Reinventing
The Office: IBM
Workplace
For five years I have been keeping a
file on my computer labeled “Reinventing the Office.”
It’s filled with proposed alternative approaches to a
Windows-based Office Suite running on a personal computer – or at
least to alternatives to the ubiquitous Microsoft Office Suite, so
popular in corporate North America.
I’ve hesitated to use “reinventing the office” as a
story title because what I’ve seen so far has seemed too niche
market oriented, too fragile or too small to offer a significant
alternative – a real opportunity to change the market.
But markets do change.
For example, in the 30 years that I have covered the word
processing market, we’ve changed both the technology and the
leading vendor many times:
Technology: From Dedicated Hard-Wired Machines to Dedicated Software
Programmable Machines to General Purpose Software Programmable
Machines (single and multi-user) (Mini Computers) to General Purpose
SW Programmable Machines (PCs)
Leading Vendor:
From IBM to Wang Laboratories to IBM PC with WordPro to PC
with WordPerfect to PC with Microsoft Word to PC with Microsoft
Office Suite
Of course, I have written frequently and
passionately about the possibility of a Linux desktop for the office
user. I’ll talk about
that in the next story in this issue, based on the presentation I
wrote for the Linux Desktop Summit last month, and the new
information I gathered there. But
this is another, very different story.
IBM has been listening to its customers,
particularly its enterprise (large) customers who are implementing
the portal approach to managing the distribution of software and
information to their employees. Based on these conversations, IBM announced yesterday a
different approach to providing office function, a genuine
re-invention of the office. To
understand requires that you forget that you are (probably) reading
this on your PC and think not about how things are, c. 2004, but how
they might be, moving into the future.
The IBM Workplace is a centrally
managed, server-centric world.
Function is located on central servers, managed by middleware
and then distributed, via client middleware (a new concept) to
whatever device the user happens to be employing – a desktop, a
laptop, or a mobile device such as a PDA, a tablet, a smart phone,
or a smart car. The IBM
Workplace is designed to distribute function and information between
its server and any enabled client.
Workplace currently runs two software
offerings, Workplace Messaging and Workplace Documents.
Workplace Messaging includes:
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Group calendaring and scheduling
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Document and attachment viewers and
search
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Mailbox/folder archive/restore
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LDAP directory certification
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Off line mail and calendar viewing
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dynamic client provisioning,
configuration, upgrade
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Instant Messaging, chat
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Extended productivity features
including sell check, full text search on local mail, and
built-in editors
Workplace Documents includes:
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Key document management features
including check in/check out, version control, document level
security
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Integration with desktop applications;
documents may be stored both locally and (automatically) at the
server, with secure local content store
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Server provisioned
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Builder tool to create new applications
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Support for DB2 Content Manager
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Built-in editors
IBM Workplace buyers may choose either
or both of these applications.
IBM and its partners will, of course, offer others over time.
Partner solutions have already been announced by PeopleSoft,
Siebel, Adobe, Intellisync, Rim, and many others.
Often, these are in the form of portlets, small plug-ins,
allowing existing applications to be used within the Workplace
environment without alternation.
IBM has already built a portlet for
Microsoft Office Suite. It
permits an Office user to take immediate advantage of Document
Management without changing anything about the Office application,
adding automatic replication of files to the server and document
management. This is an
important idea because it means a company with many Microsoft Office
users can choose to implement Workplace without the need to displace
its Office users. They
can continue to use Microsoft Office, adding the additional
functionality of Documents.
Messaging and Documents each contains a
set of embedded personal productivity components.
These are available to anyone using the messaging or document
management applications. It’s
important to note that they are not a separate offering and cannot
be purchased for use in an environment where server support is not
available. This, in
itself, would make them very different from current office suite
offerings from software vendors such as Microsoft, Corel, and
StarOffice/OpenOffice.org.
That’s an important differentiation to
remember, because many of the early press reports – and even more
of the comments about them, gloss over this difference, and seem to
think that IBM is now shipping a Microsoft-competitive office suite.
That simply is not so.
The set of componentized office
applications IBM is offering as part of its Messaging and Document
Management applications are derived from the OpenOffice.org open
source code. This means
the level of functionality and interoperability provided by the IBM
text editor, the spreadsheet editor, and the graphics (presentation)
editor, are equivalent to that found in OpenOffice (or Sun’s
StarOffice). We’d
estimate that today at about 75% of the functionality of Microsoft
Office for the equivalent applications, increasing with each new
release of OpenOffice. (Microsoft’s
office suite, in its various versions, includes other applications,
such as a personal data base, and note and web editors, not included
in the IBM offering.)
IBM Workplace Is Not An Office Suite
Because these componentized editors
exist ONLY as part of the server software offering (and not as a
shrink-wrapped or downloadable “office suite”), they are not
available to an individual user, working in a PC without server
environment. On the
other hand, once they are downloaded to the user’s computer
(desktop, laptop, or mobile device), he may use them (and other
elements of the Workplace) in disconnected mode, without continuous
access to the server connection. Whenever the IBM Workplace user is working in connected mode,
additional server-based function becomes available and any work
(emails in the out basket, new documents to be stored on the
server), will be synchronized and processed.
Likewise, new email will be downloaded, new information will
become available, and new software (or upgrades and patches) will be
automatically applied.
The Target Customer
Steve Mills, Senior Vice President of
IBM’s Software Group is quite firm about the fact that this is a
product defined by IBM’s enterprise (large) customers who (as we
noted above) have been successfully moving to portal-based solutions
to deliver applications and information access to their users.
