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Talking about Social Software

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:04:00 -0400

I recently had a long and wide-ranging interview with IT Business Edge on the topic of Social Software technologies.

The intrepid reporter, Ann All, transcribed nearly the whole discussion verbatim -- a rarity these days! -- and something any analyst (well, at least this analyst) welcomes only with some trepidation, because you're never (I'm not) as articulate in a stream-of-consciousness chat than a well-considered article. For example, I was more harsh on SharePoint in the end than I intended to be. Anyway, the key points come through and I'm not complaining.

Ann also offers some interesting commentary here.

Look for more from us over the coming months on the topic of Social Software, in these pages and others...

Infrastructure Updates for SharePoint

shawn_shell@consejoinc.com(Shawn Shell) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:20:00 -0400

Through the SharePoint product team's MSDN blog, Microsoft announced that it had released a significant infrastructure update for SharePoint (and related technologies like Project Server that leverages SharePoint components). The update seems to primarily address three areas:

Search functionality and search-related performance (like index performance).

Content Deployment bug fixes (which hopefully will correct a series of irritating bugs related to deploying content from one SharePoint environment to another in web content management scenarios). These are include the hotfix packs Microsoft released for content deployment back in May of this year.

General interface and performance improvements. In reading the three or four pages in Microsoft's site that aimed to describe what was actually included, it was difficult to pinpoint what these "improvements" actual mean to SharePoint administrators. However, Microsoft describes them as "...fixes and product performance updates driven by customer feedback which have resulted in significant platform performance improvements..." Again, I was unable to nail what precisely has changed or how significant the improvements were.

What's interesting, at least with regard to search, is that it seems the "ancillary" search products like Search Server 2008 (and it's "free" sibling Search Server Express 2008) are driving updates to SharePoint's search technology. As mentioned in the SharePoint Report 2008, Microsoft has invested heavily in improving SharePoint search. In fact, historically, it seemed as if SharePoint Search was the the parent of these independent search tools, but it now appears as if "the student [has become] the master" as Darth Vader said to Obi Wan.

In particular, SharePoint is getting Search Server's federated search capabilities and "a unified search dashboard." From what I saw at the last SharePoint conference, both of these search products borrowed very heavily from the SharePoint interface construct, but improved the visibility of certain configuration settings. In particular, I liked the ease with which you could configure the federated search.

However, these changes call into question how this will all play out within the Shared Services provider and whether administrators who are struggling to figure out where to go to change search settings -- at the site, site collection, Central Administration (in the Application or Operation tab) or in Shared Services. While most key search settings reside in Shared Services, SharePoint has search-relate configuration in spread over virtually every administrative interface. My hope is that this "unified search dashboard" brings some order to search within SharePoint.

In the end, these changes (along with the FAST search integration) also add more evidence to the theory that Microsoft is going to decouple search from SharePoint entirely (and potentially the Office team) -- making SharePoint a client technology. As I blogged about in a post on the completion of the FAST acquisition, Microsoft seems to be leaning very heavily towards and independent search product team. And just to add fuel to the conspiratorial fire, this type of organizational structure might make sense if, say, Microsoft were to acquire a large Internet-centric search company (although it begs the question what they'd do with all of this overlapping technology).

Understanding SharePoint through historical markers

shawn_shell@consejoinc.com(Shawn Shell) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 11:16:00 -0400

While working with a client in the U.S. state of Rhode Island, I discovered an interesting approach to providing directions: don't give directions by using landmarks that still exist, but rely on someone's historical knowledge of what landmarks used to exist. Directions in Rhode Island, as a result, sound something like this: "Oh you need to find the airport? Just travel down Kilvert and turn left where the old AlMacs used to be." This line of thinking is so pervasive, that's it difficult for a "foreigner" to actually figure out how to get anywhere. However, most locals, who've been around while, tend to instantly understand -- and can more fully comprehend the directions, as well as the geo-context.

