The State of the Mobile Market

The latest marketshare data for the mobile devices market has been released recently and I thought that it might be a good time to take a look at the mobile market today and tomorrow. First, lets take a look at the data that comes from comScore, combined with the latest Nielsen report and with data from iSuppli and a few other sources. The most widely reported information is the smartphone market share which looks as follows (comScore):

Basically, there are three vendors left today - Google, Apple, and RIM - with RIM losing market share while Google and Apple are growing. A forth vendor, Microsoft is fighting what seems to be a loosing battle to connect with the leading group. According to many analysts including Gartner and IDC, we will see some massive changes in the near future. The research firm iSuppli recently published a report that suggests that the Windows Phone will not only knock off the fast-fading RIM from its 3rd spot but it will even steal the 2nd spot away from Apple:

So why are all the analyst so bullish on Windows Phone when Microsoft has been losing marketshare so far? Well, the next data point may suggest an explanation:

As we can see, the smartphone penetration is still relatively low but growing very quickly. The overall market growth for mobile devices is at 10.8% according to iSuppli and both Nielsen and iSuppli expect that 60% of devices sold in 2015 will be smartphones. That means that there is plenty of marketshare to grab amid the double digit device growth, the rapid growth of smartphone penetration and the decline of other vendors.

Not a bad market to be in, is it? No wonder the vendors are so desperate to grab a piece of this pie. Today, Google and Apple have a clear lock on the top two positions while RIM keeps sliding and Microsoft is nowhere - at least so far. There are rumors about a Facebook phone and HP still has to make up or re-make up their mind about what to do with webOS. Here are some thoughts about the respective players:

Google
Google has grabbed a ton of market share thanks to all the Asian manufacturers such as Samsung, LG, HTC, Sony, etc. They all needed an operating system and since Google Android is free, the choice was easy. So far so good except that there are three big problems looming ahead. First, as a result of the open source model, the Google market has become massively fragmented and application developers struggle to support all the device types. Second, Google acquired Motorola which will make it difficult to keep the competition honest between its own devices and the other vendors. Third, Google is hardly making any money on Android - in fact they are paying hefty patent fees to Microsoft for each device - which makes it a hard business to sustain for a publicly traded company.

Apple
Apple may have lost the top market share spot to Google but honestly, Apple is running circles around everybody. Leveraging their unique value proposition of a tightly integrated system consisting of hardware, software and content, Apple is just piling up profits and making everyone else look bad. Make no mistake, the market share loss in units has nothing to do with market share in revenue and profits where Apple is standing head and shoulders above the rest of the industry combined. The decline in units market share is not a result of an inferior product or any systemic problem. It is more the result of the fact that many users are upgrading their feature phones and opting for the cheapest smartphone available without caring much about the operating system. Those users are clearly not Apple’s target customers. Apple is after the more affluent user who will not only shell out a premium price for a premium brand but who will also keep contributing to Apple’s profits through ongoing purchases on iTunes.

Microsoft
Unlike Google who’s Android is basically a less polished version of Apple’s iOS, Microsoft has built a very distinct and compelling mobile operating system. But adoption is so far eluding Microsoft for several reasons. The vendors selling Microsoft Phone devices are the same lot as those who sell Android. Android is free and Windows Phone is not and so guess who they push more? The second issue is that Microsoft has bet the farm on their Nokia partnership which was a smart move except that Nokia didn’t ship any Windows phones until the end of last year. The third and by far most important issue is the lack of developer support. Apple and Google have attracted many developers quickly leveraging superior tools, compelling business models and - in the case of Google - the open source effect. Microsoft has shown little love to developers so far. Unless Microsoft addresses these issues, they will always continue battling at best for the third place.

RIM
Well, it has been widely reported that RIM is in trouble and just replacing the CEOs is not going to fix that. RIM’s greatest problem is the lack of innovation. The good old BlackBerry may work fine and be more secure than iPhone but it is no longer hip enough even for the executives at stodgy brick-and-mortar companies. Today, RIM needs a purpose, a focus, and a compelling way to differentiate. Leaking pictures of phones that could ship in two years and be almost as cool as the iPhone is today is not going to do it. Even if those new RIM phones were available today, it would hardly make much difference. Besides needing some innovative and competitive products, RIM also has to address the developer support just like Microsoft.

HP
To be complete, I should also mention HP as the only other remaining MOS vendor. Or did they announced that they have killed webOS? Yeah, whatever. I will write another post when I meet a user with a webOS based smartphone.

