Communication Breakdown: Cisco Storms Into UC, Sort Of

Or, at least, we think it is. After all, messaging, calendaring (we still love the fact that "calendar" is a verb now) and "collaboration" all seem pretty UC-ish to us, even if Oracle's new suite doesn't currently appear to delve quite as much into voice, Web conferencing and other nifty Web-whatever-point-oh functions as offerings from Microsoft and Cisco do.

It's all about people getting in touch with each other, right? And different ways of doing that, all rolled into one easy-to-manage bundle that's more or less supposed to tell us how to get a hold of any person at any time? The difference between simple collaboration software and swanky "unified communications" seems to be the size of and number of options available in the bundle -- or maybe it's all just marketing speak. And to think that we all once survived with just e-mail, cell phones and instant messaging (actually, most of us still do).

But if Microsoft, Cisco, Google, Oracle (sort of -- it's harder to tell with Oracle) and others have their way, we'll all be tethered to the almighty system all the time, reachable in any location, situation or state of being and ready to share documents or hop on a Web conference at the drop of a hat. And you thought the cell phone was an intrusive concept.

Anyway, this week's UC news -- and we're pretty sure that this is UC, not just collaboration, news -- is that Cisco is all jacked up about its UC suite, which is coming together nicely after a series of acquisitions. We note, though, that at least a few of the press outlets covering this story have tended to refer to Cisco's suite as collaboration software, which we thought was the simpler, Notes-Exchange type stuff, not the more heady UC.

See, this is why this stuff is so confusing. One day, we read that Oracle is set to take on IBM and Microsoft in the Notes-Exchange battle, which seems pretty old-school and established. The next day (literally), Cisco is going after Microsoft in UC -- or maybe collaboration software, which in any case, sounds more whiz-bang and sophisticated than just Notes and Exchange. Oh, and the analysts don't seem to be talking about Oracle or IBM in the same breath as Cisco at all. Although they are talking about Google, without even mentioning what Google really offers or how much market penetration (in any of these markets) it has. Everybody talks about Google. Very few people seem to understand it.

Surely if we're this confused as to what all this stuff is and what category it's supposed to fall into, at least a few partners must be, too. And customers -- for heaven's sake, what are they buying? An e-mail server or an integrated unified communications platform? Or both, or one thing that's part of another? And what does it all do? And how much will it cost? And they need it...why, exactly, if everything's pretty much working OK as-is? And if they buy one thing from IBM, will the other thing from Cisco work with it? And what is Google doing here again?

It's up to partners to answer those questions...if they can. We're pretty sure that we can't right now, but we're just hacks. We do find it funny, though -- ironic, maybe -- that markets with names like "collaboration" and "unified communications" are the most muddled in terms of who's offering what and which product or service or platform performs which absolutely necessary, can't-live-without-it function. Crank up Led Zeppelin's early stuff and call it a communication breakdown. At least Zep will drown out the noise coming from these vendors.

Have you got UC figured out? If so, enlighten us at [email protected]. Oh, and we'll get back to running your e-mails next week. We promise.

Posted by Lee Pender on 09/25/2008 at 1:22 PM0 comments

I'm Not a PC, But the Ads Aren't Bad

It's with that sense of amusement that we watch Microsoft's "I'm a PC" ads, which strike back at Apple's brilliant and exhaustively documented Mac Guy-PC Guy campaign. The ads are pretty good, really, even if we don't recognize most (any?) of the celebrities in them. In fact, although this isn't saying much, these might be the best Microsoft ads ever.

Really! They're not wincingly un-cool or painfully nerdy (and we don't mean "cool nerdy," either -- just nerdy). They're pretty clever, well-paced and mildly intriguing -- we wanted to know who would step up and be a PC next -- and they almost manage to pass Microsoft off as a populist and grass-roots organization and not the massive corpomonster that it really is. (To be fair, Apple's a corpomonster, too -- just one with smaller market share in the operating system business.) They're not cool, but they don't need to be -- because Microsoft isn't cool and never has been. Finally somebody got that and went in another direction, successfully.