As an analyst and a technologist that's been working with SharePoint technologies since before the official release of SharePoint 2001, I too am guilty of using these historical references. In fact, I find them almost invaluable in understanding how to solve problems or understand why certain functions in SharePoint operate the way they do.

In many cases, Microsoft builds on previous approaches to construct improved functions -- sometimes to the detriment and sometimes to the benefit of the end user. For example, when Microsoft integrated "the old Content Management Server (MCMS)" functionality into SharePoint, the result wasn't quite like MCMS and not quite like SharePoint (although certainly more SharePoint than MCMS). What Microsoft actually did was to inject basic MCMS concepts into the existing SharePoint architecture (e.g., created a "pages" library in SharePoint to explicitly hold HTML pages) and extend implicit SharePoint concepts with MCMS-like flexibility (introduced field types and controls that existed before, but weren't explicitly extendable).

This approach yields statements like: "How do you write a custom SharePoint field control? It's like writing and old MCMS placeholder."

In our SharePoint Report 2008, we use this instruction-through-historical-context to improve overall understanding of the current product. While we don't spend a lot of time reviewing history, the report provides some valuable historical context for SharePoint's approach. As we point out, this is sometimes to the detriment of SharePoint (trying to fit all MCMS constructs inside the existing SharePoint architecture), but it does occasionally work to its benefit -- for example, with the list construct.

As I continue to travel back and forth to Rhode Island, I always have to smile when I hear statements like "you're sitting in the PMO's old office." However, I believe I've gained an appreciation for the context that accompanies the language

What's to like about SharePoint: Forms Services

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 00:05:00 -0400

We're tough on SharePoint. That's because we frequently see enterprises wandering into the platform (thinking it's "easy" or "free") without always realizing the complexity of what they're about to get into.

Still, SharePoint has its merits, and it's worth re-iterating them from time to time to help you get the most value from your investment. One area where we think most customers underestimate the platform is with forms creation and processing (especially in the "MOSS" edition). There's some problems there, but also some good stuff, that's easy to use.

You can read more about it in today's release, "Enterprises Can Benefit from SharePoint's Underrated Electronic Forms Services," based on research from our SharePoint Report 2008.

Open Text - acquire or be acquired?

aps@cmswatch.com(Alan Pelz-Sharpe) — Fri, 4 Jul 2008 03:09:00 -0400

Open Text is back on the acquisition trail. The company announced Thursday that they had bought Spicer for $12m. Spicer is a document/file viewing tool vendor that markets "Imagenation," software that competes against the likes of Snowbound.

It's a logical enough addition to the panoply of content applications within the Open Text portfolio, and appears to have been bought at a bargain price. It's not exactly a game changer, but it does resurrect the question of Open Text's own future.

Acquire to grow and compete, or be acquired -- those are the current options. It seems likely that if Open Text itself does not get bought by HP, SAP, or Microsoft in the near future (the most likely bidders), then they will themselves acquire again, probably on a more ambitious basis. Now that they find themselves competing against giants like EMC, Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft it seems the only route to survive. Most likely in their sights is Interwoven, an acquisition that would bring near complete dominance in the Legal and Services sectors, along with some interesting new technologies in the bargain. I'll predict that one of these options -- big acquisition or get acquired -- is highly likely to occur in the next year.

But is Open Text really able to absorb so many counter-cultures and technology stacks? The firm has swallowed up rivals at a pace only Oracle could match -- but Open Text is not Oracle, and they simply do not have the resources to handle this kind of acquisition rate. Indeed many Open Text customers that we have interviewed for the ECM Suites Report regularly complain about disjointed and uneven support, confusing product roadmaps, and long-term concern about the future direction of the company. At the same time it's fair to also report that Open Text customers generally like the company and don't regret choosing them, but goodwill can only go so far.

With this small acquisition, Open Text has put itself back under the spotlight. The industry is again abuzz with rumors -- some of which may be true some of which may not. This remains a very uncertain time for buyers and partners alike.

