The reason I always dread these "will [x product] succeed inside the enterprise?" posts is because most bloggers simply don’t understand enterprise computing. In an enterprise, features don’t necessarily win the day (which is the argument this author makes). A good enterprise has a few primary concerns...
1. The availability of good support
2. An obvious return on investment
3. Ease of deployment
4. Integration into existing systems
5. Products that require testable skill sets from employees
Microsoft wins in the Enterprise generally because its support is so good. If you have $245 and a phone you can solve any problem with a Microsoft product even if you’re a low level tech support person. They will sit with you for however much time it takes to fix the problem (even overnight if necessary). On the other issues Microsoft publishes tons of Return on Investment studies, half of Sharepoint is already built in to Windows server, Microsoft has gone to all kinds of trouble to make Windows developers able to manipulate Sharepoint and they offer certifications to test possible employee knowledge.
Google on the other hand offers no support for its services, Google Wave is way too different from anything that exists to demonstrate return on investment, deployment is easy but worrisome from an IT perspective because you have no control over the server, and there’s no skill set to test for just yet. The only thing it has going for it is its ease of integration.
The concepts of Google Wave may very well make their way into the Enterprise but we’re years if not decades away from that actually happening. When it does I suspect Microsoft and every other enterprise application vendor will have competing products making the discussion no more than academic now.
While true about the average blogger's understanding of enterprise computing, the author of this particular blog has spent a good few years deploying Sharepoint into enterprises.
I read his bio and all it says is that he's worked as a consultant. Consultants don't deploy anything (though they will claim they do).
You bring in a consultant to advise you but they never make the actual decision or even necessarily know what thought process is going into that decision. In this case the proof is in the post itself. Not only does he not address all the factors I mentioned above he focuses on things Enterprises simply don't care about. Again I say: Support is king. If you write about Enterprise IT without even mentioning support you don't know what the heck you're talking about.
I'm not blaming consultants. The nature of a consultants job (never actually doing the work) creates an enviornment where he or she is detached from what's really going on. But that detachment means their opinions on IT computing and what drives it are next to useless.
Google Wave is packed with interesting ideas but it is so much more complex than SMTP, FTP, HTTP or other universal communication protocols. Maybe it is time for such complex protocols - maybe we have now better libraries and faster computers - but it will be hard.
1. The availability of good support 2. An obvious return on investment 3. Ease of deployment 4. Integration into existing systems 5. Products that require testable skill sets from employees
Microsoft wins in the Enterprise generally because its support is so good. If you have $245 and a phone you can solve any problem with a Microsoft product even if you’re a low level tech support person. They will sit with you for however much time it takes to fix the problem (even overnight if necessary). On the other issues Microsoft publishes tons of Return on Investment studies, half of Sharepoint is already built in to Windows server, Microsoft has gone to all kinds of trouble to make Windows developers able to manipulate Sharepoint and they offer certifications to test possible employee knowledge.
Google on the other hand offers no support for its services, Google Wave is way too different from anything that exists to demonstrate return on investment, deployment is easy but worrisome from an IT perspective because you have no control over the server, and there’s no skill set to test for just yet. The only thing it has going for it is its ease of integration.
The concepts of Google Wave may very well make their way into the Enterprise but we’re years if not decades away from that actually happening. When it does I suspect Microsoft and every other enterprise application vendor will have competing products making the discussion no more than academic now.