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An interesting survey arrived in my inbox from Cobalt Corporate Finance about the latest quarterly survey of a panel of Computing magazine readers and Cobalt’s IT vendor clients. This allows for a comparison of the buyers (202 IT managers) and the vendors (80 C-level executives). They specifically looked at attitudes to Business Intelligence, Cloud computing, Data Security, Green IT, Mobile Computing, PC/Windows Upgrade, Social Networking, Software as a Service, Unified Communications and Virtualisation.

The headline is that responses are all more positive than last quarter, but IT vendors remain more optimistic than IT buyers. The article is found here.

There are two ways to look at their results. The first is which IT technologies are in the "here and now" - in use or under evaluation; and which are further out - 12 months before adoption. This would indicate that Data Security, Mobile Computing, Virtualisation and PC/Windows Upgrade are most prominent in buyers' thinking. On the other hand, Software as a Service, Social Networking and Cloud computing are 6-12 months out in their plans.

The other way to look at the results is to measure the disconnect between buyer and vendor attitudes. This gives an indication of which technologies are at their peak in the hype cycle. The biggest disconnect between vendor optimism and buyer caution came in Software as a Service. On the other hand, buyers are more interested in Green IT issues than vendors seem to think.

The chart tells the story:

CMS Watch is a great site for learning about document management, web content management, enterprise content management, enterprise portals, web analytics, and enterprise search solutions. It's mandatory reading for those of us making products, and definitely worth the time of any buyer who needs to select a product in this area.

This week they published their predictions for what is likely to happen in 2010. They were also brave and smart enough to assess how well their 2009 predictions fared.

Selectively looking at some of their 2009 outcomes, they probably got it right that Open Source ECM made advances and that social computing diffused into the Enterprise. I think they got it more wrong than they admit on SharePoint being derailed by Office 14  - the interest continued unabated and the beta of SharePoint 2010 did it no harm either.

They predicted that SaaS vendors would expand offerings. There was plenty of activity in the SaaS sector but many buyers are still unconvinced about putting company documents on a third party server. A term of service from a SaaS provider looked at recently is not uncommon: "Once you cancel or terminate your registration with us, we will instantly delete data, content, text, documents, images and information from the service. After the cancellation of the service, all of your content will be lost for ever." Data lock-in as a variant on vendor lock-in, and just as dangerous. 

For 2010, CMS Watch makes some predictions that we can compare and assess in regard to CogniDox.

For example, "Enterprise Content Management and Document Management will go their separate ways" (#1) gets our agreement. There is a tension between providing good workflow tools for document management and the tools used for website publishing. Clearly they need to be compatible and work in unision at some point but doing both in one application isn't necessarily the best idea. Given that prediction, their "Document Services will become an integrated part of ECM" (#8) may seem to be a contradiction. Ignoring that, we'd agree that helping users to automate the production of documents will be helpful and important. We tend to describe this as "document assembly" which I think is a more specific and useful term for e.g. creating a new legal document using metadata to populate key fields.

We'd also agree that "Faceted search will pervade enterprise applications" (#2). They mention Lucene/Solr, which we support in CogniDox 8.0 onwards, but we'd also mention the Xapian open source search engine library and the Flax Search Service as a technology to watch. CMS Watch only mentions SharePoint in the context of "Digital Asset Management vendors will focus on SharePoint integration over geographic expansion" (#3) which may be overly specific - most ECM and WCM companies will consider offering a SharePoint connector. That doesn't however imply that SharePoint is any more than a workgroup Intranet builder with file sharing capability. Buying decisions may verge on the ridiculous - why pay $$ for SharePoint user licenses and then add $$$$ for a proprietary ECM add-on? But SharePoint 2010 will be a force, and we can anticipate a rush on products that see themselves as SharePoint 'killers'.

One thing that correlates with ECM suites and SharePoint is that they can bring hidden costs in hardware / server requirements and the IT admin effort inherent in their client/server architectures. For that reason we'd agree that "Enterprises will lead thick client backlash" (#6) and to a lesser extent that "Cloud alternatives will become pervasive" (#7). Some of the same issues faced in 2008/9 for SaaS still remain.

We'd strongly agree that "Gadgets and Widgets will sweep the Portal world" (#9). People have become accustomed to seeing them on the public web at sites like iGoogle and they will become the definitive user interface for the Intranet. The only question is what widgets are the most essential?

