Bizology

Yahoo! acquires Zimbra

Congrats to Satish and the team at Zimbra for a successfully $350m acquisition by Yahoo! The is a fantastic win for the Zimbra team who worked tirelessly the last few years building a very respectable open source e-mail platform. Zimbra's innovative web user interface and focus on building a platform on open standards will make it a valuable asset in Yahoo's online arsenal of tools.

235 Patents on the Wall

Microsoft's statements in a recent Fortune Magazine article clearly show that they have been counting the patents that they allege are being violated by Linux and various open source components. This announcement comes at an interesting and important time for Microsoft. This is the year of Vista, Exchange, Office and supposedly Longhorn. These are major revisions and upgrades to applications that have been the staple of information technology, at least in North America.

Let's look at 2003, the last year Microsoft launched so many new products:

Microsoft          Viable competitor in business market

Windows XP            None
Server 2003            Novell NetWare
Exchange 2003       Novell GroupWise, Lotus Domino/Notes
SharePoint 2003     Large and expensive doc management systems
Office 2003             None worthy to mention (ok, I'll mention - WordPerfect, OpenOffice).
MS CRM                   Salesforce.com, ACT!
MS SQL 2000           Oracle on the high end

Let's look at the landscape today, in 2007

Microsoft          Viable competitor in business market

Windows Vista          SuSe Linux Desktop 10, Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise Desktop, Apple
Longhorn                  Not evident yet for file/print services, desktop management.
Exchange 2007         Zimbra, Scalix, Novell GroupWise, Lotus Domino, Kerio, OpenXchange
Sharepoint 2007       SocialText, Alfresco, Zimbra, Typepad, Moveable Type, Central Desktop
Office 2007              Much improved OpenOffice.
MS CRM 3.0              Salesforce.com with AppExchange, Sugar CRM, Centric CRM, NetSuite
SQL 2005                 MySQL, Postgres, EnterpriseDB

Clearly, this is a different competitive environment and Microsoft has substantially more to lose this time around. A lot of the innovation has happened because of open source. Products were able to be developed much faster because the cost of development has dropped significantly, not to mention developer communities that have been built around open source.

I can't stop to think about the people who continuously discount Microsoft's claims. One has to wonder how something like SaMBa is able to work. SaMBa allows Linux machines to appear as Microsoft Windows computers and are able emulate Windows servers. The SMB protocol is proprietary, but people have developed ways to get Linux to emulate Windows. I can't help to wonder how that was done. But is that technology owned by Microsoft? I don't know. I'm not a patent lawyer. And what about the graphical user interface? After many years Microsoft had to settle a law suit with Apple related to copying certain features of Apple's user interface. I bet the Apple executives have been laughing for a long time after seeing various iterations of Linux partake in designing their user interface to appeal to Windows users.

I don't think Microsoft will ever file a massive legal challenge against their own customers. But I think  they might bully Linux distributors into some sort of licensing deal, as they have done with Novell. Only time will tell.

Proprietary Software...friend or foe

So I was thinking, what's the bottom line here? Proprietary software vs. open source - is it good vs evil? Better vs worse? Expensive vs free? I think it all boils down to one word - trust.

For quite a few years the de-facto standard on corporate desktops has been a Windows operating system and Microsoft Office with Microsoft Outlook. Some larger companies, expecially financial services firms, use Lotus Notes instead of Outlook for e-mail, and if you're an IBM employee you're probably using the long forgotten Lotus SmartSuite.

When you think about it the corporate desktop is what made the computer industry it is today. In the the 1990s companies started buying PCs with the Windows operating system in droves. But why? Was it because of a master plan orchestrated by Microsoft to enslave the world? I don't think so. Humans just found it easier to relate to pictures and using a mouse then to using cryptic DOS commands and navigating convoluted menu-driven software. What were the options back then? Macintosh - no way, too expensive and too limited in features. Unix? Yeah, right. Linux - too young and unrefined. Commodore 64 (I loved my old Commodore!)..well, that was a "home computer".

What really happend was a snowball effect, especially with the birth of the World Wide Web and the Internet. Did Microsoft play by the rules? Later we found out that it did not. They abused their market share by squeezing companies like Novell, Netscape, Real Networks, and ensuring that hardware manufactures only bought their software to pre-load on PCs. And they were (and still continue to be) punished for their sins. But with all this turmoil I have to admit that they came out with good software that made computers and software easy to use. They created Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. In college I bought SmartSuite instead of MS Office just to be different. But realistically, Office was a better product and later I switched.