White paper on SharePoint for public websites

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Wed, 2 Jul 2008 11:07:00 -0400

We've critiqued SharePoint's rather awkward web publishing capabilities in different evaluation reports (on Web CMS tools and SharePoint itself). But we also see customers who seek to deploy SharePoint for their public websites, either because they want to experiment with the platform, or because the business side is being forced to use it (often under the misimpression that it will be "free").

The latter case is a bit ironic, because for years some enterprise web teams had to put up with bloated Web CMS tools from the likes of Documentum or IBM in a mistaken effort by IT to overreach and standardize on a single ECM supplier. Now we sometimes see IT throwing SharePoint over the wall to the business as almost a kind of abdication of any involvement.

But using SharePoint for traditional web publishing is not a trivial undertaking. If you go that route, I'll commend you to a very useful white paper published by our partners at J. Boye, which offers some best practices in deploying SharePoint for web publishing. If you've already decided to take the plunge (or someone has decided for you), "Best Practices for Using SharePoint for Public Websites - A Business Person's Guide" can help you sort out how you should (and should not) proceed.

Some of the advice is germane to any web publishing automation effort, but that's exactly the point: whatever its unique particularities, employing SharePoint does not suspend the need for essential project management. If anything, the complexity of the platform and array of implementation choices puts a premium on dotting your i's and crossing your t's.

Web CMS Thoughts from Gilbane Day One

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 10:48:00 -0400

After participating in the first day of the Gilbane San Francisco conference yesterday, here some short observations in no particular order.

By my count, once-little Ektron has seen four years of hyper-growth. The company says they now have 200 employees. If accurate, I'll guess this head-count puts them at about US$30-40m in revenues, which sizes Ektron in the ball-park of some of the larger standalone Web CMS vendors (like FatWire, or Tridion before the SDL acquisition), or even the CMS product groups of some larger vendors. You're probably not surprised to hear that Ektron customers tell us this growth has not come without associated growth pains.

Forrester analyst Rob Koplowitz, who once worked on SharePoint Portal Server 2003 at Microsoft, called the MOSS 2007 platform a "collection of festering boils." You can ask him for clarification, but he seems to have meant it with love...

Speaking of SharePoint, two channel partners told me that their local Microsoft reps were marketing MOSS for public websites really hard. Evidently Redmond wants to beat the rap that the tool is not ideal for public-facing sites, and doubtless would like to lengthen this customer list. So the integrators are asking themselves, "when Microsoft hands us a great lead to follow, how can we have a candid conversation with the prospect about their real alternatives?" Not a new story in the channel business, but a pressing one right now, and you the buyer should understand the institutional dynamics. See, this presents you a bit of a dilemma as well: ideally you'd find a vendor-neutral consultant to help you sort out your choices, but if MOSS wins your competition in the end, you really want to go with a partner who brings very deep skills in Web Publishing in SharePoint, because it's not a simple beast. If Redmond keeps pushing its partners, then "vendor neutral with very deep SharePoint skills" could become an oxymoron.

If the exhibit hall is any indication, the Web CMS marketplace continues to expand, especially at the lower end -- perhaps dispelling the myth of a SharePoint steamroller, at least in this space. Smaller vendors here -- some of whom have participated for multiple events now -- include Acumium, Bridgeline, Broadchoice, Hippo, Telerik, and The Level, plus many of the other usual suspects we cover in our Web CMS Report 2008.

Of course, exhibitors come and go from year to year. One thing doesn't change though. Despite all the talk about Web 2.0, a lot of customers bring some very basic questions they want addressed about web publishing and CMS tools. I hope I can answer some of them at my tutorial tomorrow.

Web CMS versus Social Software?

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 10:10:00 -0400

People frequently ask me about where their Web Publishing efforts should end and Social Software begin. Like so many things, the answer is, "it depends." For example, one important question is whether you are talking about intranets versus a public site, which will likely exhibit very different interaction and security models.