The prediction that "Mobile will come of age for Document Management and Enterprise Search" (#4) depends on what is meant by "coming of age". It will certainly be the case that this will grow from the current small base, but we think this is one for 2011 instead.

That leaves 4 other predictions we have not commented on, and so a quick visit to CMS Watch to read these for yourself is recommended.

The 2009 edition of the Open Source CMS Market Share Report was released today by the water&stone digital agency.  A free copy of the survey can be downloaded from CMSwire at http://www.cmswire.com/downloads/cms-market-share/

Ric Shreves, who has led the reporting on this and previous editions in 2007 and 2008, has developed a very thorough and clever method for analysing the market share of an open source product or project. You can't just use company financial data because the software is downloaded for free, so he has developed an arsenal of metrics ranging from number of downloads to the level of community actvity around the product. He uses these to order the products in terms of their usage and mindshare.

A CMS (it stands for Content Management System) is software used for creating Enterprise web sites and for uploading content such as news, blogs, documents; or any unstructured information content, without requiring technical knowledge of web site design. An analogy is sometimes made with the introduction of the Caxton printing press - without one you couldn't successfully enter the new printing industry. Today, you can't keep up with the creation and update of web sites without the modern equivalent - the CMS.

At the risk of offending my web designer colleagues, it can sometimes seem that every web design company out there offers it's own CMS. But the ones in this report are much more complex in nature, with a wide array of features.

The highlights are that Joomla!, Drupal and Wordpress are the most commonly used (in that order); and that there is a gulf of usage between these and the rest. Although Joomla! was the most used, it only came 5th in response to the question of how much people approved of it.

I think one problem with the report is that there is a difference in the type of company that chooses to use Wordpress rather than Joomla! or Drupal. Wordpress is easy to install and use, and it is therefore excellent for a one-person company that needs to get started quickly. Joomla! and Drupal typically need server installation skills but they do offer myriad features and add-on extensions, either free or low cost. This blog for example is produced by an extension called MyBlog from Azrul.com. The website is built using Joomla! 1.5 and the blog creation is a component like any other.

We also use Joomla! for the customer portal sites we create - CogniDox provides content from the document repository and we can add-on other components such as a customer trouble ticketing system by adding extensions.

I'm pleased to see Joomla! do so well in this report. It hasn't been getting as much press as Drupal recently, mostly because there are now companies offering Drupal support, and they have (quite rightly) promoted the tool along with their capabilities. There is still room for improvement on that front, but Joomla! is an excellent CMS.

The concept of a Knowledge Worker has been around for a long time (Drucker, 1959) but it is still a slippery term to define. Sometimes it's synonymous with Information Worker; other times it's a sub-category. It can depend on the company using the term - IBM favours one, Microsoft another. Sometimes it's reserved for a minority who work on unstructured tasks and goals which they achieve through free-form collaboration with others - not to be confused with workers who process information in structured tasks. Sometimes it's the majority, pretty much anybody who uses IT is an information worker.

And they all now work in the "clever" economy.

This slipperiness may be one reason why it's hard to define Knowledge Management applications and to understand fully surveys carried out on the habits of information workers.

There's a survey just out from Forrester that falls into that category. Intriguing and useful in part, but affected by the problem of knowing the makeup of their 2001 respondents.

For example, we learn that Email, word processing, web browsers and spreadsheets are the only applications widely used. But then we're told that while 60% use a word processing application, only 42% create documents. I can't reconcile that statistic with any of the knowledge worker environments I've worked in, so have to assume there is a difference here between information and knowledge workers. Some of us may wish it was true we didn't have to write documents, but have never got that lucky.

The survey does have an interesting graphic on different types of applications and how frequently they are used i.e. hourly, daily, weekly, monthly. Email clients (57%) and web browsers (35%) are the only applications used hourly to a significant degree. There is also an interesting age difference in the use of social networking sites: the 18-29 age group uses these sites extensively during non-work hours, but when they are at work they don't. At work, both they and the 30-43 age group only access these 13% of the time.

The reason for non-use at work may be explained by a different survey. This one, carried out by Robert Half Technology, surveyed 1400 CIOs at US firms. They asked which statement most closely described company policy on visiting social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. The results were that over half (57%) replied "Prohibited completely" and a further 19% said "Permitted for Business purposes only".  So it is still the case that bigger companies (who would tend to have a CIO role in the first place) are blocking social networking sites.

