Here are my notes from Oracle Middleware Strategy briefing.

The conference call started with energetic marketing spiel “Oracle is #1 middleware vendor”. The speaker was talking about exciting opportunities that Bea aquision presents to Oracle now that they have the biggest and the most complete set of offerings in the middleware market. At some point he even took some stabs at IBM almost saying that “Oracle middleware is bigger then IBM’s”. Ok, ok I got the message – bigger is better.

After that Thomas Kurian took over and gave outline on Oracle middleware product strategy and how Bea technologies fit into  Fusion portfolio. His presentation had very little marketing fluff and for the most part was right to the point.

Thomas divided existing Oracle products into three categories:

• strategic
• “continue and converge” (C&C) – Oracle will gradually merge this product into strategic Fusion portfolio with projected product lifecycle about 9 years
• maintenance – Oracle will support the product for up to 5 years but no major development is expected

Development Tools

• Oracle JDeveloper is a strategic product
• Bea Workshop components will be offered as add-on in Oracle Eclipse Pack
• Bea Beehive is a maintenance product

Application Server and SOA Products

• Weblogic Application Server re-branded as Oracle Weblogic Server will the strategic product. It will as include Oracle JRocket JVM. Oracle middleware products will be migrated to Weblogic runtime
• Oracle Containers for Java (OC4J) is C&C. Some OC4J components like Toplink will be included into Weblogic platform
• Bea Aqualogic ESB will the strategic product with some additional components from Oracle ESB
• Oracle BPEL is the strategic BPEL engine. A new product combining Oracle BPA and Aqualogic BPM will be offered as BPM solution

Enterprise 2.0 and Portals

A short lesson from Dr. Kurian on Web 2.0 and social software and back to business:

• Oracle WebCenter Services and Oracle WebCenter Suite is the strategic portal solution
• Aqualogic UI collaboration and social components will complement WebCenter framework
• Weblogic Portal and Oracle Portal are C&C product. However, the migration is not clear. Thomas indicated that current customers will be able to take advantage of some WebCenter capabilites.
• Oracle UCM was briefly mentioned as ECM offerening and “add-on” capability that WebCenter framework will leverage. Details on how Oracle UCM will fit into overall Fusion middleware picture were not provided
• Combination of WebCenter and Aqualogic UI components is targeted as a strategic solution in collaboration and Enterprise 2.0 space. The fate of other collaboration products such as Oracle Collaboration Suite, Oracle Beehive or Oracle UCM Collaboration Manager is not clear at the moment as they were not mentioned at all

Gartner Portals, Content and Collaboration

Notes from Software as a Service (SaaS) Roundtable.

There were no real examples of using SaaS except for some coming from the vendors. Most companies just wanted to learn what SaaS is and how it is different from more “traditional” Application Service Provider (ASP) model. Overall, there were more questions asked than answered. Here are topics that were discussed.

What is SaaS model. What makes it different from ASP model.

The only clear differentiator is so called “single image” attribute. ASP model provides highly customized solution with customer getting “dedicated image” of the business application tailored to the specific customer needs. In contrast, in SaaS model customers share the same image (single image) with very limited customization (pretty much customer logo and slightly customized look and feel).

Why should one go with SaaS model?

The main value proposition of SaaS model compared to ASP is time to market and cost sharing (so called multi-tenancy with several customers sharing the same infrastructure and application image). Most companies asked what level of customization they could expect and still stay within SaaS pricing.

Different types of SaaS model.

Among those discussed: data services (like datawarehouse service) and partial subscription (with only subset of functionality used by the customer). Gartner analysts admitted that there is a lot of unknown in this area and it is not even clear that more fine-grained classification of SaaS is warranted.

How to work with SaaS provider.

Companies are interested in how to do RFP for SaaS, what to focus on and what questions to ask compared to ASP vendor, what kind of Service Level Agreement (SLA) to expect, what about security and data privacy.

Gartner Portals, Content and Collaboration Summit

Notes from the Social Software in Enterprise Roundtable

The roundtable session had tremendous success. Far more people wanted to attend (sits were limited). Gartner had to organize two additional sessions to accommodate the demand.

Every company is looking at using social software in one form or another. Level of involvement varies from early experimentation to stories of real success. Commonly reported concerns and issues are lack of established processes and proliferation of products and solutions that do not work well together. General observation is that what is available on the market from commercial vendors or open source products doesn’t meet requirements of most companies.