A Tale of Two Worlds

Often, when I tune into my Twitter feed, I often get the impression that the world has already moved into a place where all human collaboration is done on mobile devices using social software, all software is delivered as a service, all data is Big Data and lives in the cloud. Often, I meet customers who fit into this category and I get very excited about how they push the barriers.

But then I look again and listen to customers who are different. I meet customers who still ban public social media such as Twitter and Facebook from their organization. Their only approved mobile device is an ancient model of BlackBerry with no built-in camera, and the idea of their data ever entering a cloud send shivers down their spines. While perhaps less exciting, these are often some of the largest customers I meet.

Do I suffer from a multiple personality disorder? Do I live in two parallel worlds that rarely connect?

Well, when we look at the big industry analyst firms in our space, it appears that they too have aligned themselves along these lines of demarcation. They have analysts who cover subjects such as compliance, records management, archiving, security, and e-discovery. Those analysts cannot be found on Twitter, they don’t write many blogs, and their email signature includes long disclaimers. Then, the same firms have analysts who cover collaboration, social software, web experience management, and digital asset management. These analysts are much more visible on social media and they are a little less paranoid about the fact that everything they say is a record and subject to legal discovery rules.

Yes, there are different worlds that co-exist. Sometimes, we marketers like to get ahead of ourselves. We start believing that everybody is on the leading edge. And some customers clearly are. There are many industries with low barriers to entry, comparable products, and high price pressures where it is the technology that allows companies to differentiate. Just think of the competitive pressures in manufacturing, retail or consumer packaged goods.

At the same time, there are heavily regulated industries that have developed a strong record-keeping discipline over the last few decades. Think pharmaceuticals, oil&gas, utilities, and increasingly financial services (Dodd-Frank anyone?). These customers are clearly much more conservative but that doesn’t make them any less demanding or any less attractive for a vendor. Their business requirements are simply different.

Successful vendors can operate on the entire spectrum of solutions - from those catering to the most conservative business needs all the way to those who will explore the very latest technology to get an inch of competitive advantage for the next couple of quarters. The most successful vendors can cater not only to the glamour of the one extreme or the dependability on the other end of the spectrum. They understand the business demands of the organization and can cater to all of them and to any combination in between.

Yes, there are multiple worlds out there which makes our business very exciting!

What Happened to Don't Be Evil?

Don't be evil?

Google is changing. It was and still is one of the amazing success stories since they have built a highly profitable business based on their search service. In addition to making a boat load of money, Google attracted a lot of positive karma by providing fantastic service and by proclaiming their mantra “Don’t Be Evil”. Ten years ago, they even lived by it.

But, fast forward to January 2012. Google is now a publicly traded company with the typical Wall Street pressure of quarterly earnings. Search-based advertising is still a giant money-making machine and Google keeps innovating by coming up with new ways to make advertisers part with their budgets - i.e. local search, mobile search or map based search. But an important thing has changed since - Google now has competition!

Google’s mission, as stated on their Web site, is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. That’s a noble goal that benefits mankind while allowing Google to make a ton of money along the way. But Google is not true to their mission anymore. For instance, there is a lot of information on Facebook and Twitter and Google is deliberately not searching for it. Is the information on Twitter not part of the “world’s information” that should be universally accessible and useful?

A few days ago, Google escalated this game to another level when it changed its search ranking algorithm to prioritize the information found on its own social network, Google+. This prioritization has little to do with actual relevancy which is supposed to be at the heart of the search ranking algorithm. Instead, it artificially promotes Google’s own fledgling social network which represents another source of advertising revenue for Google. Information posted on Google+ ranks relatively high, often even higher than Web sites to which it points to. Information posted on Facebook and Twitter is not available at all.

This was when Google discovered it had competition.

Now, let’s consider advertising - Google’s primary revenue source. Advertisers who want their content to be visible in Google search will have no choice but to promote that content in Google+. As a result, Google+ will enjoy more traffic and more user interactions while fueling Google’s revenue engine. Pretty clever, actually. Well, diabolically clever if you ask me. By unjustly promoting its own content and suppressing content from its competitors, Google is double-dipping by cross-promoting two of its services. No, Google can’t claim that this is not evil.

This is very evil, indeed. Google has sold out its beliefs. Instead of providing customers with the best possible experience, Google delivers the experience that maximizes its revenue. What’s next? A YouTube video will rank higher than a more relevant video on the Discovery Channel’s web site? You bet! What Google’s doing to Twitter is no different from what Microsoft did to Netscape back in the 90s. Microsoft ended up as the target of a huge anti-trust lawsuit that has had a massive impact on Microsoft’s pace of innovation. Google is marching down the same path now and nobody will like the end of it.