I can certainly understand the confusion. Our recent research on Web CMS and Enterprise Social Software suggests a definite overlap from a tools perspective. But our research also found most Web CMS tools coming up short when it comes to deeper forms of Social Networking and Collaboration. (See today's press release for more details).

Meanwhile, most Social Software tools lack -- in some cases deliberately lack -- the sort of heavier-duty systems and administrative services that you would want behind an enterprise website.

Some enthusiasts argue that multidimensional platforms (like Drupal or SharePoint, to name just two) give you the best of both worlds. I disagree. But perhaps it's best to look at this less as a competition between two different types of software and more as distinct approaches to addressing two rather different objectives: one for enabling the publishing of "official" information, and the other supporting the creation and social interaction around unofficial content.

For most cases in most enterprises today, I think this means investing in two (or more) different types of tools to get you there.

Is SharePoint the end of (portal) history?

shawn_shell@consejoinc.com(Shawn Shell) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:16:00 -0400

In one of my university political science classes, we had to read and review a now famous essay by Francis Fukuyama titled "The End of History?" In the essay, Fukuyama argued that the apparent victory of modern liberal democracy over totalitarianism in the aftermath of the Cold War effectively marked the end of the ideological evolution of forms of government.

As I speak with more and more clients, I'm struck by the parallel between the essay's main argument and SharePoint (don't laugh...there's more). In much the same way Fukuyama suggests a resolved debate on forms of effective government, SharePoint seems to have halted virtually every conversation about alternate portal technologies. When speaking with my colleagues, Steve Krol, Exec VP of Services at Lyons Consulting Group, and Tony Byrne, CMS Watch founder, it seems they're seeing much the same thing. In fact, Steve went as far as to compare SharePoint to Kleenex, Band Aid, and Xerox -- no one installs "portals" anymore, they install "SharePoint." This begs the question: does SharePoint represent the end-all of portal products?

Whether you agree or disagree, it is certainly true that more and more customers are looking at SharePoint before anything else. With 100 million seats licensed and $1 bn in sales, it's hard to argue that SharePoint is anything but successful or mainstream. Consider that companies like Accenture, Ford, Del Monte, Mary Kay, and Hawaiian Air (to name just a few) all use SharePoint (some internally and some externally). Still many others are migrating there.

Of course, SharePoint owes some of its success to Microsoft's Enterprise Agreement approach. Most customers with Enterprise Agreements that include the "core CAL" get end-user licenses for SharePoint included (the actual server license is actually trivial in the scheme of things). In addition, the Windows SharePoint Services component is a free download and, although it depends on SQL Server, a basic implementation can use another free tool -- SQL Express. However, this approach is not much different than open source platforms, or products from other vendors like Oracle or IBM that might give away some portions of their portal product in exchange for customers buying the broader platform.

As our SharePoint Report 2008 points out, the product is quite broad. It can, among other functions, support: a composite application framework, document collaboration, web content management, and a broad enterprise portal. Still, you'll really want to do your homework before assuming that SharePoint can solve your portal problems. Just because you get something "for free" doesn't mean it really is free.

And like any product, it is certainly not the end-all. SharePoint does not shine in records management, it provides only basic document management, it lacks digital asset management, while search (at the enterprise level) usually requires add-on products to deliver full value. In addition, SharePoint partially suffers and partially benefits from a very broad partner community -- some customers like the fact that SharePoint is well supported by 3rd parties, but many also feel that Microsoft should have included more of that functionality "in the box."

Is SharePoint the "End of Portal History?" Not likely. The end of the Cold War did not mark the end of political history. It just suspended some discussions and changed some others. SharePoint has clearly caused a disruption in portal conversations in many organizations. The real question is whether SharePoint deserves this kind of attention. I think it does. Just exercise suitable caution: all portals, regardless of vendor, raise tricky issues of data integration, identity management, and application usability. (Some conversations, it seems, never go away.) In the end, you must truly understand SharePoint and your needs before dismissing other solutions in the portal space.