So back to trust. I trust Microsoft to create good software. Not to put security issues aside, which we all know Microsoft has their fair share to deal with, but their software works and it works well. Recently I tried using OpenOffice.org's spreadsheet program and it wasn't a very fruitful experience. Maybe it's because I'm used to Excel...ok, so I couldn't find the AutoSum (or it's equivalent). I also have been testing Microsoft Vista and Office 2007, which are a dramatic departure, in terms of user interface, from anything that anyone has yet seen. It's very different from any version of Windows or Office in the last 10 years. And I'm sure six months after they are released I'll wonder how I ever lived without them. Unfortunately, I really can't say that I have comparable feelings toward the Linux alternatives. They've made huge strides but I can't say they have anything comparable yet.

But this is not an issue about Microsoft vs Linux. Any software package that a business purchases is subject to the same test - do you trust the vendor to innovate, provide support, and hopefully, stay in business? Office productivity application are really at the low end of the totem pole when it comes to business applications. When you start talking about CRM, ERP, and the like the trust factor is worth a whole lot more. The same principles that apply to proprietary software also apply to open source. Is the open source vendor innovating, providing fast and accurate support, and is the vendor financially sound? Zealots will say it doesn't matter because you have the source code. But the reality is that it takes a substantial amount of resources to take a product's source code, recruit developers, have them learn the software and business process, and pick up where the software vendor left off. It may sound easy but it's not...and it's certainly not free.

When evaluating a solution - open source or not - I look at the company and more importantly, the talent of the people inventing the product. It's important to note that some open source "projects" become closed source. They may be built on an open source platform but the code becomes closed for practical reasons of support. So when choosing a solution for the business take into consideration the whole picture, not just whether or not the software developer is giving the source code. Because if you are not a software development company or a large corporation with teams of developers chances are that you'll never use the source code. I would put trust first and everything else second.

7/27 - Update: Linux Watch has an interesting story about what Linux vendors can learn from Microsoft.

Linux on the desktop..in a Windows world

I've been testing some of the new Linux desktop products that are on the market. I do this once every 6-8 months just to see the progress the Linux community is making on this seemingly insurmountable task. I'm looking at this from the business side versus the consumer side. The products I tested were Fedora Core 5, Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 (preview - not final release), and Ubuntu.

It seems that Novell , who purchased Suse several years ago. is making very good progress at making the installation of a Linux desktop seamless. I'm very impressed by their user-friendly configuration process. The desktop is clean and resembles Windowx XP to some extent. So I was thinking - can I use this as my desktop? Novell includes Evolution, a groupware application similar to Outlook that supringly connects to Microsoft Exchange as best as any Linux product I've seen. They also include OpenOffice 2.0, a Microsoft Office-like application suite, Firefox for web browsing, and a some multimedia apps. Of course the other Linux distributions include the same software so in that respect there is nothing innovative about Novell's desktop. The innovative part of their product is that it's easy to use and configure and that is key to gaining acceptance with systems administrators.

I think Novell has come the closest to a Microsoft Windows alternative. But as I think about running Linux as my desktop I realize that I have about 4 or 5 apps that are Windows only. The Achilles' heel of switching desktop operating systems is the lack of applications that are available for Windows but have been ported to Linux. Yes, I can install them on a Windows Terminal Server and use remote desktop from Linux. But the functionality is not the same and it's a bit inconvenient. I supposed for users who only need to use a web browser to access a web application or to use an application already ported to Linux the desktop solution would work. Citrix has a Linux client so Linux desktops could be deployed for use only with Citrix servers, although you can just as well buy a less-expensive-then-a-PC thin client with an embedded, diskless operating system as well.

This reminds me of when Windows 3.1 came out and most people with PCs used DOS applications. Eventually, DOS apps were ported to Windows. And this is precisely where Linux is today, in my opinion. I think Linux on the desktop does make sense for developers since they have an advantage of using open source development tools. But for the average knowledge worker that lives in a Windows world I just don't see it...yet.