Of course, the ads don't make us want to buy Vista, which, we thought, was the point of the campaign. (Or maybe even Redmond has given up the Vista ghost and is priming us for Windows 7.) But if Microsoft just wanted to improve its image and get out from Apple's pop-culture thumb, this new campaign does the trick.

Of course, we at RCPU are among the only people on the world who are on the fence in the PC-Mac debate (and, yes, your editor is speaking for himself here). We've had both, and both have their drawbacks and advantages. So, you won't be hearing us declare that we're a Mac or a PC any time soon -- which we wouldn't do, anyway, given that we're supposed to be impartial and all that. (We are West Ham, though.)

One more thought about Microsoft's ad strategy: We're not buying the line that the company scrapped the Bill Gates-Jerry Seinfeld spots as a snap decision. We're pretty sure that those ads weren't supposed to run for long and that there weren't supposed to be many of them. In fact, we think that Bill and Jerry's obtuse efforts were just meant to get people talking -- which they did -- and maybe even to provide a lame, confusing setup to the much better "I'm a PC" campaign. After all, the lousy band is always the opening act, right? We're on to you, Redmond. But we're still not a PC.

Posted by Lee Pender on 09/25/2008 at 1:22 PM0 comments

MessageGate Rolls Out Risk-Management Apps

Posted by Lee Pender on 09/24/2008 at 1:22 PM0 comments

ByteShield Launches Anti-Piracy App for .NET

Posted by Lee Pender on 09/24/2008 at 1:22 PM0 comments

Microsoft Buys Itself, Sort Of

Posted by Lee Pender on 09/24/2008 at 1:22 PM1 comments

Oracle Stirs Hornet's Nest with Beehive

Or, at least, it could be significant. The database titan has just stormed into the Notes-Exchange war with what seems at first glance (although we haven't actually seen it) like a nifty new suite of collaboration software.

That's right -- it's not all about Microsoft and IBM slugging it out for IT departments' e-mail and calendaring applications anymore, with Google offering its Web-based stuff just on the edge of the battle and Cisco making noise about unified communications. Oracle has arrived, seriously this time, with its own collaboration suite aimed at -- but ready to work with -- Outlook and Exchange, as well as Notes.

As the Ovum commentary linked above indicates, there's something of a move toward heterogeneity taking place in IT departments' collaboration strategies -- or, at least, there might be soon. We know that many Microsoft partners have been slugging it out with IBM to try -- successfully, in many cases -- to knock Lotus Notes out of customers' environments. Well, Oracle would love to knock out both Notes and Exchange/Outlook...but it also claims to collaborate with Microsoft's wares as well as those of IBM.

And that's a big deal. After all, the biggest challenge any enterprise deployment faces is user acceptance, and as anybody who has gone through the Notes-Outlook transition in either direction can attest, it's not easy getting used to a whole new interface for the most important business application we have today -- e-mail. Never mind all the apps built on top of the collaboration platform and all the back-end mess of keeping the thing running. We don't know exactly how Beehive will work with its rivals' wares, but there's talk of back- and front-end integration, and IT managers and users alike would welcome both.

Of course, the real question is whether -- and, by extension, why -- customers would look at Beehive in the first place. Notes and Exchange/Outlook are very mature products with huge market penetration. They've been hammering each other for years, so Oracle had better step in with something pretty darn appealing (easier to use, to administrate, to manage?) with Beehive.

Will it produce the sticky honey that keeps collaboration systems together and makes users' and IT managers' live sweeter? Or will it simply be a bit player in the ongoing IBM-Microsoft drama? We don't know, but we'll say this -- Larry Ellison rarely does anything halfway, so we have a feeling Beehive will buzz its way into at least a few IT shops. Microsoft partners, take note: You're fighting on (at least) two fronts now.

What's your take on Oracle getting serious about collaboration applications? Will Oracle stake a claim in the IBM-Microsoft war? Tell us at [email protected].

