ECM vendors collaborate on interoperability standard
Yesterday EMC, IBM, and Microsoft
jointly announced Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) - a new specification designed to enable interoperability between content management repositories. The proposed standard, which was also being submitted to the open standards consortium OASIS yesterday, will create a common interface for accessing content stored in compliant repositories, simplifying the process of integrating business applications with enterprise content management (ECM) systems, particularly in a mixed environment with products from multiple ECM vendors - a situation that is common among enterprise organisations.
The core ECM focus areas for version 1.0 are collaborative content creation, and delivery of content through portals and mashups, with support for applications such as workflow/BPM, archiving, compound document management and electronic legal discovery to be built on top of the CMIS interfaces. The specification provides support for both REST- and SOAP-based interfaces.
The three primary parties in the development of the standard have been working on its development since 2006, and have since been joined by fellow competitors in the ECM space Alfresco, BEA/Oracle, OpenText and SAP.
I have to say that this is a welcome move by the ECM vendors - a standard of this kind is well overdue, and it is encouraging that so many of the leading players are on board. Clearly the implementation of such a (proposed) standard will not happen overnight - and approval of the standard by OASIS is not expected until the second half of 2009. However, we can expect the vendors involved to begin introducing CMIS-compliant code before then, especially since a key goal of the specification was to enable it to be developed as a layer that can sit on top of existing content repositories, rather than requiring them to be redeveloped from scratch (compared to the related JSR 170 standard, for example). In fact, the Alfresco website is already offering up its draft CMIS implementation for preview by the developer community.
A risk to the specification's success is that it falls into the same trap that befell the ANSI SQL standard. This provided a standard way of accessing data repositories, but allowed vendors to include their own "tweaks" which locked people in. The CMIS vendors acknowledge that CMIS is not trying to cover everything - for example security and administration is left to the individual applications - and clearly some products will have differentiating capabilities that are not covered by the standard, increasing the risk of deviation. However, despite this risk, CMIS is a positive step for the ECM market.
It is also worth noting that the standard has much wider implications than just ECM - certainly any organisations looking to implement collaboration technologies should keep an eye on the progress of the standard, and should also challenge their collaboration software providers on their plans, as CMIS should make it much easier to manage collaboratively authored content in the same way as any other organisational content.
Labels: Alfresco, CMIS, ECM, EMC, ibm, Microsoft, Open Text, Oracle, SAP, standards
Oracle proposes to buy BEA
Oracle
today confirmedthat it delivered a letter to the Board of Directors of BEA Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: BEAS) on October 9 in which Oracle proposes to acquire BEA for $17.00 per share in cash. The $17.00 per share offer is a 25% premium over yesterday's closing price of $13.62.This acquisition has been long-discussed so I can't say I find the news particularly surprising, particularly with Carl Icahn recently
upping his stake in the company. I think this just makes it more likely that Oracle's proposal will be accepted.
This is primarily as a market share grab by Oracle. It does plug some gaps in the portfolio - particularly around business process management (based on BEA's Fuego acquisition), where Oracle only has basic BPEL web services orchestration; adds some telecoms vertical market capabilities to complement Oracle's vertical market push and the virtualisation work that BEA has done with the WebLogic Virtual Server Edition. Also, there's the opportunity for Oracle to tap into the healthy Tuxedo base. With a significant chunk of Oracle's profitability coming from maintenance, the revenue from BEA's customer base will suit its business far better than it did BEA which was suffering with its inability to grow license revenues.
This is yet another example of the bigger specialist players getting squeezed out by the industry goliaths - IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP - and the open source, smaller best-of-breed players. SAP's recent acquisition of Business Objects is another example (although that did plug a few more gaps). It leaves some of the other bigger specialist players - TIBCO, SoftwareAG (and to a lesser extent Progress and Red Hat) in an interesting position. On the one hand they will be more attractive, particularly for SOA and BPM, to customers looking for an application-independent infrastructure offering. On the other, though, taking market share for those customers from BEA is one thing: taking it from Oracle quite another. Ultimately, IBM is the big beneficiary in this regard.
In summary, then, I see: the acquisition going ahead; BEA's customers looking worried as they see themselves with an application-dependent infrastructure stack; IBM looking happy at the prospect of providing those customers with an application-independent alternative; the likes of TIBCO and Software AG pondering their options; and SAP and Microsoft carrying on in there own sweet way.
Labels: BEA, BPM, ibm, Microsoft, Oracle, Progress, Red Hat, SAP, SOA, Software AG, TIBCO
Time to be honest about SaaS
I thought that those of you who aren't recipients of our monthly newsletter might be interested in this commentary (penned by the other Neil) dissecting some of the problems with the definition (or lack thereof) of software-as-a-service.