The decision to block social networking sites isn't necessarily because corporates don't accept their use for collaboration among knowledge workers. It is usually security and data protection that is the cited reason. It's also possible that sites like LinkedIn might be deemed more business-use than say, Facebook, and are allowed. Or, it could be that we are in the transition phase between an old way of working and a new one.

In the meantime, I'm off to update my LinkedIn status and Tweet about this.

IDC’s latest Worldwide Open Source Software 2009-2013 Forecast reports that global open source software (OSS) revenue was $2.9 billion in 2008, and is expected to grow by 34% in 2009 to $3.9 billion. IDC predict global revenue will grow to reach $8.1 billion by 2013.

This is higher than IDC previously predicted and they attribute their change of mind to the current recession, the growing acceptance of OSS and inclusion of revenue from hybrid products from the larger IT vendors and the Cloud / SaaS vendors.

However, OSS still only represents around 2-3% of the $138 billion market for proprietary software.

I find it intriguing that they see such accelerated growth for proprietary software from now to 2013. It seems to rely on an assumption that the recession will end and we’ll go back to buying software ‘the way we used to’. It doesn’t seem to tally with their other conclusions about growing OSS acceptance and the increase in hybrid products that rely on embedded OSS. Also, how many consumer or enterprise markets have seen a price fall but then recover to former levels? That may happen for commodities, but software-as-a-commodity?

It’s more likely that the days of the traditional enterprise software majors are on the decline. Companies will get more and more comfortable with the idea of paying for support and services rather than per-seat licenses. Will software buyers ever again opt for steep up-front costs and little or no recovery plan in the event of failure when they discover that they can have a pay-as-you-go alternative?

In which case, we will see a far more rapid convergence of the trend lines than is predicted by IDC.

If the private sector is impacted by the recession to re-consider procurement patterns, then the public sector and Government should follow suit. It’s our money and there’s not a great deal of difference between spending tax money on a Banker’s bonus or on yet another IT failed / delayed project.

There’s a new community website / networking group called UKGovOSS that apparently feels the same way. They have published a report which quotes some interesting facts. For example, reported ICT spending by UK local authorities is expected to reach a record level of £3.2 billion of expenditure in 2008/09. The survey found what is commonly seen in the private sector - open source is used extensively for web servers, databases and web publishing tools, but the desktop and end-user applications are mainly proprietary software (Microsoft).

The drivers towards OSS are also familiar - lower cost, freedom from dependency on particular suppliers, and the functionality of the software itself.

CogniDox isn’t used (yet) in the public sector but this is a very worthwhile group and we are happy to join. It will be interesting to see whether the depth of open source talent and skills available in the UK becomes evident to those in power.

It’s already been pointed out by others that the UK Government site on open source at http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/government_it/open_source.aspx is based on Microsoft's ASP.NET web application framework, so there is clearly a way to go yet.

 

 Forrester Research has just published a survey of 2,200 IT executives in the UK, France, Germany, the US and Canada which states that open source software has been (or is about to be) implemented by 46 percent of businesses. There were regional differences, with France at 58% and the UK at 40%, for example. The main motivation for adoption was the cost-savings provided by open source.

The dominant usage is still in lower level software (OS, databases, web server, programming languages) but there is evidence that it is "rapidly moving up the technology stack".

CIO UK reports that some UK companies told them that they do not believe open source is a viable alternative for major corporations. I had a look at their video to understand why. It wasn't quite the overwhelming put-down that the article had led me to expect. One interviewee said that in his experience open source sometimes costs more than expected, often due to (unspecified) peripheral issues.

It certainly is the case that a 'strategy-lite' approach to open source projects can result in the discovery (shock horror) that you need skills to install and integrate any software. We've just spend a day wrangling with a module in SugarCRM community edition until we got it to work.

With our SugarCRM issue, with enough trawling through forums and source code we got to where we wanted to be.

If it hadn't worked, I guess the cost of software licenses would not have left me red-faced, and I could have written off the time invested and moved on to a different solution.

But, this is why we emphasize the commercial open source business model for CogniDox:

• Open source, so that the cost of technology acquisition is lower (you don't have to re-coup years of software development costs).

• Commercial - it's cheaper in the end if you have a support agreement and someone dedicated to help you.