Curiously enough, it is none other than Microsoft that provides Bing, the search engine that can stand up to Google. I’m not trying to portray Microsoft as the angel while calling Google the devil. But Bing can search information on Twitter and while it doesn’t appear to be searching Facebook today, it probably could since Microsoft has a stake in Facebook. Bing still has a relatively small market share compared to Google but that could change.

Because now, Google is evil.

Stop SOPA!!!

I am against SOPA. I am against PIPA. I am against censorship.
I admire and support Wikipedia, Reddit and other organizations that decided to stand up against the proposed legislation.

PLEASE KEEP THE INTERNET FREE FOR EVERYONE!

Why Acquire Companies?

I’ve wanted to write this post for a while, but I was worried that you would read too much into it if it was published shortly after any particular acquisition by my employer, OpenText. Obviously, we know a thing or two about acquisitions at OpenText. They are an important part of our growth strategy. But this post is not about any particular acquisition or about OpenText per se, it is about the general reasons why companies buy other companies.

High-tech acquisitions tend to draw a lot of attention when they are announced and most of the coverage is focused on the perceived strategic fit. Or, what the technology pundits consider to be the strategic fit. Unfortunately, most of the time, everybody focuses on the technology and nothing else. Sure, the technical strategy is pretty fundamental for a technology company. Yet in reality, there are many possible reasons for high-tech companies to acquire:

1. Technology
This is what most people think of first and a technology driven acquisition is usually driven by vendor’s “build, buy, or partner” analysis - one of these strategies is the most economical given the cost, time to market, and account control.

2. Access to new markets
An acquisition can give the suitor quick access to new markets for the purposes of growth or diversification - for example to new geographies, new channels, new partners, new vertical markets, or access to exclusive government contracts. Buying a vendor who’s established itself in a given market can be an effective way to get there fast or cost-effectively.

3. Customer base
Buying a customer base can be extremely lucrative in the enterprise software market. Customers typically pay around 20% of the original license cost annually for maintenance - for support and upgrades. Given how sticky enterprise software can be, this is often a highly profitable business for many years to come.

4. Talent
You want to off-shore your development or quickly build a sales force specialized in a new vertical market? Buying a company with that kind of talent may be a quick way of getting there. Just make sure you keep them.

5. Assets
Acquiring a company can be an effective way to get their assets, i.e. a patent portfolio, production facilities or data centers.

6. Outflank competition
Sometimes, buying a company makes sure a competitor doesn’t get it. The company may have been a supplier, strategic partner, or a channel partner to your competitor and acquiring it may be a great way to disrupt the competitive balance of power.

7. Financial engineering
Sometimes, an acquisition makes sense for mostly financial reasons, such as tax loss carry-forwards, profits repatriation, or as a financial investment for the company’s venture arm.

As you can see, there can be many reasons for M&A activities (mergers and acquisitions) - and you might even come up with a couple more. So, the next time you hear about an acquisition, don’t just analyse the technology stacks before passing your judgment on the strategic fit.

Now, let’s get the 2012 M&A season started!

Content Management Predictions for 2012

Another year over, and a new one just begun...yes, I’m quoting John Lennon. This is the time for resolutions and predictions. After I published my 2011 Content Management Predictions a year ago, I was rewarded by a lot of positive feedback and the article became the top post on my blog in 2011. I believe that every prediction has to be followed by a review and so I published my 2011 Predictions Scorecard just a few weeks ago. This year, let’s do it again! Here are my Content Management Predictions for 2012:

1. Big Data will be the hype of the year
If SoLoMo was the buzzword of 2011, I’m predicting that “big data” will be the hype in 2012. Sure, lots of companies are already talking about big data today but in 2012, everybody will be talking about it. There is no good definition of big data today which means that the marketers and pundits will have a field day. Just substitute the word “data” with “big data” and launch your marketing campaign!

2. “Social” becomes a feature
The year 2011 saw us shifting gears rapidly from social software to social media and finally to social business. That’s a sure sign that the social market hasn’t settled yet. In 2011, it was still unclear who were the legitimate stakeholders of social enterprise - consumer companies moving in, start-ups capitalizing on the hype, or the traditional enterprise software vendors? Well, I’m predicting that in 2012, it will become clear that social software is not a viable stand-alone business and that we will see it subsumed by enterprise software - from Opentext to SAP to Salesforce, but the big catalyst will be SharePoint 15.