Over the past few days we?ve been having an interesting debate here at MWD, in conjunction with the analysts at our close partner
Freeform Dynamics. The question came from Dale Vile at Freeform: what's a good definition of software-as-a-service (SaaS)? The reason for asking the question was that SaaS is a hot topic, and it's something that's considered as a major growth opportunity for a lot of technology suppliers; but although there are a fair few forecasts of growth in demand, it's difficult to get a clear idea of what's actually included in these forecasts. Of course, if there isn't a consistent view of what does and doesn't actually constitute SaaS then that's not really helping anyone. The approach we took to try and provide that consistent view was to look at a long list of things (ranging from Google Search, Google Maps and hosted wikis to Skype's VOIP and messaging services, hosted voice PBXs, online travel agency services and remote backup services), and say whether we thought they "counted" as SaaS offerings.
What came to the fore very quickly was that there was no crisp set of attributes that we could agree characterised SaaS offerings. SaaS isn't defined (as some would tell you) by a particular type of distribution or access technology, a particular technology architecture, or a particular approach to charging for usage.
Yes, SaaS offerings do commonly exhibit particular choices in these areas (use of the web for distribution and access; a "multi-tenant" architecture to efficiently separate the data and customisations of each customer from those of others; and some kind of subscription license). But crucially, these choices aren't unique to what most people would call SaaS offerings. Google's services, and countless millions of other online dynamic websites, have made those same technology choices for distribution and access ? and they're commonly lumped into that whole other can of slippery worms, "Web 2.0". Countless online portals (some hosted within organisations, others available to the public) allow users to personalise their experiences and use a multi-tenant architecture to store personalisation data efficiently and effectively. Lastly, all sorts of information- or IT-based capabilities are delivered on a subscription basis (not least, mainframe capacity, and analyst research ;-).
So what is it that marks something out as SaaS (or not)? The only answer that seems to tick all the boxes is that SaaS offerings are those which deliver online, hosted alternatives to things that we have historically experienced through the in-house purchase (or development) and deployment of software systems.
Let's take Customer Relationship Management (CRM) as an example. Historically, CRM capabilities were provided by software that was installed on premise, was managed on premise, supported one organisation, and was paid for through a perpetual license. When Salesforce.com delivers those CRM capabilities from a remote installation, manages them on behalf of multiple organisations, and is paid to do so on the basis of a monthly subscription, it needs a different name: that's "Software-as-a-Service". Following that example, remote backup/restore services, online word processing applications like Google Docs, the Zoho suite and (now Adobe's) Buzzword, and SAP's BusinessByDesign (formerly A1S) all count as SaaS offerings. Google Search and Facebook don't, because they're not delivering capabilities that you would ever have associated with on-premise, perpetually licensed software.
This helps us clarify SaaS' place in the IT industry, but we think it's a problematic conclusion, for three reasons. Firstly, most people use the label without really understanding how context-dependent it is (what you think of as SaaS is primarily defined by your own experience); secondly, if we continue down this road, there can never really be a consistent definition of SaaS that will work for everyone; and thirdly, this is a very IT industry- and supplier-centric way of looking at the world that is only likely to alienate or confuse a very important community ? "users" (the people who pay all our salaries).
Perhaps we need to call time on SaaS, and think of some clearer terms and definitions that can really help IT organisations and IT buyers work out how everything fits together. At the very least, as an industry we need to be honest about SaaS ? and explain that it?s an industry-driven marketing and positioning term that's primarily about separating "funky new stuff" from "boring old stuff".
Labels: Adobe, Facebook, google, SaaS, Salesforce, SAP, Skype, Web 2.0, Zoho
SAP plugs a significant gap - acquires MaXware
Well, better late than never. SAP
today announced the acquisition of privately-held MaXware, a supplier of identity management infrastructure.
Back in June 2005, I discussed SAP Venture's (its VC arm) investment in another identity management specialist: Ping Identity and at
the beginning of 2006 predicted that SAP would enter the identity management acquisition fray. My timing was off but SAP has finally done it. In light of the investment in Ping Identity I was somewhat surprised by the choice of MaXware rather than Ping Identity but I think geography may have had a part to play. It is going to be easier for SAP to integrate a Norwegian company than one based in the US.
MaXware is hardly a new entrant in the market: the company has been around for over 15 years, initially providing virtual directory solutions. The company has subsequently built on that foundation to add identity lifecycle management, provisioning and federated web single sign-on. As a result MaXware provides SAP with a pretty comprehensive set of capabilities to bulk up its NetWeaver and broader application proposition, particularly when it comes to competing with arch-rival Oracle which has done a good job with acquiring and subsequently integrating identity management capabilities as part of Fusion Middleware.
SAP still has some way to go, obviously, when it comes to actually delivering an integrated proposition. The fact that both companies are European should help. However, I note that SAP does not appear
on the list of MaXware partners and the press release doesn't mention "building on the existing strong partnership" or "exploiting existing integration between the companies' solutions" (or other such press release-ese) so its difficult to gauge the extent of the technology integration work ahead. Customers and potential customers should look for detailed integration roadmaps.
Labels: identity, MaXware, Oracle, Ping, SAP
