Open Web

Another great review for Conrado. Summary: OpenGoo is an open source web/Cloud office where all resources and aspects of contact and project management are linked. This includes eMail, calendar, task, schedules, time lines, notes, documents, workgroups and data. Great stuff. OpenGoo and hosted sister Feng Office are the first Web Office systems to challenge the entire Microsoft Office productivity environment. Very polished, great performance. Excellent use of URI's to replace Win32-OLE functionality. Lacks direct collaboration of Zoho and gDOCS. Could easily make up for that and more with the incorporation of Wave computing (Google). I'm wondering when Conrado will take on the vertical market categories; like Real Estate - Finance? I also think OpenGoo and Feng Office have reached the point where governments would be interested. Instead of replacing existing MSOffice desktops, migrate the project/contact management stuff to OpenGoo, and shut down the upgrade treadmill. Get into the Cloud. I suspect also that Conrado is looking carefully at Wave Computing, and the chellenge of incorporating Wave into OpenGoo.

Conrado gets a very good review! Excerpt: Feng Office packs most of the features you should require for most project management duties. In addition to basics like calendars, contacts and email, it also provides milestone and task management, and a built-in time-tracking function. All of the above are well-implemented, although some users may actually find the similar interface design of all the functions more confusing than helpful, since it's often not clear which function you're using at any given time without looking at what tab is highlighted. I like the uniformity, though, since it gives each feature a sense of connectedness to the others and adds to the feeling that Feng Office is a holistic solution. Notes, Links and Documents features also bring much to Feng Office's overall value proposition, and each is well-executed. You can even create new Word docs and PowerPoint HTML documents and presentations directly from within Feng Office using its own built-in editors, both of which retain UI elements from Microsoft's own suite. That means less time switching from browser to standalone apps, which adds up to better productivity.

A collection of Web articles and discussions concerning Compatibility and the Lessons of Massachusetts

Knock me over with a feather. Now comes news that Cisco wants to challenge Microsoft Office and Google Apps. Paul Smalera of Business Insider questions the wisdom of this initiative, insisting that Cisco must know it can't beat either MSOffice or Google Apps. Maybe Cisco is fishing for help? Where is that wave-maker application Jason and Florian are said to be working on? :) Excerpt: Cisco VP Doug Dennerline told reporters, the company is "thinking about" adding document drafting and sharing to WebEx, which already features instant messaging, online meeting and email services.

Finally! Someone who gets it. For an office suite to be considered as an alternative to MSOffice, it must be designed with multiple levels of compatibility. It's not just that the "feature sets" that must be comparable. The guts of the suite must be compatible at both the file format level, and the environment level. Randall put's it this way; "It's the ecosystem stupid". The reason ODF failed in Massachusetts is that neither OpenOffice nor OpenOffice ODF are designed to be compatible with legacy and existing MSOffice applications, binary formats, and, the MSOffice productivity environment. Instead, OOo and OOo-ODF are designed to be competitively comparable. As an alternative to MSOffice, OpenOffice and OpenOffice ODF cannot fit into existing MSOffice workgroups and producitivity environments. Because it s was not designed to be compatible, OOo demands that the environment be replaced, rebuilt and re-engineered. Making OOo and OOo-ODF costly and disruptive to critical day-to-day business processes. The lesson of Massachusetts is simple; compatibility matters. Conversion of workgroup/workflow documents from the MSOffice productivity environment to OpenOffice ODF will break those documents at two levels: fidelity and embedded "ecosystem" logic. Fidelity is what most end-users point to since that's the aspect of the document conversion they can see. However, it's what they can't see that is the show stopper. The hidden side of workgroup/workflow documents is embedded logic that includes scripts, macros, formulas, OLE, data bindings, security settings, application specific settings, and productivity environment settings. Breaks these aspects of the document, and you stop important business processes bound to the MSOffice productivity environment. There is no such thing as an OpenOffice productivity environment designed to be a compatible alternative to the MSOffice productivity environment. Another lesson from Massach

"Horizon Info Services is committed to offering industry-leading technology services to small businesses at affordable prices." This is an interesting approach. Horizon is a reseller of customized and enhanced Google services. They provide enterprises and SMB's with gMail hosting, on-line backup services, security, and customized Google Apps. They are also ready to dive into Google Wave, as the ultimate interface for aggregating Web based communications, messaging, conversations and collaborative documents.

MindTouch was by far and away the hottest property at the 2009 Web 2.0 Conference. And for good reason. They have figured out how to tap into the productivity value of enterprise collaborative networks. Most their underlying stuff is based on REST based data objects and services, but they also allow for proprietary data bindings. The key to MindTouch seemd to be the easy to fall into and use collaborative interface: imagine a workgroup project centered around a Web page filled with data objects, graphics and content, with each object also having a collabortaive conversation attached to it. Sounds complicated, but that's where the magic of MindTouch kicks in. It's simple. One the things that most impressed me was an interactive graph placed on one of the wiki project pages. The graph was being fed data from a local excel spreadsheet, and could be interacted with in real time. It was simple to change from a pie chart to a bar graph and so on. It was also possible to interact with the data itself and create what-if scenario's. Great stuff. With considerable persistence though, i was able to discover from Aaron that this interactivity and graphical richness was due to a Silverlight plug-in! From the article: "..... Rather than focusing on socialization, one to one interactions and individual enrichment, businesses must be concerned with creating an information fabric within their organizations. This information fabric is a federation of content from the multiplicity of data and application silos utilized on a daily basis; such as, ERP, CRM, file servers, email, databases, web-services infrastructures, etc. When you make this information fabric easy to edit between groups of individuals in a dynamic, secure, governed and real-time manner, it creates a Collaborative Network." "This is very different from social networks or social software, which is focused entirely on enabling conversations. Collaborative Networks are focused on groups accessing and organiz