3. SharePoint will solve every problem, again
Speaking of, the time has come to make a prediction about SharePoint. 2011 was surprisingly quiet on the SharePoint front with Microsoft focusing on other priorities. In fact, the pundits and wanna-be competitors started poking their heads out and proclaiming rebellious statements about SharePoint. Well, not so fast - the empire will strike again. I predict that SharePoint will make it on the list of Microsoft priorities by the end of 2012 and that just like the previous versions, the Redmond Marketing Machine will turn it into a universal solution for every problem. For a while, we will actually believe it but eventually, things will settle back into the right order. But this time, there may be a new twist in this familiar tune - the cloud!

4. Rise of the hybrid cloud
In 2011, it was impossible to have a conversation without mentioning the cloud which is what we started calling it when we could not tell SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS apart anymore. Clouds are hip and all of a sudden, everybody is a meteorologist! Well, I predicted for 2011 that enterprises will not be rushing to the cloud yet. In 2012, that might change. The cloud-based model makes a lot of sense and now, we have a way to say that we may consider selectively taking advantage of certain cloud-based offerings for some use cases: hybrid cloud. In 2012, we will start seeing hybrid cloud adoption of content management software.

5. Cloudy outlook for open source
Well, all that cloud business has gotta be bad news for open source. Sure, there will always be customers who will like to tinker with their deployments like I wrote about last February. But customers hoping to save money - or at least to reduce their capex - by embracing open source have to seriously consider the cloud-based offerings. Sure, Drupal will be still around and probably still growing but the Great Open Source Movement will hit the trough of disillusionment in 2012 - courtesy of the cloud.

6. Consumerization is here to stay
In my 2011 look back, I admitted that consumerization was one significant trend that I had missed in my predictions. In 2012, consumerization will continue. Particularly the trend of employees bringing their own devices to work will continue. Facing the rapid pace of innovation in consumer devices, companies will not be able to keep up and they will have to give in. People will simply buy the latest gadget and use it for work. OK, since this is too easy of a prediction, I am also predicting that the consequences of consumerization will be the number one topic for the records management and information governance crowd in 2012.

7. End of convergence
One of the consequences of consumerization will be the end of device convergence. Until now, I believed that all of the cool functionality would eventually be subsumed by a single mobile device - most likely sold to us by Apple. But that is not happening. I travel frequently with my laptop, iPad, iPhone, pocket camera, and even a GPS. Oh, and I’ve started wearing an iPod Nano as a watch and I bought a Kindle. That’s not convergence! The reason why I do this is simple - for specific tasks, an optimized device is far better than similar functionality in my smart phone. For example - data roaming fees are the reason for using a GPS while my tiny Canon takes pictures far better than the iPhone and the Kindle is a better reader. For 2012, I predict that we will see even more divergence like this. The device manufacturers have to differentiate and they will be bringing out devices that will be compelling enough to carry multiple ones. Is anybody at RIM reading this? There is a niche opening up for secure, enterprise grade devices, folks...

8. HTML5 won’t kill apps
Talking about mobility, 2011 marked the beginning of not just the post-PC era but also the post-Flash world. With Flash dead (yes, technically only ‘mobile Flash’ is dead but that really means that Flash is dead) and with Silverlight the likely next victim, all hopes are turning to HTML5 as the panacea for all mobility-related problems. The biggest of the problems being the fact that building native apps is getting costly with the number of mobile OS derivatives growing - particularly in the Android camp. Well, folks, I predict that HTML5 will not solve this issue anytime soon. Certainly not in 2012. In 2012, we will continue seeing native apps being built at a rapid pace. I have elaborated on my reasoning in my recent article. Those enterprise apps I have predicted for 2011 will keep coming in 2012.

9. Tipping point for analytics
There has been plenty of discussion about the need for content analytics in 2011 yet the adoption has been still fairly modest. Sure, the IBM Watson won on Jeopardy and lots of Web sites have added some analytical capabilities to increase their stickiness. But not many organizations use analytics to improve their productivity today - i.e. to help employees deal with the information overflow by applying automatic analytics and classification. I suspect that the price-performance ratio has been the problem so far - it takes way too much computing power to do anything meaningful with acceptable performance. After all, the Watson is a supercomputer! I predict that this will change in 2012. The technology is now good enough to derive significant benefits from analytics and that in 2012, we will start seeing a much broader adoption.

10. ECM, what’s next?
Lots has been said and written in 2011 about the end of the ECM era. Many vendors tried to distance themselves from Enterprise Content Management by trying to either coin new terms or by embracing broader alternatives. Not very successfully. Like it or not, the term ECM is still the one and only term that has been adopted to describe this space. In 2012, I predict that the search for the ECM replacement will continue and that at the end of 2012, we will be where we are today. Sure, there will be more consolidation and some vendors will be talking about subsuming their ECM acquisitions. There will also be vendors coining new terms like “Secure Social Experience” and “Content as a Service” and “ECM 3.0”. But none of that will stick. In December 2012, we will still call this space ECM. I hope I’m wrong on this one, by the way...