Announcing the Enterprise Social Software Report 2008

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0400

The full name is actually Enterprise Social Software Report 2008: Networking & Collaboration Within and Beyond the Enterprise. Enterprises are increasingly using social tools -- some new, some not so new -- within and beyond enterprise boundaries. As one side effect, those boundaries are increasingly blurring, even though vendors still find it difficult to satisfy both internal and external scenarios.

The report evaluates 20 Social Software vendors against eleven common scenarions, weighing in at about 400 pages. Turns out there are a lot of differences among vendors and approaches. The tools may espouse a light touch, but many of the architectures are far from trivial. Our media release today highlights just one potential challenge you may face implementing at an enterprise level: the general dearth of system services (like configuration management) across this space.

The report is available for pre-order today. Subscribers will receive their copy in a week or so when the official version gets burned out.

IBM-Microsoft shoot-out at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Mon, 9 Jun 2008 19:06:00 -0400

This morning at the Enterprise 2.0 conference we were treated to a series of semi-structured Social Software demos pitting IBM (Connections) against Microsoft (SharePoint), all moderated by Mike Gotta of the Burton Group.

Interestingly, both vendors pushed the portal angle: IBM bringing WebSphere Portal Server into play (partly as a container to mix in its quite separate collaboration tool, Quickr) and Microsoft showing off various 3rd-party Web Parts that can compensate for the dearth of native Social Networking services in Sharepoint.

IBM came off looking better for various reasons. They fielded a more focused demo team -- never to be underestimated -- but also because Connections has some slick, Ajax interfaces, and SharePoint does not. Ajax does not necessarily bring better usability, but done right, it can simplify complex interfaces.

And believe me: most Social Software tools ship with busy, power-user interfaces -- the sort of complex dashboards that have induced vertigo among enterprise portal users for years now. Social Software vendors seem to assume that all adopters are information addicts, wanting to scan multi-column pages packed with small-point text and hundreds of links to related, or popular, or recommended information. For some, surely that's true, but what about the mass of your colleagues? Asked one participant, "Are there documented best practices to implement [Lotus] Connections without overwhelming the community?"

IBM also previewed a selection of alphaware, including a social network analysis module and feed reader that will darken the marketplace "some time this year." SharePoint in contrast, came off as quite boring, and in the "back-channel" chat room a lonely, dogged Redmond representative got tortured by attendees. There's a palpable anti-Microsoft vibe among consultants here -- as you would suspect at any "cool" conference -- but I wonder if that's partly just resentment. Many of the enterprise attendees I spoke to are at least experimenting with SharePoint before going out into the marketplace to select another tool. Whatever its (many) demerits as a Social Software platform, SharePoint feels simple. IBM's Connections product made a good show for itself, but as we'll highlight in the Enterprise Social Software Report 2008, the attendant infrastructure requirements are not trivial.

Facebook: Not just a toy...

jgingras@cmswatch.com(Jarrod Gingras) — Mon, 12 May 2008 11:26:00 -0400

Over the last few years, many people (including us) have asked whether or not Facebook can be used as a enterprise intranet. Many have dismissed this notion by stating that Facebook is really just a time-wasting toy. While that question continues to be debated in enterprises across the globe, there is no question that Facebook has caught the attention of the big boys -- namely Google and Microsoft.

We have been hearing of Facebook as a drain on Google resources for some time. When asked about the biggest challenge to Google's success, one Google employee we talked to indicated that it was the loss of talent to nearby Facebook. It's not surprising that employees would be attracted to move down the street from Mountain View to Palo Alto to find a similar collegiate, yet pre-IPO, culture; but now the defections are becoming more senior, and more strategic. Facebook's COO, VP of Global Communications, Director of Business Development, Director of Platform Product Marketing are all ex-Google employees.

In the midst of Facebook's talent threat to Google, the company has also piqued the interest of Microsoft as a way to challenge Google themselves. As Prescient Digital Media's Toby Ward points out, Microsoft may look to Facebook's platform as a way to tap into the hosted enterprise tool market where Google has found success.