Blogs

Most companies use blogs as a communication tool. It appears that blogs is the most adopted technology from the social software stack. And this is the only technology that that has true success stories. At least two companies reported that blogging technologies had become business critical. The most successful areas for using blog technologies are
• Sales and marketing for product promotion, supporting user communities and soliciting customer feedback
• Communication channel for upper (to a lesser degree mid) management to interact with employees and collect feedback (very often anonymous – this appears a big sell).
Generally, companies report greater use of blogs in the business communities than in IT. Also, according to IBM research only up to 20% of employees will use blogs actively. It is usually people in business or technical leadership positions or subject matter experts.

Wikis

Most companies consider using wiki technologies for simplifying content management, documentation and knowledge sharing. It looks like there is a significant drive for knowledge sharing even in organizations where policies and nature of business make it difficult to implement (e.g. private Swiss bank). Generally, adoption rate and demand for wikis is greater in IT. Business community appears a bit apprehensive about benefits and advantages of adopting wikis. Most success stories revolve around collaborative workspaces for distributed software development teams.

Social tagging

There is general lack of understanding what social tagging is and what it has to offer. Most companies are just curious about the phenomenon but don’t see real application in their business. Adoption rate is close to non-existent. Only one company reported piloting social tagging technology to help employees find information on corporate policies and guidelines. HR department is the main driving force behind the initiative. The stark difference here is IBM where adoption of social tagging in the workplace is relatively high. At least that is what they say about use of Dogear technology internally at IBM.

Gartner Portals, Content and Collaboration Summit

Open Source Software (OSS) in Workplace. What It Promises and What It Delivers.

Nikos Drakos gave this presentation as pre-conference tutorial. It is pity that attendance was low because of the traveling problems (north east coast got hit by a snowstorm) and the presentation itself was positioned as add-on not a first class conference material. Just a thought: is it indication that Gartner still perceives the topic as not ready for a prime time?

Here are some interesting points in the presentation.

• OSS is not free software. The price structure is different. You don’t have to pay upfront license fees. But accepting the OSS the company usually takes on more responsibility of managing the product. It may lead to bigger total cost of ownership (TCO).
• Size of the investment into OSS in the workplace is very impressive. In many cases Web 2.0 drives adoption of OSS in the workplace.
• Even if your strategic direction doesn’t except OSS you still have to pay attention especially in the workspace area.
• To the large extend the success or failure of OSS product adoption in the enterprise depends on its alignment with existing and “strategic” products and technologies that are available as a coherent platform or solution. This is an important differentiator for mainstream products of successful platform vendors such as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle or SAP. In the best-of-bread strategy that is at least partially based on OSS products cross-certification and integration become a major issue.
• OSS is not a trademark. That leads to diversions and misuse of OSS as marketing tool.
• OSS in the workplace has significantly more diverse ecosystem. We don’t have a clear winner.
• Rules of thumb on when OSS product may fit well into organization. Repeatability or ability to reuse OSS product or replicate OSS based solution in different areas of organization. Proximity (you have need for significant inhouse custom development, you have the expertise, it is just a matter of using this or that product).

And finally key predictions and strategic planning assumptions.
• By 2010, OSS solutions will directly compete with closed-source products in all software infrastructure and workplace application markets.
• By 2010, at least 40% of mainstream IT organizations will include OSS in their workplace-focused software investments.
• By 2010, OSS will be included in mission critical software portfolios in 75% of Global 2000 enterprises.

Why do we need governance for Open Source Software (OSS)

In nutshell, OSS is quite different from commercial software products therefore existing governance proccesses have to be adjusted to accomodate new model that OSS brings. It is not really a separate process: it needs to be part of existing enterprise IT govenance.

What is OSS?

It is more than just *free* software. It comes in many forms and shapes and brings along new development process, distribution and service models and several software licenses. In addition, a very important part of OSS is governance and community. Therefore, in order to deal with OSS efficiently, enterprise has to clarify what OSS is from the company’s perspective, what is its scope and decide what type of OSS is the best aligned with the company strategic goals.

In what way OSS is different?

Licensing model is different.

OSS introduces new software licenses to the enterprise and to make things even more complicated there are hundreds of OSS licenses. A special effort is required to get through this legal maze unscarred.

Service model is different.

Whether there is a vendor behind OSS or not it is based on a new service and support model. Enterprise policies around service contracts have to be re-evaluated and adjusted even if OSS comes as a part of vendor solution with the signed SLA. Things to consider:

• how to report defects
• scheduling fixes and patches
• what about contributing patches or enhancements?

Distribution model is different.

