Hubble vs. Mars Rover which is your client?

Space....the final frontier, poppycock!

Messaging is the final frontier and always will be. IM, email, voice, chat, video, but still messaging or in the words of Pink Floyd and Stephen Hawking... Keep Talking. Without communications we would not be very collaborative now would we? So why don't we take better care of it?

Based on some posts and discussions, let's look at this from a completely different view....Space.

Out in space, NASA sent some objects to learn about the galaxy and planets. One they continue to fix, maintain, update, clean the other they left to die, once it finished it's goals.

By the way the greatest motivational posters can be found on this site, Trekkies indulge.

The Hubble telescope sits floating in space above the Earth taking photos and other great images of the world.

NASA has had the shuttle send up new glasses, power, various add-ons and improvements. Basically it serves a great purpose and the powers that be want to keep paying for it and enjoy the benefits from it.

The Mars Rover, while personally much cooler than the Hubble, was sent on a lonely mission to seek out the red planet and map it, test it, experience it. Sadly it took a few tries but there it is, barely hanging on for life.

No updates coming, no antennae fix, no power pack update, no booster to send it back home even! It's on a clear mission to die a slow and not so painful death most likely. But maybe the solar wings will keep it humming, who knows.

Do you see your clients this way? Do you present this to customers stuck on Exchange 2000 or 2003? If you can not spend the money on a solution that continues to enhance your business then you are inevitably waiting for the day when the power pack gives it up.

What will you do then?
It's cold in space and no one can hear you scream, but you work in IT or are the executive in charge and reading this.
What will you say when you reach this point?
Here's a hint, better have a huge budget available because emergency repairs always cost more than a fresh new system or one which is properly maintained.

Friday Findings #1 - Messaging in the Enterprise

I love Visio. I do and have since it came out in 1993.

Sure some competitors are out there but with over 15 years of Visio charts I am embedded to them, probably forever.

Similarly many customers feel the same way about their email servers, although rarely the same when it comes to application servers.

Why is that?

Could it be because applications change as business changes?

Maybe email, like a telephone, can be a commodity while applications, usually, are not.

Perhaps the uniqueness of something new or different provides some answers.

Email, for better or worse, hasn't changed in the 20 years I have been working with it. Sure it has come along way from dumb terminals and green monitors (or has it if you see the latest touch screens and browsers?) and this is usually why one sticks with the original one you installed.

Now compare that to your telephone/cell phone provider and how people change vendors every few years. The ease of change is relatively easy as long as your phone number is portable all is good.

Not so easy with email.

Your email address and naming stays the same of course, but changing 10/100/1,000 or 10,000 people is NOT an easy undertaking. So many pieces of the puzzle can be involved from calendar appointments, mobile device reconfigurations, personal contacts, archiving and many other issues can arise.

Almost as bad as changing bank accounts. Just a big pain in the ...

Is it any wonder when an organization doesn't leave their software, it's just so much better to stay where you are. Pay the renewal and maintenance fees and keep that email flowing, even if 85% of it is SPAM.

Now imagine if you could expand that email inbox so it could not only handle your email but your instant messaging discussions, online meeting events, applicational workflow, authorization notices, travel plans, detail awareness within your emails to provide background information on a client or location or their Linkedin details?

Changing email servers should never be about getting email for giving up email. Doing this, is a blatant disregard of your company standards, policies, financial guidelines and line of business decisions.

I can trade in my car for another car, but if that new car doesn't lower my payments or get better gas mileage or sit a family of 5 comfortably or doesn't have a convertible top or some other way to make a difference(unless my car was totaled) then why have I bothered?

So if you are looking, or your customers are, at a new email server you should point out to them the truth which is email is just a transport mechanism. What do they/you want to transport through the system is more important and how that information is accessed and stored is even more important.

Forget Microsoft, Google's on the cusp

Following on the latest from Google, what if PostiniG is their leading edge?
Is Spam really such an issue? Doesn't everyone have a spam filter of some sort? Even at home? What are they getting to by ads like the one in March 24 Information Week issue with the "Messaging and Collaboration" section in bold. It is not about them, but a reference to some white papers they have produced over at www.informationweekreports.com.

Does SaaS make sense for email? Google of course argues it does. One of the Google White Papers even points out from 575 interviews of executives, 17% or 98 of them knew nothing about SaaS! There is an interesting discussion in itself.

Others argue it's a privacy issue or security and they would never do it. Why is Google(or any other SaaS vendor) better equiped to secure my data if every day we read about another failing bank, another credit card scam, more records stolen, laptops disappearing and other security issues?

Google, and most intenet companies are starting to realize that until the Star Trek transporter exists people will need to take data offline or off the grid or out of the cloud. Because right now you can not be online everywhere YOU want to be.
This may never change either. For some people they may never be offline unless on an airplane.

Friends of mine just took a cruise in the Caribbean and had cell phone coverage the entire time. They claim it's the first time the saw that in the last few years and they go on cruises 2-4 times a year.

Maybe Google really is on to something and we need to rethink our plans for our users and companies. I have seen a push for webmail and it means 20 years later I need to be an ISP again or 10 years later I need to be an ASP, except now I am called an SAAS provider.

Let me Compare thee to a....pinball machine

So this Lotus vs. Microsoft discussion gets old does it?

While not as old as the Middle East conflicts, Yankees vs. Redsox, Hatfields/McCoys or ex-British Empire Countries suing for their art and artifacts. It goes to show that something of importance can never really die in the minds of people throughout the world, even over cebnturies.

And so it was in Pinball.

I am restoring (making it useful and clean and power efficient, not 100% strip the paint restoration) a 1979 Bally Future Spa pinball.

Over the last 75 years there were many similar arguments going on wether Bally, Gottlieb or later Williams were superior. Advanced designs, louder, wider, faster game plays. You get the idea.

In the end, they all merged because the market was taken over by "video games".
A brief merger of the main ones then Data East grew out of the ashes of the previous companies, today the pinball world is just a very niche, but fun, product line.

Do I think the same will occur in this case? Highly unlikely unless Microsoft or IBM was willing to sell off their messaging servers and I think we can all agree that is not happenning. But the argumenst will run forever.

But what if Microsoft is the Data East of Messaging. They keep buying everyone until there is only 1 last contender and then Lotus eventually folds? I don't bet on this scenario.

Or may this exact endgame happen to Microsoft and Lotus wins the battle. And when Lotus/IBM does win, isn't it because Domino is much more than mail in the end and that is where the ROI on your messaging system is expected, when it is part of your entire business solution, not just another box you MUST install because of some companies blueprint for how to run your infrastrcuture.

Tune in about 10-15 years from now to find out.