I agree with Toby that the Facebook platform certainly has a ways to go to truly compete head to head with Google's current offerings, but Microsoft's interest should indicate that Facebook has some major strategic value. The platform, the 70 million users, and the ever-growing ex-Google experience, are all assets that would strengthen Microsoft's arsenal in these early stages of a possible showdown between Microsoft and Google. Clearly, Facebook is much more than just a toy.

Next week, I will be moderating a panel discussion on this and other Facebook in the Enterprise questions at the Enterprise3 conference in San Diego. The panel will be comprised of the previously mentioned President of Prescient Digital Media, Toby Ward; Serena Software's VP of Communications, Kyle Arteaga; and the Senior Director of Optaros Labs at Optaros, John Eckman. Please join us for what should be a very lively discussion.

Microsoft Releases Latest SharePoint Extensions and Improves Developer Experience

shawn_shell@consejoinc.com(Shawn Shell) — Fri, 6 Jun 2008 20:21:00 -0400

Microsoft recently announced the latest version of the Visual Studio Extensions for Windows SharePoint Services (v1.2). This announcement is significant in that, among specific improvements in and to "out-of-the-box" projects, Redmond has added support for Visual Studio 2008. For those of you actively developing on SharePoint, this update to the extensions means, among other things:

No more "hacking" to use VS 2008
Until the 1.2 extensions, developers were reduced to "community" solutions for leveraging VS 2008. Some of these community-developed solutions worked, but they were not supported by Microsoft and lacked the fit and polish of a commercial release.
The ability to fully utilize .NET 3.5 (which provides native AJAX extensions)
The latest version of the .NET framework has been out for some time. However, SharePoint developers couldn't really take advantage of the update, since VS 2005 only supports .NET 3.0 (we can split hairs about how much SharePoint support there is with this extensions release, but that's another blog topic). With the update, the facilities in the new framework are now effectively available to SharePoint developers, including having the AJAX framework built into .NET (although official support for AJAX within SharePoint doesn't really exist).
Silverlight support (at least from Visual Studio's perspective)
As mentioned in a previous post on the SharePoint conference, Microsoft has been demoing more and more Silverlight-based Web Parts in SharePoint. Both Andrew Connell and Robert Bogue have been hosting a series of SharePoint online sessions that, in part, cover Silverlight-enabled Web Parts. For highly interactive Web Parts, Silverlight may be a better option than AJAX, since SharePoint doesn't natively support AJAX.
Improved project diversity
There are additional project types added to SharePoint development, including custom fields, modules, and templates. In addition, two project types (content types and list definitions) include stubbed Event Receivers.

As the SharePoint Report 2008 points out, the SharePoint developer experience needs some improvement. Specifically, there were historical problems with the 1.0 extensions that Microsoft released. The 1.1 extensions fixed may quirks, but didn't significantly add to the project types available and failed to support the latest Visual Studio version (even though the release dates were relatively close). With the 1.2 release, it seems Microsoft has regained its development footing and has started moving the ball forward again.

All this said, there were some disappointing news within the announcement. Remote development is still not supported. One could argue that remote development has never been a strong suit of Microsoft's server products; most products, including previous versions of SharePoint, Content Management Server, and BizTalk all required developers to have a local copy of the product installed. However, as the SharePoint development community expands and more customers adopt the platform, I question whether it's reasonable to expect every developer to host their own SharePoint server. I know of at least a few customers who don't want developers arbitrarily spinning up servers on their network and don't have the network support bandwidth for a half-dozen new servers just for development.

In all, the new extensions take a step forward, but the developer community is left still wanting more...

FAST clarification

bloem@radagio.com(Adriaan Bloem) — Tue, 3 Jun 2008 09:43:00 -0400

Apparently, when I previously wrote about Carrie's hand reaching out from the grave, the metaphor was too subtle. So let me make it absolutely clear: I'm not hoping the FAST turmoil will "just go away" so I won't be bothered by it anymore. I was pointing out the fact that the consequences could be further reaching than it being "just another investor soap", and the acquisition of FAST by Microsoft won't be enough to bury it.