Unlike commercial software all it takes to start using OSS is download distribution files and install it. Therefore, a policy is required that defines:

• how to get OSS, where to store it
• do we get only binaries or source as well
• what version, what about upgrades and patches

Risk management is different.

First, OSS introduces new legal risks. The primary legal risks are contamination, derived works and indemnification. Indemnification risk can be reasonably easy mitigated through license agreements. To address contamination (i.e. using company proprietary code in the OSS contributions) a policy is required about contributing to the Open Source project. The trickiest one is derived works risk when use of OSS in the enterprise solution may make it subject to the General Public License (GPL). In some cases indemnification protection may not cover derived works risk.

In addition to legal risks there are other risks associated with use of OSS. Among those are software commoditization, lack of standardization in OSS, misalignment with emerging application superplatforms, integration risks, changing business models, project stability, challenges in assessing OSS. Things to consider:

• define policies to deal with each risk
• define alignment with strategic direction
• define alignment with application superplatform vs best of bread strategic direction
• how to assess OSS
• what is preferred OSS license
• get legal department involved in assessing OSS risks

Cost structure is different

Traditional commercial software cost consists of multiple components such as license fees, customization cost, service and support fees. Though there are number of hidden costs and it is not as transparent as software vendors want them to look enterprises as a rule are well prepared to deal with it. On the other hand, OSS costs are uncharted territory and figuring out total cost of ownership (TCO) for OSS maybe quite challenging. Things to consider:

• how to assess TCO for OSS
• how to compare commercial and OSS software price
• how to budget for OSS projects.

Dependency management is much more complex.

OSS projects are very liberal at introducing dependencies on other open source components. That may easily lead to spaghetti of dependencies and seriously limit the ability to manage and integrate applications using OSS. Anyone who had to troubleshoot notorious java.lang.LinkageError problem knows exactly what I’m talking about. Things to consider:

• OSS repository
• tools to manage OSS dependencies
• OSS dependency analysis is part of the early risk assessment for all projects.

Human factor.

There is a lot of passion around OSS. OSS brings strong sense of community and spirit of participation. Architects and developers using OSS or participating in OSS development tend to develop attachment to specific products or projects. Therefore, policies are processes are especially important to make technical decisions that are balanced and based on business needs and organization strategic goals and not on emotions or affiliation with specific OSS products.

Areas of OSS Governance

What exactly needs to be governed? You may be suprised to what degree OSS is used at any particular enterprise even those that do not allow use of OSS at all. Here are some of the areas OSS governance may need to focus on.

• OSS that is currently used in enterprise applications. What is enterprise strategy on using OSS? What OSS needs to be grandfathered and what needs to be replaced or get rid of?
• Application development team wants to use OSS because commercial alternative is not available, too expensive or doesn’t meet business or technical requirements
• OSS introduced as a part of vendor solution or platform
• OSS introduced by integration vendor
• Buy vs build decision. IS OSS based solution considered at all?
• Vendor evaluation. Should OSS that vendor uses be part of the evaluation criteria. How about OSS experience/participation?
• Use of OSS development tools.
• Use of OSS for proof-of-concept projects.
• OSS software development practices. Is there something company can learn from?
• Skill set: is experience with OSS required or considered a plus?

I’m a bit surprised by all these excited comments on just announced IBM Lotus Connections from people that did not really use the product (I don’t consider playing with the demo at Lotusphere a real use). I guess it is just conditions are ripe and people have been waiting long enough for a Big Vendor like IBM to start pushing Web 2.0 software for enterprises. I’m not denying overall positive impact that this offering will have on future of social software in the enterprise. But I’m a little bit cautious about what the product will actually have to offer when it finally becomes generally available.

Lotus Connections is not a product built from ground up. It is a collection of independently developed components that are combined together to make “the sum greater than the parts”. Well, I’m afraid it may turn out to be just a great promise rather than reality. At least in the first incarnation.

How well will the components be integrated? Will they fit into existing infrastructure? I have worked with Roller which is a blogging component in Lotus Connections for quite a bit. In Roller, integration is one of the weakest points. At all levels: UI, content or identity management. Roller is in Apache incubation now and is seeing a lot of development activities. There are several developers from IBM working on the product but still it is long way to go until Roller is ready for prime time or be easily integrated into the application suite. I’m quite curious what Roller we will see in the final Connections release.

I just hope that other Connections components are at the much higher maturity level and much better integrated into the product. Well, I really want to see Lotus Connections team proving me wrong. After all, we’ve been waiting for a serious offering of Web 2.0 software for enterprises far too long.