I also don't see a cost incentive at this point. Unlike servers, desktop and laptop computers come pre-installed with a Windows operating system. It's highly unlikely that you can even buy a computer without Windows. Laptops and desktops that are traditionally used in a business enviroment are either HP, Dell, or IBM/Lenovo. Those are the three key players in the business desktop/laptop computing market. All of their computers come with Windows XP and the ones that come with Linux are not substantially less expensive. Technically, Windows XP costs about $250 retail. But rarely does anyone pay this price for Windows XP. Almost always Windows XP comes pre-installed on a computer and is included in the price. Hardware manufacturers don't reduce the price of the computer by $250 if you ask for one without Windows (if you can even find a manufacturer that will do this). So  there is little financial incentive for going through all the trouble to switch from Windows XP to Linux. Unless someone wants to start another Microsoft anti-trust lawsuit I don't see this being an option anytime soon.

Linspire is an interesting company to watch. They have a consumer-oriented Linux product on the market and also sell computers pre-loaded with Linspire's distribution of Linux. They have made substantial progress in using the retail channel to bring their product to market. Wal-Mart, CompUSA, and Best Buy are among the companies that sell their Linux-based desktop products. It should be noted that historically Windows gained its market momentum by being installed on personal computers, which gained their ubiquity as home computers that companies started using at the office. The "home" computer became the work computer but ironically it's still called the "personal computer".

The Open Source Challenge

Open source software has been a hot topic recently..well, ok, maybe in the last few years.  Linux has started to gain ground in the enterprise market, particularly in web servers and more importantly, enterprise applications. Recently I met with a customer who uses a Unix application but is being forced to migrate to Linux to appease the software firm that develops the application. Certainly, it's less expensive to maintain an open standard Intel system then a proprietary IBM system and it's understandable why the software vendor has chosen to port the application to Linux.

Trade magazines have started creating some level of hype of a forthcoming opportunity for Linux vendors like Novell, Xandros, Ubuntu, and others to gain market share before Microsoft's Vista operating system hits the market next year. However, I see it this way: it's not about winning the operating system battle. It's about winning the solution war. And this I call The Open Source Challenge.

In the small business (SMB) world, which is loosely defined as companies between 10 and 200 employees (although some vendors widen the gap to 1,000 employees), Linux adoption is still in its infancy. It's not just the desktop or the server software. SMB customers need ease of management, a great e-mail system, file sharing, and printing.  A key component that is often overlooked is management of all the systems. Starting with Windows NT and continuing today Microsoft has created the "Windows domain" and "Active Directory". These are the two core technologies that make it difficult to switch to another operating system. Yes, I know..all the hard core techies are saying that Samba and Open LDAP can emulate this functionality. Sure...if you have endless amount of time to figure it out. But why? For about $700 anyone can buy Windows Server 2003 and get Active Directory set up in no time flat. And it's much easier to maintain. Anyone that argues against this either has too much time to kill or is a Linux mercenary that is willing to spend unlimited amount of time to prove this concept wrong. Don't believe me? Click on the Samba and Open LDAP hyperlinks and see how quickly you can understand what's written on those web pages (disregard this if you're a computer science student, software developer, or Linux guru).

There are benefits to open source and Linux and I would love for there to be a real challenger to Microsoft's platform. However, I see a better opportunity now that is budding - interoperability by creating Linux apps that tie in with Microsoft's technologies. An excellent example of this is Zimbra, which I mentioned in an earlier blog posting. Zimbra's e-mail/collaboration product is untouchable by competitors - and to some extent Microsoft. The software runs on the Linux platform and even has support for Apple Mac. More importantly, it integrates with Active Directory (it's optional for all you hard core Linux fanatics). When I say integrates I mean even at the most basic level it allows you to have one password for your e-mail and for your user login. That's a great way of bringing a killer Linux app into the Microsoft world. We need more apps that are Microsoft friendly!

Another company - SpikeSource - also has an interesting offering that will help open source developers update not only their applications but also the operating system components. In the Windows world we have to live with having to update not only the operating system but also the applications. SpikeSource is leading the way in helping update the applications AND the operating systems.

I'm confident that as Linux evolves so will the functionality. But in order for it to start taking over the bread-and-butter territory of unified management and directory services it needs to be greatly simplified. Until then I will be looking at Microsoft-friendly Linux apps that provide value to our customers and maybe along the way save them money!