Now that I've ruined the joke by explaining it anyway, let me add that this is no laughing matter. Of course, while it is much more fun to ridicule the situation without having to be able to back it up, I'll have to stick to the known facts: FAST is under investigation by the police. By stating just that, I estimate the readers of this blog to understand this as a serious warning.

When I say I'd rather discuss the technology, again, I imply rather then explain (to do a good job of that takes quite a few pages). So let me explicitly state some of the questions arising.

Now that FAST is turning out to be more of a Tucker Torpedo than a Cadillac (and to quote Wikipedia: "[Tucker's] Accessories Program raised funds by selling accessories before the car was even in production"): what is it Microsoft actually bought?

Customers (who were, it now seems, fraudulently overvalued, and many of which are on the Linux platform), whom Microsoft probably won't support in the long run?
Street-cred in enterprise search, which is now seriously marred by the consistently negative reports about FAST, compounded by suspicions that MS may have once again been blinded by competition with Google?
A vision on enterprise search, in the form of a vice president of Enterprise Search possibly implicated in a police investigation?

These have been widely reported, and there doesn't seem to be a whole lot more of value that came for Microsoft's $1.2 billion than technology. Which is what prompted my widely misunderstood remark that I'd rather discuss just that piece of the puzzle. Surely, it would have been possible to acquire the technology at a friendlier price point, say $23 million (oh wait! they got that as a free bonus), but it raises enough questions on its own. Which parts of ESP aren't third party, bought, or open source? How would these be integrated, or will a separate product line emerge? What are Microsoft's long-term views on enterprise search?

I've criticized Microsoft's unclear strategy and roadmap for MOSS in the past, and once again, Redmond seems to be covered in fog. Since search solutions are written off in years, not months, knowing what future development holds for the software is very relevant to existing and prospective customers. I'd think twice before investing in an implementation until the clouds subside.

On a side note, kudos to Dave Kellogg for being the first to actually respond to my previous post under his own name. I received a fair bit of anonymous mail on this subject, and it seems paradoxical to be criticized for not speaking out loud enough by those who choose to remain incognito themselves. Though this post is not about Dave, as much as his post is not about me, I would like to point out that my name contains three A's (not two), and I'm not a 20-something English major. Yes, CMS Watch does have maps and charts, and no, we don't dismiss business problems -- we just prefer not to place too much emphasis on the intricate details of GAAP accounting procedures on this blog...;-)

FAST clarification

bloem@radagio.com(Adriaan Bloem) — Tue, 3 Jun 2008 09:43:00 -0400

When I say I'd rather discuss the technology, again, I imply rather then explain (to do a good job of that takes quite a few pages). So let me explicitly state some of the questions arising.

Customers (who were, it now seems, fraudulently overvalued, and many of which are on the Linux platform), whom Microsoft probably won't support in the long run?
Street-cred in enterprise search, which is now seriously marred by the consistently negative reports about FAST, compounded by suspicions that MS may have once again been blinded by competition with Google?
A vision on enterprise search, in the form of a vice president of Enterprise Search possibly implicated in a police investigation?

FAST clarification

bloem@radagio.com(Adriaan Bloem) — Tue, 3 Jun 2008 09:43:00 -0400

When I say I'd rather discuss the technology, again, I imply rather then explain (to do a good job of that takes quite a few pages). So let me explicitly state some of the questions arising.

Customers (who were, it now seems, fraudulently overvalued, and many of which are on the Linux platform), whom Microsoft probably won't support in the long run?
Street-cred in enterprise search, which is now seriously marred by the consistently negative reports about FAST, compounded by suspicions that MS may have once again been blinded by competition with Google?
A vision on enterprise search, in the form of a vice president of Enterprise Search possibly implicated in a police investigation?