Well, here they are, my predictions. Please let me know where you agree and disagree. I sure hope that you disagree with at least some of them. Otherwise, my predictions would be safe and boring. After all, one of my favorite quotes comes from the great Mario Andretti:

“If everything seems under control, you are not driving fast enough!”

I wish you a great 2012. Start your engines and pedal to the metal!

Looking Back at My Most Popular Blog Posts in 2011

As a technology veteran of twenty plus years, I cannot remember a time more exciting and turbulent than right now. Sure, when the Web first arrived in 1994/95, it was exciting except that there was not much to do on the Web back then. And the dotcom era was exciting except that the irrational exuberance was somehow making people think that Pets.com was a high tech company. The year 2011 has seen many interesting technology trends convert and deliver measurable benefits to our lives. Sure, we are probably in a bubble with LinkedIn, Groupon, and Zynga having gone public raising huge amounts of money. But have seen some massive changes that are probably real and permanent. Now, this is fun!

And as the year 2011 nears to end, the time has come to take a look at what happened - on this blog. The list below are the articles that have received the most hits in 2011. That alone is a wrong metric, of course, since the articles published in January had much more time to score hits than those published in December. But let’s not get stuck on technicalities - here are the top posts in 2011:

10. Struggles of a Professional iPhone User
Having switched to iPhone from a Blackberry in April, I have described many deficiencies related to business tasks in email, calendar, search, etc. Some of them are still valid but I love my iPhone.

9. BlackBerry PlayBook - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
I got to test the new PlayBook back in May and I wrote a pretty positive review. Some folks apparently didn’t agree with me since PlayBook was not much of a hit in 2011.

8. OpenText Acquires Metastorm
I only rarely write about my employer but people are usually taking interest in acquisitions and my blog allows me to share some insights and so these posts usually score pretty well. This one was published in February.

7. Testing Samsung Omnia Running Windows Phone 7
I don’t consider myself a great tester but as these devices were coming out, people were really interested in the reviews. And so I tested and shared my opinions - which I am good at doing!

6. Practical Gamification Use Case
This is a customer success story, describing the gamification deployment at OpenText. Gamification was a big topic in general and I felt compelled to write about it as I was able to experience it first hand and talk to the developers.

5. Who Will Own Enterprise Social Media?
By March, it was clear that every software company had some sort of social media initiative (‘social media’ was what we used to call ‘social business’ back then). In this post, I argued that we won’t be able to participate in more than a couple and that some of the vendors probably don’t stand a chance.

4. Why Do We Rename Products
In May, I stood up on my virtual soap box and explained the rationale behind some of the marketing decision that follow acquisitions. Lots of folks were interested in the answers and Lee Dallas from EMC even disagreed with me in his counter-post Why Re-Branding Makes Us Crazy.

3. HTML5 vs Native Apps
In this post, I argued that while HTML5 is great and will gain significant adoption, it will not become the panacea that will save the world from the need to develop native apps for multiple operating systems. That was in September and in December I even got to argue this point at the Gilbane Conference in Boston. That was great fun!

2. Why We Acquired Global 360
In July, following the February acquisition of Metastorm, OpenText acquired another BPM vendor Global 360. The title alone compelled many readers to find out what the answer was, not to mention that this was a pretty big acquisition anyway.

1. Content Management Predictions for 2011
This post was a surprising winner by a huge margin. Even more interesting was the fact that it was getting hits throughout the year, sometimes becoming one of the top posts for a given month. Of course that can only mean one thing:

...I will start the year 2012 off with my Content Management Predictions for 2012. Stay tuned and thanks for reading my blog. Happy New Year and all the best in 2012!

Can Social Software Ever Replace Email?

According to Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg, the year 2011 was supposed to be the year when email finally died. Or at least the year when email was taken over by social software. Yet it didn’t happen and we all still email today. Sure, there are kids out there sending each other messages via Facebook but nobody has given up their enterprise email in favor of Facebook yet. So, why is it that email isn’t dead?