These customers have asked for improvements in two areas:
a richer client than the browser and better productivity apps
than those provided with the portal. IBM Workplace 2.0 and the new
messaging and document management applications do just that.
-
A richer client, provisioned and managed
at the server, promises a combination of lower TCO and richer
function. This rich
client can integrate with desktop applications, offers
drag-n-drop and has UI control. The
customer can then choose between rich client, browser, and
mobile client solutions, without having to alter applications or
routes to information.
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A Micro Edition of the Workplace Client
provides micro middleware components for all types of mobile
devices, supporting transactions, a web container, messaging,
and a database. It provides embedded Linux support and portable
JVM based graphics. It
is offered with a new set of enterprise development tools.
-
Managed clients function in connected,
intermittently connected, and disconnected mode, enabled by
Lotus-provided bi-directional synchronization and replication.
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Workplace provides a middle ground,
sitting between the clients for whom they provide collaboration
services, interaction and access services, and managed client
services, as well as business context and activities, and
back-end integration to business processes (monitoring,
workflows, and access to business applications) and information
(data, content, integration, and tools such as search and
analysis).
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All of this occurs in a single
architectural model, within a single programming model and a
single consistent tool set.
Eclipse is the basic development environment, but tools
include a Portlet Builder, a Workplace Builder, designers for
Domino and Workplace, and WebSphere Studio.
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Security is well provided for.
There is a separate client-side repository.
Only applications provisioned from the server can access
this database. It
belongs to the client-side middleware, not to the desktop file
system (and is, therefore, separate from the operating system).
It is this separation of the middleware from the client
operating system that provides the security and should
significantly avoid unwanted invaders.
Workplaces start out as generic,
horizontal applications, but they won’t stay that way.
IBM will mesh them with their solution strategy, with
specific Workplace offerings in the future for specific industry
segments. For example,
look for a branch banking Workplace; IBM’s Global Services has a
worldwide practice in this segment and will use its expertise to
provide the feature set. Expect
announcements for some verticals in the second half of 2004 and into
2005.
Pricing
IBM hasn’t officially announced
pricing for IBM Workplace, but it has said that pricing will be
aggressive and competitive. They’ve
mentioned that for a large enterprise user (we’d guess that means
multiple thousands of seats) each server (Messaging, Documents) will
be $1 per user per month plus $2 per user per month for support.
We’re guessing, but we’d assume that must mean that some
multiple in the 2 to 3 times range would be the “list” price.
We expect better, more detailed pricing information in late
June.
If those guesses are correct, we might
see some competitive repricing as a result, especially from Sun, who
JDS offering is positioned around a compelling pricing model.
A Roadmap
Some Workplace functionality is
available right now. Early customers are participating in the Beta.
Workplace Messaging and Workplace Documents as well as
Workplace Builder and the Microsoft Office Plug-In will all be
available in the second quarter.
The Office components (the text, spreadsheet and graphic
editors) deliver with Messaging and Documents.
Micro Builder 5.6 is available for download now; 5.7 will be
available in the 3rd quarter.
IBM is presenting to customers in 70
cities, world-wide, starting today.
IBM’s goal is to spend their time with customers who are
prepared to commit to more than pilot-level activity and to stay
away from complicated or special client needs in the first round.
They will run an implementation center to assist customers,
especially corporate users.
From a pervasive computing point of
view, customers are pushing IBM at about as fast a pace as they can
go. The problem, VP
Gary Cohen says, is sorting pilots from real projects.
There’s a new focus on ISVs, helping them to enable
software on new devices and new applications to broaden demand for
their applications. A
good source for Micro Middleware information is www.ibm.com/developerworks
- dl 5.6.
Some Conclusions And Predictions
IBM is going to focus this product at
Enterprise and the high-end of the mid-Market (IBM’s definition of
mid-Market is companies with 100 to 1,000 employees.), at least for
a while. But this
product will be equally appealing, we believe, to smaller
organizations. Much
smaller ones. We’d guess that IBM will have to figure out how it’s
going to handle the go-to-market strategy for that.
Partners will obviously be involved and, we’d suspect, some
vertical segmentation. (In
any case, IBM plans vertical offerings in a number of markets.)
What we’d really like to see is a
hosted offering for the SMB market, perhaps connected to IBM’s
recent announcement of a hosted systems management offering for SMB
PC buyers, adding office services to system management.
We’d expect that competitors will be
forced to react, both in pricing and in strategy, but not quickly.
This announcement will take time to sort out, time to make
its way into the marketplace, and time for customers to entirely
understand. This will
give Sun and Microsoft some time to decide what – if anything –
they should do.
We tried to get competitive reactions,
but were only able to get in touch with Microsoft by deadline time.
Microsoft Reacts
We
asked Microsoft for a reaction and although they had not known
anything about this IBM announcement until Friday, they agreed to
comment. Gytis
Barzdukas, Microsoft’s Director of Office Product Management, said
it was nice to see IBM embrace a rich client environment at the
desktop, something that Microsoft has long endorsed.
He also liked the idea that IBM was putting that client into
a broader context, talking to back-end systems, rather as Microsoft
did when it started talking about Microsoft Office as part of an
Office System rather than as just an Office Suite.
Microsoft
was interested, of course, in just what customer audience the
product was targeted to. We
agreed that reading the trade press it was easy to get the
(incorrect) impression that IBM had announced a product competitive
to Microsoft’s Office Suite, suitable for any office user, down to
an individual consumer. That,
of course, is not what IBM has in mind.
But
we suspect that Microsoft may find the product competitive for some
Enterprise customers, particularly those who have been looking for
an Office Suite or PC-centric alternative.
We think there are a few of those among the customers IBM has
in its Workplace betas.
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