Posted by Lee Pender on 09/24/2008 at 1:22 PM1 comments

Microsoft: Building a Brand Without Really Trying

For today, though, we were shocked to see that a branding survey this week placed Microsoft as the No. 3 brand worldwide, behind only Coca-Cola and rival IBM. Now, there are a lot of branding surveys out there -- really, a whole lot -- and we understand that they take a lot more into account than just how clever a particular ad campaign is or how much a company gets hammered in the blogosphere.

So, the title of the entry might be a little harsh. Obviously, Microsoft has built a brand over the years through more than just advertising -- and it's a good thing, too, because Microsoft's ads have mostly been pretty lame, as have some of its business-targeted marketing campaigns. The new crop of consumer-oriented ads has promise, but there aren't many Microsoft plugs from over the years that stick in our minds as having been particularly effective.

Still, having 90-plus percent market share in what is still (for now) the most important category in the software market must have engendered some goodwill over the years. And, for partners, that's a good thing. After all, everybody's a consumer, even enterprise customers. If Microsoft's brand really is that strong, maybe Redmond should forget about spending hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising and focus on innovation and product marketing.

Of course, Microsoft's current ad campaign is mostly about trying to boost Vista, so dumping the ads might be the first step to Redmond dumping the forlorn OS altogether. And, really, that doesn't sound like that bad an idea.

Posted by Lee Pender on 09/23/2008 at 1:22 PM0 comments

McAfee Snaps Up Secure Computing

Posted by Lee Pender on 09/23/2008 at 1:22 PM0 comments

Demand for IT Workers To Grow

Posted by Lee Pender on 09/23/2008 at 1:22 PM0 comments

HPC Server Live

Posted by Lee Pender on 09/23/2008 at 1:22 PM0 comments

We Just Can't Wait for Windows 7

But today, when we use the word "we" to describe folks waiting on Windows 7, we're not just talking one person or even a few people. We're talking about the masses of people who have rejected Vista (in which RCPU is, to be fair, presently included) and are more than a little curious to see what its successor will look like.

In fact, as far as we here at RCPU can tell, the "we" that's waiting for Windows 7 represents the overwhelming majority of computer users -- meaning a fairly impressive percentage of people on this planet. Maybe that's why rumors about Windows 7 get approximately the same treatment as Sarah Palin these days -- every rumor, leak or commentary about the forthcoming operating system gets exposed, analyzed, criticized and dissected by bloggers and the trade press.

The hubbub gained steam this week when the release of the OS to private testing spurred rumors about a possible release date. Honestly, we haven't seen a Windows OS get this much buzz since...well, um, since Vista. And we all know how that turned out.

It seems in this corner of the Web as though Windows 7 has the potential to be Super Bowl operating system -- desperately awaited, massively over-hyped...and ultimately a disappointment. Oh, it's not that we don't think that it'll be a good product. It's just that there's almost no way it'll make up for the general malaise created by Vista, especially since it might not actually be that different from Vista.

We here at RCPU wonder whether maybe Windows 7, if it does fail to sweep users off their feet, will speed the move toward cloud computing and push the concept of an operating system further into obsolescence. We also wonder how much of a hit Microsoft will take -- more image-wise than money-wise, for the time being -- if Windows 7 isn't a blockbuster.

As it stands, for Microsoft, partners and the very model of desktop computing, there's actually a heck of a lot riding on Windows 7. Will it make up for the damage Vista has done? We -- meaning the waiting millions, not just the folks here at RCPU -- will see soon enough.

What do you want from Windows 7? If you didn't like Vista, what does Microsoft need to do to win you back? Tell us at [email protected].

Posted by Lee Pender on 09/18/2008 at 1:22 PM6 comments

Not a September To Remember for Ingram

Incidentally, we're still looking for comments on how you're handling what we think we can safely call a financial crisis. Send them to [email protected].

Posted by Lee Pender on 09/18/2008 at 1:22 PM1 comments