Collaborate and Edit documents with Zoho, Store and Manage in Microsoft® SharePoint®. Zoho is onto something here. The video is well worth the watching. Anthony Ha of Venture Beat ahd this to say: "As online office software tries to move into big corporations, it's starting to work more closely with entrenched solutions - which often means technology built by Microsoft. In the latest example, Zoho just announced plans to offer its collaboration services as an add-on for SharePoint, Microsoft's server and software for collaboration and document management." "Basically, that means you can use Zoho Office as the interface for collaborative editing of documents, while the documents themselves sit safely on the SharePoint server, behind the corporate firewall. The add-on brings a more web-like interface to SharePoint; rather than having to check documents in and out as they work on them, multiple users can jump into a document and edit it at once, and also send instant messages back-and-forth within their application using Zoho Chat." "This is a smart way to get Zoho into companies that wouldn't consider making the full jump into online office applications, but want to experiment with these kinds of tools without sacrificing security or throwing away existing hardware. The financial investment is small, too - a 30-day trial period, followed by $2 per user per month if companies pay for a year, or $3 per user per month if companies pay by month."

Note the emphasis that this is a unilateral move by Microsoft and a different remedy may still be forthcoming from DG Competition. In particular, not only the remedy as to bundling may be different, but other related issues remain, such as Opera's complaint that Microsoft had been undermining Open Web standards with inadequate support.

.... "I recently described how Google's Wave, a collaboration tool based on the new HTML 5 standard, demonstrated the potential for Web applications to unglue Microsoft's hold on customers. My post quoted Gary Edwards, the former president of the Open Document Foundation, a first-hand witness to the failed attempt by Massachusetts to dump Microsoft and as experienced a hand at Microsoft-tilting as anyone I know......"

Cisco's James Urquhart discusses the NIST definition of Cloud Computing. The National Institute of Technology and Standards is a non regulatory branch of the Commerce Department and is responsible for much of the USA's official participation in World Standards organizations. This is an important discussion, but i'm a bit disappointed by the loose use of the term "network". I guess they mean the Internet? No mention of RESTfull computing or Open Web Standards either. Some interesting clips: ...(The NIST's) definition of cloud computing will be the de facto standard definition that the entire US government will be given...In creating this definition, NIST consulted extensively with the private sector including a wide range of vendors, consultants and industry pundants including your truly. Below is the draft NIST working definition of Cloud Computing. I should note, this definition is a work in progress and therefore is open to public ratification & comment. The initial feedback was very positive from the federal CIO's who were presented it yesterday in DC. Baring any last minute lobbying I doubt we'll see many more major revisions. ....... Cloud computing is a pay-per-use model for enabling available, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model promotes availability and is comprised of five key characteristics, three delivery models, and four deployment models.

Gary, NIST really is not "responsible for much of the USA's official participation in World Standards organizations." Lots of legal analysis omitted, but the bottom line is that NIST would have had to be delegated that responsibility by the President, but never was. However, that did not stop NIST from signing over virtually all responsibility for U.S. participation in international standard development to the private ANSI, without so much as a public notice and comment rulemaking process. See section 3 at http://ts.nist.gov/Standards/Conformity/ansimou.cfm. Absolutely illegal, including at least two bright-line violations of the U.S. Constitution. But the Feds have unmistakably abdicated their legal responsibilities in regard to international standards to the private sector.

Excellent presentation discussing the AtomPub protocol as a key Open Web API . 52 slides, and everyone worth some study.

Digital Daily is carrying John Paczkowski's point-by-point twitter stream of the Google Apps Event. Fascinating stuff. Especially Dave Girouard's comments comparing Google Apps to MSOffice. One highlight of the event seems to be the announcement of a Google OutLook integration app. Sounds like something similar to what Zimbra did a few years ago prior to the $350 million acquisition by Yahoo! Zimbra perfected an integration into desktop Outlook comparable to the Exchange - Outlook channel. If Google Apps Sync for Outlook integration is a s good as the event demo, they would still have to crack into MSOffice to compete with the MSOffice-SharePoint-MOSS integration channel. Some interesting comments from Google Enterprise customers, Genentech, Morgans Hotel Group, and Avago ....... At an event in San Francisco, Google is expected to discuss the future of its productivity suite and some enhancements that may begin to close the gap with Microsoft (MSFT) Office, something the company desperately needs to do if it wants to make deeper inroads in the enterprise area. As Girouard himself admitted last week, Apps still has a ways to go. "Gmail is really the best email application in the world for consumers or business users, and we can prove that very well," he said. "Calendar is also very good, and probably almost at the level of Gmail. But the word processing, spreadsheets and other products are much less mature. They're a couple of years old at the most, and we still have a lot of work to do."

A new report by research analyst, Forrester says that 80 percent of enterprise customers are using some version of Microsoft Office. This reflects the stranglehold Microsoft has on the office productivity market, despite increased awareness of alternatives such as Sun's OpenOffice.org suite, and the rise of web-hosted variants such as Google Docs. I had a chance to comment on this brief lament regarding Microsoft's iron grip, desktop monopoly.

This new technical committee IPR mode may not make much sense to the legally-inclined without reading the new section 2.7 definition of "Covered Product." There we learn that the patent covenant extends only so far as the implementation is conformant with the standard. I count that as a good thing, curing a defect in the Sun Covenant Not to Sue in regard to ODF, which at least arguably extended far enough to confer immunity on those who embrace and extend a standard. But the reciprocity provision allowing contributors to counter-sue for infringement if sued clashes with many definitions of an "open standard" adopted by governmental entities for procurement purposes. So a question remains as to who must bend, government or OASIS members.