Well, it is because email has our share of attention. Email offers one-to-one or one-to-many communication which is what enterprises need and we are all programmed to go to our email several times a day to check what’s happening. Our email inbox serves not only as a communication terminal but also as a reminder of what to do next, what to put on our task list,  what meetings to prepare for, and what’s going on. Email is a go-to destination and it gets our share of attention.
Facebook is also a go-to destination. That’s one of the secrets behind Facebook’s success. We go to Facebook often several times a day to see what’s going on. Unfortunately, Facebook is a very consumer-oriented service and does not lend itself for enterprise use outside of marketing communications. In fact, many enterprises are rather paranoid about the possibility of their enterprise communication happening on Facebook.
Twitter too is a go-to destination which gets our share of attention and Twitter has established itself for business use. But due to it’s one-to-all type of communication, it lacks the core concept of security - communication to those I chose and not those who happen to be listening right now.
Is Google+ a go-to-destination? I’m not sure that’s happened yet and the jury seems to be still out. But given the growth in number of users, it is likely to happen. Is LinkedIn a go-to-destination? For some, perhaps. The LinkedIn features such as direct messages and private groups may even meet the one-to-one and one-to-many communication requirements of the enterprise but no company has switched off email in favor of LinkedIn yet. Or in favor of anything else, the recent PR coup by Atos notwithstanding.

Thierry Breton, Atos CEO, recently banned email in his company.

So, how about your enterprise deployment of social software? From what I am seeing, the adoption is very tribal today. There tend to be groups in the enterprise that embrace it and experience a high degree of adoption but also groups that ignore it. And herein lies the challenge of replacing email.
What we like about email and social software is the fact that it enables asynchronous communication. The beauty of asynchronous communication is the fact that it is not disruptive. The challenge with synchronous communication such as the telephone, Skype, or even instant messaging is its disruptive nature that automatically limits the number of conversations possible. When I’m in a meeting, I can’t be on the phone. Email, on the other hand, can wait for me to respond. That works!
For an asynchronous communication tool to be successful, it has to gain a share of our attention and significant adoption. Email not only has our attention, but it has reached a mind-blowing adoption that is nearly 100%. On top of that, email works the same across our professional and personal needs. We may use separate accounts but it works the same and when we make a mistake and cross the boundaries, it is usually forgiving. The share of attention and the high adoption make email a top go-to destination for all of us.
Social software has the possibilities to get there, but it is a long row to hoe. Email didn’t reach its adoption in a day and not even in a year. Not long ago, managers used to have assistants to handle their email. It took our parents or grand-parents years to embrace email. Even today, email is subject to a relatively formal protocol starting with “Hello …” and ending with “Kind regards”. For better of worth, we have established rules about who can email whom and with what degree of urgency. We had to develop pretty solid spam filters to avoid being eaten alive by unwanted email. It took years and we did all of that to get the email adoption where it is today.
On top of that, email has another useful feature. Since the mid 90s when email met the Internet, email addresses became universal identifiers. Your email address is usually a relatively simple derivative of your real name and yet uniquely and unambiguously identifies you. That’s why your email address is used as a login on a myriad of online services - from your bank to Facebook. All that has propelled email’s 100% adoption.
100% adoption, or even 80% adoption is not a small feat. Until any alternative communication technology gets there, we cannot talk about the death of email.

2011 Predictions Scorecard

At the beginning of this year, I published my 2011 Content Management Predictions. I received a lot of good feedback on this article, which has since become by far my most popular post this year. But now, the time has come to see how I did on my predictions. I do believe that it is the responsibility of anyone making predictions to openly review their results. So, here it comes:

1. Mobile devices as a primary interface
I predicted that in 2011, we would see people using their mobile devices as their primary way to access content applications and data. I found my first evidence of this just a few weeks later when I took a picture of my co-worker using his smartphone while sitting at his desk. This prediction has become a reality. Perhaps not as much for smartphones but certainly for the iPad. Many of us started bringing the iPad - and just the iPad - to meetings, conferences and business trips and this trend continues to grow with every additional iPad sold.

I have further predicted that the content management vendors will start building their apps with the “mobile first” principle. This too I see happening now. Many content management vendors now offer mobile apps and increasingly, I am seeing capabilities developed for mobile devices first. In fact many apps are only really valuable when used on mobile devices - file sharing, note-taking, social media, etc. OpenText Tempo is a good example of such an app - secure document sharing and synchronization between multiple devices built as “mobile first”.
Verdict: Hit, Score: 1/1

2. End of MS Office monopoly
Back in January, I predicted that in light of free alternatives, Microsoft would lose its dominance over the office productivity applications. In the course of the year, there has been a lot of Microsoft bashing in the media and indeed, Microsoft is increasingly seen playing defense rather than offence. Google Docs is probably the most tangible threat and I see increasingly people using Google Docs (BTW, I’m writing all my blog posts in Google Docs). However, it would be too soon to declare victory for Google Docs or any other Office alternative. In the enterprise, little has happened this year and Microsoft Office remains strong. I’d say that I was simply wrong on this one.
Verdict: Miss, Score: 1/2

