|
contents | business | |||||||
| Ovum on: Beehive Generating Buzz by David Mitchell, SVP at Ovum Beehive is a much more viable collaboration software platform than previous Oracle offerings Oracle Collaboration Suite was not widely adopted in the market, with Oracle finding difficulties in persuading customers to adopt the technology. Beehive, with its much improved functionality, architecture and user-interaction models, has the potential to change that pattern. It offers facilities for team workspaces, messaging, email, calendar management, instant messaging, presence, task management, document management, web/voice conferencing, mobile access and voicemail. In short, these are the key areas of functionality that would be expected in a modern collaboration platform. There are two significant differences compared to previous Oracle efforts in this space: architecture and the user-interaction model. At an architecture level the expected scalability of an Oracle infrastructure is a given, as is the focus on industry standards. It is also constructed on firm SOA foundations, meaning that Beehive can be integrated and embedded into many different elements of a corporate architecture, rather than being a standalone collaboration 'software island'. This architectural element will be one of the most important aspects of collaboration in the future, as collaboration becomes an inherent element of other applications. The user interaction model involves treating collaboration as an integral element of other work and tasks, rather than having a separate interaction model. Beehive should not be viewed as an upgrade, whether major or minor, to Oracle Collaboration Suite. It needs to be viewed as an entirely new product range, built after learning the lessons of previous attempts. Collaboration software needs to embrace heterogeneity At its launch Beehive is being positioned as complementary and technically compatible with competing software from providers such as Microsoft and IBM. This is a focus that will be welcomed by enterprise CIOs. The typical CIO has to support collaboration and communication infrastructure with technology provided by multiple suppliers, rather than having wall-to-wall technology from a single provider. As such, the focus on Beehive being an element of a heterogeneous infrastructure is welcome. IBM, through Lotus, and Microsoft have been viewed by some as mutually exclusive, with a customer having one or the other – very rarely both. Sales teams have sought to persuade customers to move from one to the other, with a series of marketing efforts. In practice, it is very difficult for a CIO to take the decision to migrate from a mainstream collaboration platform, for a number of reasons. First, companies have often developed a significant portfolio of applications that sit on top of their collaboration infrastructure, and migrating those applications to a new platform is a difficult task. Second, collaboration platforms generate strong emotional bonds in the organization, with users either loving or hating the technology that they are provided with – and, in return, loving or loathing the alternative technologies. Third, it is very difficult to make a concrete financially focused business case that justifies a platform change, especially when balanced against the major disruptions that can result from a poorly executed migration. Over the past 12 months we have seen a change in the way that collaboration software from most providers is being positioned. Rarely do we see an 'all or nothing' sales pitch. Instead we see all of the major vendors recognizing that the collaboration environment in most enterprises will be heterogeneous. Existing vendors may soon have to recognize Beehive as a new element in that mix. write your comments about the article :: © 2008 Computing News :: home page |