Cisco WebEX is a great video-conferencing and
presentation/meeting service. But it's not an Office-in-the
Cloud. Interesting idea though. But it will take some work
to get there.
Unless of course Cisco grabs something off the shelf like
"Feng Office-in-the-Cloud", or builds on Feng's open source
sister "OpenGoo".
Feng and OpenGoo are very polished in-the-Cloud
alternatives to the Microsoft Office Productivity
Environment. Although Feng lacks the highly interactive
collaborative editing of Google Docs, Zoho and MOSS, most
of the elements of traditional desktop productivity
environment are in place, and blended into the advantages
of the Web. Throw in the Wave Computing that Google
enables, and Feng will move to the top of the heap.
Unfortunately, unless someone can stop the
Exchange/SharePoint juggernaut, MOSS will insure that
Microsoft's iron grip on enterprise workgroups will continue
for years to come. Microsoft has the distinct advantage of
owning the legacy client in client/server. The advantages of
Web content, communications, conferencing and
collaboration can joined to legacy productivity and business
processing systems as "value added" services. The re-
purposing of the MSOffice productivity environment to take
advantage of the Web is far less disruptive than efforts to
rip-and-replace existing MSOffice. This is exactly what
MOSS is designed to do. The only question is whether or
not Microsoft will Web enable existing MSOffice ecosystems
using the "compatibility Pack" plug-in approach? Or, will
they bundle this extraordinary Web productivity in upgrade
packages designed to force march the entire desktop
monopoly base into a Microsoft Web future?
Cisco does have some interesting things in place, and i think
they will benefit greatly from the open sourcing of Google's
Wave Computing technology. But one has to wonder if they
understand the "why of the Web"? Pushing bits across the
wire and routing packets is not the same thing as knowing
why Web workers access, exchange, aggregate, converse
and collaborate with these volumes of information.
I can see where the acquisition of PostPath puts Cisco in
the eMail business, competing with Google, Yahoo and
"possibly" the Microsoft Office/Outlook-Exchange/SharePoint
juggernaut. But we've yet to see from Cisco anything by
way of Web/Cloud based wordprocessors, spreadsheet or
presentation apps. Google Docs, Zoho, and MOSS (Microsoft
Office - SharePoint Server) are defining and running away
with the collaborative computing market, with Microsoft's
grip on the enterprise/workgroup stronger than ever.
WebEX and Jabber acquisitions give Cisco a compelling Web
conferencing and communications story.
As a protocol, Jabber is providing the emerging WebOS with
easy to implement "object linking and embedding" capabilities
that blow the lid off the desktop/workgroup limitations of the
venerable Win32 OLE. (WebOS not to be confused with
Palm's WebKit WebOS). So i can see the bridge work coming
into place needed to enable complex but Web based
"compound documents".
Jabber can also be used to link desktop office suite
document objects across the Web. It can be used to bridge
legacy client/server business processes and systems to
Open Web systems, services and applications.
Perhaps more important to Cisco is the fact that Google
Wave is based on the Jabber protocol. Wave is revolutionary
in that it can provide a collaborative core, an end-user
interface that Web applications, data/media streams, and
services can be designed to provision.
Bringing the application spawned resources of various
content, communications, and collaborative computing
together is a challenge. Interoperability demands that
applications separate themselves from the information they
create, consume, re-factor, recycle and circulate.
Most applications are designed to own the information they
work on and are applied to. They stubbornly refuse to
separate the end-users information (content, styles,
embedded workflow and collaboration logic) from application
and feature specific settings. In a Win32-.NET-WPF
environment, this interop defying entanglement gets much
worse, as the sprawl of application, platform and vendor
specific settings terminally lock up documents, messages
and the resources converged interfaces need to be
productive.
Still i think Wave can pull this off. The question is, can
Cisco ride that Wave?
The quickest way for Cisco to jump into the fray would of
course be to acquire some Open Web productivity software.
Like Feng Office-in -the-Cloud. Fold Feng into WebEX.
Then boost Feng with Wave.
The Microsoft Office productivity environment is not easily
defined except to say that the core is always MSOffice,
Outlook, and Access baked into client/server systems and
entangled using the Visual Basic IDE. MOSS adds
collaborative computing value. No doubt Microsoft will
poach on Wave to provide a Mesh-Silverlight alternative.
The most important challenge Google has ever faced is
game-on, with Microsoft betting they can replace Google on
the Web faster than Google can replace Microsoft on the
desktop and device.
Wave computing is important because it folds into an easy
and fluid interface the Web advantages of productivity,
collaboration, conferencing, conversing and information
resource management. Web and platform specific
applications for content access, creation, aggregation and
collaboration will choose to embrace Wave, or go it alone.
With Wave, interoperability becomes an all or nothing
proposition because end-users be centered and able to see
beyond the boundaries of specific applications and services
that now command and control their information. Hard
choices will be made.
Welcome to the fray Cisco. And best of luck going forward.
~ge~
Cisco is striving to redefine itself as a vendor connecting inner and outer clouds, thus reasserting its relevance in the context of a fluid Web-driven IT world increasingly dominated by the likes of Google, Salesforce, Oracle and IBM. It also hopes to parlay its legacy of infrastructure expertise into a reassuring presence, particularly for veteran IT administrators struggling to balance their in-house infrastructures against the cost-savings and potential efficiencies of cloud computing.
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