3. eDiscovery has gone SOX
My prediction was that in 2011, the excitement around eDiscovery would fizzle away the same way the Sarbanes-Oxley problem has eventually dwindled after a lot of initial publicity a decade ago. Sure, the problem of presenting electronic evidence upon a subpoena isn’t going away. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act didn’t go away either, even if Senator Paul Sarbanes announced his retirement a few weeks ago. But time has taken the mystery out of the problem and most companies have figured out what they need to do and have moved on to solving the next set of problems. That was my prediction and I maintain that it happened. The problems of the year 2011 included anything from social business and mobility to analytics and big data. eDiscovery isn’t that hot anymore.
Verdict: Hit, Score: 2/3

4. Wikileaks would be the next SOX
My next prediction was related to content security which made headlines when Wikileaks published sensitive government information and pre-announced that the banks would be the next target. This issue has created plenty of concern and publicity, particularly in situations where the weak link wasn’t an external attack but an internal leak instead. In the course of 2011, Wikileaks itself has gone a bit quiet with Julian Assange busy fighting his extradition case instead of stirring up trouble. However, the insurgence of the Arab Spring of 2011 has been widely credited to some of the information Wikileaks published and the sheer consequences of Wikileaks support my prediction. Security is back in the spotlight particularly in the world of mobility, social media and cloud computing. I’m calling it a hit and I’m sure that Mr. Mubarak or the late Mr. Gaddafi would agree.
Verdict: Hit, Score: 3/4

5. Experience will go from browser to apps
In this prediction, I’ve argued that the content management vendors will follow in the footsteps of the consumer market where users have overwhelmingly embraced native apps in favor of web browser-based application. The vendors were expected to start developing apps and just like the consumer apps, the enterprise apps were expected to become more atomic - focused on a relatively narrow functionality or a single task. Well, most vendors started building apps and those apps are for the most part more narrowly focused but I have not seen the kind of atomic functionality yet I had in mind - apps focused on a specific task such as file travel expenses, or submit purchase requisition. I still believe that we are headed towards the “app-tastic” world as the OpenText CTO Eugene Roman likes to call it, but we are not quite there yet. I’d say this one is too soon to call and I give it half a point.
Verdict: Too soon to call, Score: 3.5/5

6. Social media will pass the peak [of inflated expectations]
This was a pretty straight forward prediction about social media following the Gartner hype-cycle model. As a result, we should have passed over the peak of inflated expectations towards the trough of disillusionment. This has happened in 2011. Not in the consumer world where Facebook and Twitter are still growing strong but it is happening in the enterprise. Many enterprises are learning that just because you’ve built a social site, it doesn’t mean that the employees are using it in ways that stimulate corporate effectiveness. The companies are learning that this is more about change management and corporate culture than about the technology. On the technology front, the vendors are not making any money on social software this year. Just check out the S1 filing from Jive which is supposedly the most successful of the social vendors. Sure, Jive has just gone public today and raised a ton of cash but their solution is already becoming obsolete. The customers who want on-premise social software can get it as a feature from their existing vendors (i.e. Salesforce or OpenText) and those who want it in the cloud get it for free from Yammer or Box.
Verdict: Hit, Score: 4.5/6

7. Case Management will catch on
This prediction was about the expected success of case management and how it will differentiate from business process management (BPM). This was probably my least controversial prediction since case management was already happening at the time. And it continues happening with some vendors delivering separate product lines for BPM and for case management. My employer OpenText was probably the best proofpoint for this prediction coming true when we acquired a BPM vendor Metastorm first and a case management vendor Global 360 a few months later. Case management is catching on - not much argument here, I suppose.
Verdict: Hit, Score 5.5/7

8. Web sites and portals need refurbishing
Next, I predicted a strong year for Web content management (WCM). The space has evolved in 2011 by changing its mission from just managing Web content to Web experience management (WEM), and most recently to customer experience management (CEM). I reasoned that this growth would be fueled by the pent up demand of marketing departments who didn’t have the budget for innovation during the recession. That’s very much what I have seen happening in 2011. Most WCM vendors in the space were doing well and even Oracle decided to jump in by acquiring FatWire. In addition, we have seen marketing departments emerge as a key buying audience for WCM software (and WEM and CEM) which is another proofpoint that I was right on this one.
Verdict: Hit, Score: 6.5/8

9. Enterprises won’t rush to public cloud
This prediction was arguing that while the cloud remains a hot trend and we will see a lot of adoption in the consumer space, enterprises won’t rush to the public cloud. Note that I was explicit about public cloud since I consider the adoption of a private cloud a no-brainer. Judging this prediction is a tough call. I believe that what happened in 2011 is that enterprise indeed didn’t rush to the public cloud but at the same time, enterprise users have done so. This is the effect of consumarisation and I see enterprises having to deal with this issue while accepting that you can’t stop the tidal wave.

