WORKPLACES WILL CHALLENGE OFFICE AS A USER PARADIGM

IBM's approach to delivering custom, role-based workplaces will challenge Microsoft's Office-based ownership of the user experience. Examples such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Workplace and workplaces for retail managers will vie for corporate and user acceptance as the primary interface to the information and resources that people need to do their jobs--an interface that is today dominated by Microsoft Office and its tools-based approach. Building on its own experience, its customers' experiences, and key partnerships (such as that with KPMG for the Sarbanes-Oxley offering), IBM will present the first real challenge to the idea that "I live in Outlook, I live in Word, I live in IE," which is really the sustaining basis of Microsoft's hegemony on the desktop. We believe that the workplace model can be compelling, with the statement "I live in my job workplace" having implications that include the workplace understanding and dynamically adapting to the user's current role, context, and desired outcomes.

IBM faces three key hurdles in presenting this challenge to Microsoft. The first is getting the message out to corporate IT, line-of-business managers, and end users explaining what a workplace is (IBM itself has several definitions) and how it can increase the efficiency and effectiveness of people trying to do their jobs. Second, IBM and its partners must provide pre-built workplaces that are easily customizable by their customers and personalizable by their end users. Deploying workplaces cannot be a multi-month process requiring high-level, high-priced consulting services. Much of what IBM learned in the early Lotus Notes days should help here. Finally, IBM needs to make sure that when users move from a tool-based model of work to living in their workplaces, users retain access to their favorite tools (which, for the foreseeable future, will remain the key components of Microsoft Office: Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint). This needs to be seamless for the user, and using an Office product within the workplace should be seen as more valuable than using the Office product by itself. For example, Word or Outlook should be able to take advantage of key elements of the workplace, such as the workplace's understanding of the user's role and context.

Once it understands that the workplace model is a major challenge to Office, Microsoft will certainly respond. Already, the elements of Office are being more tightly integrated--for example, Smart Tag technology allows the user to select a name in a document and send an email to that person. This tighter integration lets the user begin to consider the Office tools as part of a larger, virtual workplace. Microsoft is behind today in the tools to add workplace capabilities easily. (Most of these capabilities--such as deep customization, contextual collaboration, and workplace-level business-process management--stem from the respective vendors' portal platforms.) But Microsoft will certainly expand its capabilities. In doing so, it might just prove the value of the workplace model over the tools model--and shift its battle for the desktop to the workplace.

PORTALS WILL COME UNDER CLOSE SCRUTINY

In 2004, many companies will take a step back and evaluate their portal initiatives. And many of them will not be happy with what they discover. Those looking at numbers (particularly costs and usage) will be disappointed--the costs will be higher than anticipated and the results will be far less than promised. Those that took a "build it and they will come" philosophy to portals will be on the proverbial hot seat; they will find it more difficult to justify increased investment in widening the roll-out of their portals and in adding new functionality.

The resulting pause in portal development and implementation--it will not be a retreat--will give those who own the portals, and particularly those who are responsible for the experience of the target users of the portals, an opportunity to re-strategize the role of portals in their companies and how to leverage portals to meet their goals. They will find that their lack of success has been due not to an over-reliance on portals, but to a limited view of how portals can best be used. Over the year, that view will be expanded by looking at how some companies are using portals to deliver high value and great return.

In examining these best practices, portal owners will begin to take a new approach to their initiatives: emphasizing the appropriate target users for the portal and figuring out how to make the portal useful and valuable to them. For example, those who saw portals mainly as a way to deliver HR information to employees will begin to see the efficiencies in workspace portals that help employees do their jobs, and they will begin to see that customer portals that address customers' key issues and processes can result in measurable payback in customer satisfaction and revenue. Portal owners will understand how to design their portals from the user's point of view--making sure that the portal experience is aimed at addressing key customer, partner, and employee scenarios. Finally, driven by the scenario requirements, companies will make use of the more advanced features available from portal platforms (such as real-time and contextual collaboration, personal and community workspaces, and portal-level business processes) to turn each portal from a set of uninteresting links and static content into a compelling way--arguably, from my first prediction, the best way--to get our jobs and tasks accomplished.

2004 WILL BE THE "YEAR OF IM" IN BUSINESS, BUT...

In 2004, key foundations for the use of presence awareness and instant messaging as a business tool will be put into place. Enterprise-level IM systems from IBM and Microsoft will be widely deployed by major companies seeking to improve collaboration and increase the efficient use of their employees' time. These systems already overcome two of the previous barriers to the generalized business use of IM: security and the logging/archiving required for compliance in many industries.

The major step we will see this year will be the increasing ability of individuals within different companies to IM each other. Today, this is generally done by using one of the public IM systems (AOL, MSN, or Yahoo). For all but the smallest businesses, this, of course, raises all of the issues of security and logging, as well as that of corporate control. For the individuals, this means that they frequently have to have two or three different IM systems to communicate with all of their key external contacts--this is in addition to any internal IM system that might be rolled out. Over the next 12 months we expect to see much more integration among enterprise IM systems. (For example we're impressed with a solution from eDial that not only connects multiple enterprise IM systems, but also integrates them into the corporate telephone system enabling individuals to use IM presence to make phone calls or to know when other people are busy, at their desks, or on the phone.) We will also see integration between enterprise and public IM systems that, when properly managed, will provide the security and logging required by businesses and the flexibility to interact with any contact.

We are less certain that the other key hurdle to effective use of IM in the workplace will be overcome this year. The social implications of IM and presence awareness still have to be addressed by most companies. Some companies have successfully used a top-down approach to mandate not only the employee's participation in IM, but also the conventions by which it is used. For example, some companies require a response to an IM request within a certain amount of time--generally measured in minutes. Those companies that have made IM participation voluntary are finding that while pockets of users are taking advantage of it, many others are resistant, seeing it as both an invasion of privacy and compromising their ability to manage their own work time. The lack of complete participation can be the most significant hurdle to a company using IM to increase corporate responsiveness and efficiency. (We would agree that increasing corporate efficiency sometimes requires the expense of some individuals' personal efficiency.)

This hurdle will eventually be overcome. First, more and more people are entering the workplace who see IM as an efficiency tool, rather than as a burden. And more and more people who have never used IM before are being seduced into its world (such as when their children go away to college) and finding it can be valuable to them in their work. At the same time, more companies are making it a priority to educate their employees and create acceptable IM processes that will lower resistance to IM.

Finally, we expect eventually to have much smarter IM systems that can granularly show a person's presence based on what they are doing and who is asking to contact them. When properly instrumented, these systems will remove much of the noise that people associate with IM and make it a communications tool at least as compelling as email or the telephone. Unfortunately, we have not yet seen these systems, and we don't expect them until 2005.