to simple "every day low prices" rather than fancy Freemium models supported by advertising. If it has value, charge for it.

The End Of Information Asymmetry

Validas looks like it is part of a big trend towards transparency, the end of "information asymmetry" that we noted in our Ten Trends To Bet On For Your Most Audacious Start-Up. We have seen start-ups doing this well in the car market. We suspect we will see more in financial services. In all cases, the start-up takes the side of the small buyer to get better deals from a large seller. Validas is a welcome entrant in the cell phone market.

The New Stack: SaaS, Cloud Computing, Core Technology

Bernard Lunn — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 21:15:00 -0800

During the PC era, the technology stack was controlled by Microsoft Windows and Wintel - the "Wintel" era. We are now entering a new era, called variously 'Cloud' or 'SaaS' or 'Enterprise 2.0'.

In this era everything is different - the stack, the players and the potential for value creation. Let's outline the basic shape of this emerging era, in particular defining what makes up the new stack.

The New Stack Has 3 Layers

At the Top - SaaS: these are the end user services that we actually interact with, such as Basecamp. This is the "final mile". This is what we used to call application software, vertical systems or value added systems. Although SaaS is sometimes also used to describe the layer below, we prefer to label the top as SaaS and the middle as Cloud Computing. Typically this layer has had thousands of companies. These are our bootstrapped Gritty Entrepreneurs.

In the Middle - Cloud Computing: this is the Cloud where we witness the "sound and fury" of BigCos battling it out - Amazon, Google, Microsoft, IBM and others. This layer is the most fluid and where all the deals are. This layer can be seen as two layers, but the difference is very blurry. Some SaaS companies create some "middleware" that they position in this layer. Some start-ups create middleware as their primary focus, with an end game of getting acquired by one of the Cloud BigCos. Over time, these will tend to get rolled up into a few big platforms that compete by providing higher levels of abstraction for developers.

At the Bottom - Core Technology: this is what we might call "traditional Silicon Valley", hard core patent-protected technology sold to big companies that use it as part of their stack. Arista, the latest venture from Andreas Bechtolsheim falls into this category.

Spectators And Players

Most of us are spectators in the Cloud Computing game. It is fun to watch the big guys duke it out and ReadWriteWeb will continue to report on that. Entrepreneurs need to understand the strategies of the big players who will be their "platform partner". But we all have lots of opportunities to be players at the top of the stack, in the SaaS layer. This is where there are low barriers to entry, massively reduced R&D costs and incumbents who will be slow to embrace SaaS for fear of cannibalizing their core business.

Has The Stack Value Inverted?

Traditionally, value was at the bottom of the stack, which is why Microsoft and Intel were so dominant in the past. With a few notable exceptions like SAP, the top of the stack tended to be smaller companies.

It is possible that this has inverted, that the real value is now at the top of the stack and not at the bottom. For example, Arista will probably be very successful, but their market will be limited to the few companies who build huge data centers. Those clients will place huge orders but will also have a lot of negotiating clout.

Lock-In And Network Effects?

So maybe the value is all in the middle now? This is certainly where all the action is today. The two big questions at this layer are:

1. Lock-in? How easy will it be to move your SaaS service between Amazon AWS, Google App Engine, Microsoft Azure and other contenders? Today there is quite a lot of technical lock-in, you cannot move from one to another without some re-coding. But is that a big deal? No, because a) any Platform that jacks up prices will get hammered by their competitors and b) when you do need to move, it may require some coding changes but the move is transparent to end users. So, very little lock-in.

2. Viral Network Effects? Market leaders will get a lower cost of sale, but there is no social media viral effect at the Cloud Computing Platform layer.

Without Lock-In or Viral Network Effects, this layer will be commoditized. It will be very, very big but it will be a thin margin commodity business that is all about scale.

So The SaaS Cream Floats To The Top?

This is our theory. The value is with the small SaaS companies in the "final mile" interacting with end users. This is what we are seeing with our bootstrapped Gritty Entrepreneurs.

What About Players Across Layers?

Next week I will be at Dreamforce, the Salesforce.com annual event in San Francisco. Salesforce.com is the SaaS pioneer that defined the market. At some stage they decided that being on the top layer only was not enough and they created their Force.com "platform" on which others could create applications.

IBM also operates at many layers of the stack. But they do so with separate divisions that would be large companies in their own right.

It will be interesting to see how this stack evolves and specifically how well Salesforce.com succeeds with their mission to operate at both the top and the middle layer.