The marketing folks in IBM's Lotus division are starting to sound like the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, who insists he's winning a fight even as he loses both arms and legs: "'Tis but a scratch," the Black Knight declares after one arm is lopped off. "Just a flesh wound," he says after losing the other. "I'm invincible!"
The same goes for IBM's
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) Lotus, which keeps declaring victory even as Microsoft
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) carves it up.
Gary Edwards (343)
marbux (24)
Jesper Lund Stocholm (9)
mazyar hedayat (4)
The article is old, but the point is well taken. Today the Exchange/SharePoint juggernaut i sover 65% marketshare. IBM is struggling to protect the Lotus Stack against an impossible foe.
The thing is, Microsoft E/S will ALWAYS have better integration with the MSOffice - Outlook desktop monopoly base (550 M and counting). Most of this "integration" is due to the high fidelity exchange of documents in Microsoft's proprietary XML mode known as MS-OOXML. Forget the charade that MS-OOXML is an open standard called Ecma 376. MSOffice and infamous XML Compatibility Pack Plug-in do not implement Ecma 376. The Pack implements MS-OOXML.
One key differnece between MS-OOXML and Ecma 376 us that MS-OOXML is infused with the Smart Tags components. These are for metadata, data binding, data extraction, workflow, intelligent routing and on demand re purposing of docuemnt components. In effect, MS-OOXML :: Smart Tags combines with proprietary .NET Libraries, XAML and soon enough Silverlight to replace the entire span of W3C Open Internet Technologies.
Can you say "HTML"?
Okay, so why does this matter to IBM and the future of Lotus Notes?
The end game of the document format wars is that of a stack model that converges desktop, server, devices and web information systems. The MS Stack uses MS-OOXML as the primary transport of accelerated content/data/multi media streams running across the MS Stack of desktop, server, device and web application systems. It's the one point of extreme interoperability.
It's also a barrier that no non MS applicatio or service can penetrate or interoperate with except on terms Microsoft dictates. This includes the Logus Notes Stack as well as any other ODF based alternative.
It gets worse.
The lever Microsoft uses to push the Exchange/SharePoint Hub is that of integration into the EXISTING 550 million MSOffice bound workgroup - business process strapped desktops. It's an integration Lotus Notes can't touch.
So even though E/S offers a fraction of the fabled Lotus Notes collaboration and messaging capability, the untouchable integration to the MSOffice desktop factor trumps all feature comparisons.
IBM's plan for countering the E/S juggernaut seems to be that of riding government anti trust concerns into a mandated rip out and replace of MSOffice with ODF based alternatives like OpenOffice, IBM WorkPlace and IBM LOtus Symphony. Symphony and WorkPlace are both based on a proprietary fork of OpenOffice 1.1.4 that took place when the OOo license was a dual SSSL-LGPL license.
ODF 1.0 has achieved the ISO/IEC standards stamp of approval. Micrsoft of course countered with Ecma 376, which failed to get the ISO/IEC stamp of approval. Meaning, governments seeking to implement open standards compliant with ISO and various world trade agreements, would of course be lef twith the challenge here of implementing ODF by ripping out an dreplacing MSOffice. Which is good for IBM and may in fact halt the Lotus Notes hemmoraging.
While i doubt that governments are so stupid to not know the difference between MS-OOXML and Ecma 376, there is more to this than just ISO approval. The disruptive cost of ripping out and replacing MSOffice is beyond anyone's reach. Even if they wanted to do it, and the law insist that they do it, most lack the funds to do it.
For IBM this may in fact be a pyhric victory. MSOffice is the unmovable constant in the migration to XML equation. And even though it's a near certainty that Microsoft will not be able to revive Ecma 376 at ISO, IBM has the cahllenge of trying to get ODF 1.1 and ODF 1.2 through ISO.
Today, ODF 1.2 is guaranteed to fail to get ISO approval. It's a ticking time bomb waiting to go off shortly after the ISO Resolution Board fails to resolve the near 3,000 Ecma 376 problems in February of 2008. ODF 1.2 features were frozen in July of 2006, and it is scheduled to go in front of OASIS soon, with ISO to follow.
The stakes are high here. There's not much IBM can do to force open the MSOffice - Outlook interoperability API's that would level the competitive playing field and remove the unfair advantage of the Exchange/SharePoint Hub. Governments are worn and tired of the anti trust battles with Microsoft. For sure the May 2006 RFi announcement by Massachusetts that they were seeking information about the feasibility of a ODF plug-in for MSOffice signalled the end of a "rip out and replace" mandate approach that may have broken the monopolist grip once and for all. Either the ODF Community had to adapt to the new market requirements Massachusetts was insisting upon, or the future would belong to MS-OOXML.
Those market requirements are difficult, pretty much relecting the overall dilemma that compatetiors do not have equal access to much needed interoperability information that Microsoft reserves for the exclusive use of it's own application stack. But that's the hand we've been dealt. If the anti trust initiatives don't break the iron grip, it is beyond ridiculous to think that the grip will be broken on the backs of divisional workgroups who lack budgets, legal weaponry, and F16 fighter squandrons.
IBM fights on though. They have no choice to play out the hand they've been dealt. And they're down to one ace; ODF.
Now you know,
~ge~