The users - their employees - are using cloud based services from Dropbox and Skydrive to Yammer. The enterprises - the enterprise IT and legal departments - are not happy with that and are looking for alternatives. This is a volatile situation and the data suggests that the corporate world is divided about 50:50 on this issue. Half of the companies want to be draconian and put the end to this while the other half is looking for a peaceful way to let the users decide without compromising enterprise security and legal concerns. This is perhaps another prediction that is too soon to call.
Verdict: Too soon to call, Score 7/ 9

10. There will be more consolidation in ECM
Boy was I right on this one. Just consider some of the companies that were acquired in 2011: FatWire, Endeca, ATG, Iron Mountain (ECM assets), CA Technologies (ECM assets), Autonomy, Metastorm, Global 360, weComm, Operitel, Alterian, EchoSign, and many others. This was perhaps the busiest year the ECM market has ever seen.
Verdict: Hit, Score: 8/10

I wish I had predicted the power of consumerization back in January. That is the most glaring trend that happened in 2011 and I didn’t predict it. Consumerisation impacts mostly mobility which I had on my list but also includes the adoption of apps and cloud based services which I didn’t have on it.

But, 8 out of 10 hits isn’t bad even if two of them were too early to call. What do you think? Of course you may see some of the results differently but that’s the beauty of qualitative predictions. If you do, please do comment. In the mean time, I will write my Content Management Predictions for 2012.

Amazing Accessories for iPhone and iPad

The other day, I found myself in an electronic section of a department store and I noticed an entire shelf of accessories for the iPad and iPhone. Since we are in the middle of the Christmas shopping season, I have decided to devote my blog post to the lighter topic of amazing things you can use your iPad or iPhone for.

Most iPad and iPhone owners already have all kinds of chargers, docks, mounts, cases, speakers and keyboards and I will not be discussing those. Instead, I want to feature a bunch of interesting hardware add-ons that truly extend the use cases of the platform into previously unexpected applications.

Fitness
- Heart Monitor
Wahoo makes an ANT+ add-on (hardware) that communicates with the chest strap and monitors your heart rate while running. Wahoo also makes a similar monitor for biking.

- Blood Pressure Monitor
iHealth makes a blood pressure measuring system that keeps your history in an iPhone app.

- Scale
The scale from Withings gathers info such as weight, fat, muscle and body mass index and sends it to your iPhone via wi-fi network.

Photo
- Photo accessories
An amazing set of accessories from Photojojo can add filters and lenses to the iPhone camera and some of them can even turn it into an SLR camera.

- Microscope
This contraption by Brando feels like a square peg in a round hole but, it promises to turn your iPhone into a microscope at a very reasonable price.

Kids
- RC toys
The HELO TC helicopter by Griffin Technology uses the iPad as the remote control. Not bad, actually.

- Baby monitor
The baby monitor by iBaby allows you to see the baby on an iPad or iPhone.

- iPad toys
Disney produced a series of toys called AppMATes that interact with a iPad application. They look like the characters from Cars 2 which alone makes this game pretty cool.

Music
- iRig
This amazing gadget connects your electric guitar with an iPad and an amplifier and produces sound effects like a whole set of sound distortion pedals.

- Piano
The Piano Apprentice by ION turns your iPad into a pretty smart musical instrument.

- Scratch Mixer
Feeling like mixing some tunes for your next party? The Jensen DJ Scratch Mixer will help! I should perhaps also mention the Soulo karaoke system and the ION iCade at this time.

- Arcade
A gizmo that turns an iPad into an Arcade game machine? Atari!

Business
- Square
Credit card payments for everyone! Since receiving payments is still surprisingly difficult in the US, the Square solution s finally giving the little man a chance to solve this problem.

- Pico Projector
If you make your living by giving presentations to small groups of people - i.e. customer meetings - the combination of iPhone with Keynote and any of the pico projectors is something to consider!

- Radar detector
Cobra iRadar uses the iPhone as a display. Well, what can I say? Drive safely, folks!

You must admit these things are cool aren't they? What's amazing is that they all take the iPhone and iPad into new areas of applications which Apple has perhaps never envisioned. That's the sign of a true platform.

Merry Christmas!