by Sheri McLeish

The new European browser menu launched this week, and Microsoft in many ways faces a no-win situation. These past few years have been a doozy for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. After extricating itself from a legal mess with Netscape, its IE6 browser braved on and captured more than two-thirds of the market at its height in the fall of 2003. While unbundled, IE’s fortunes remained closely tied the operating system, and so Vista’s failure to displace XP as the standard image for many enterprises around the world also impacted IE7 and IE8’s uptake. Even with the well-received launch of Windows 7, IE’s overall erosion accelerated this past year.

When AOL stopped development of the Netscape browser, it left Mozilla’s Firefox to challenge IE’s dominance. And it’s put up a good fight. Firefox today can claim browser market leadership for tech enthusiasts, with 46.5% of the market compared to 35% for all IE versions combined, according to the latest WC3Schools data. Google also started muscling in with Chrome. After a year-and-a-half on the market, Google finally took Chrome to the people, delivering a marketing onslaught in Europe to coincide with the new browser menu. It seems to be paying off: In January, Google’s Chrome cracked double digits and crept further up in February to 11.6% of the market share. Other market data sources like Netmarketshare aren’t quite as bad for IE, placing all versions of IE combined at 62% of the market versus 24% for Firefox and 5.6% for Chrome. Opera, which initiated the European litigation, only captures 2% of the market but said it’s already feeling the benefit of the browser menu.

But who really cares about browser market share other than the vendors and web developers? I mean, really, they seem to be free and plentiful. Consumers and information workers want web sites to work correctly, for their activities to be secure, and to have features that improve their web browsing experience like speed, add-ons, and customization. But despite improvements on all of these fronts with IE8, particularly around security, Microsoft’s IE6 remains entrenched in many global enterprises, because choice is often dependent on customizations with third-party apps, operating system upgrades, or security/compliance concerns. In these cases, European browser menu choice matters little.

Microsoft has been trying to clean up its web browser mess for enterprises by reaffirming its commitment to interoperability and standards for web browsers and ensuring compatibility between IE7 and IE8. It’s been advocating for more than a year for customers to upgrade to IE8, even if it’s obligated to continue support of IE6 until 2014. But it now seems the acrimony over IE6 is reaching near-hysterical levels, from an online petition in the UK for the British government to ditch IE6 to the revelation that the recent Google hacker attack in China exploited a vulnerability in IE6. (Yes, you read it right: Google was using IE6.)

All of this puts Microsoft in a no-win situation where IE6 remediation is needed. Every client I have spoken with in the past months facing this issue is either staying on IE6 or just letting users download an alternative browser, most often Firefox. Virtualization tends to be assessed and dismissed. Most customers say they will eventually upgrade IE, just as they will move to Windows 7. The effort and aggravation of IE6 application remediation may make more enterprises want to make a clean break from IE. But we don’t think they will. And Microsoft doesn’t want them to be swept away that easily either. Early indications show Microsoft is bucking up with IE9, adding HTML5 support and providing even more standards support. Now, if 6 turned up to be 9, Microsoft would definitely not mind. But for now, it remains a fine mess.

by Sheri McLeish

First, thank you IBM/Lotus for getting me out of Boston before the snow. I know that has something to do with my good mood. But that aside, what Lotus unveiled at its 17^th annual Lotusphere in Orlando this week warms my heart in another way. For all the advancements in its product portfolio and technologies, the real accomplishment is Lotus’ keen focus on people, context, and simplicity.

IBM wants us to have a Smarter Planet, and Lotus "Knows" how to get there. Its vision for collaboration is deeply connected to personal productivity. With LotusLive, launched just a year ago, the effort is to allow people to be able to stay in their in-box and bring work tasks, information, and people together, in context. It has 18 million users today compared to just about 1 million each for Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) and Google Premier Apps. It’s landing more huge enterprise accounts, including the just announced more than 150,000 seats with Panasonic. Yet it still seems that many people don’t know Lotus, because most of my inquiries continue to ask about Microsoft or Google. Let me share.

So much of the iWorker’s day is spent searching for information, toggling between applications, and pulling content together from various sources to support a business activity or process. Unlike Google Wave, which does try to innovate to accomplish similar collaborative experiences, LotusLive doesn’t require radically altering behavior to get there (see Ted Schadler’s related Lotus blog). Email is an hourly addictionfor iWorkers, so LotusLive starts there and integrates Web conferencing, social networking, and collaboration within the environment.

Symphony, Lotus’ free Open Office productivity suite, will soon also be integrated to provide a web-based document document editor for creating and sharing (which surprisingly drew spontaneous cheers from the crowd).

Critical mass matters for the success of social networking and collaboration. So does trust and track record. IBM/Lotus meets the security litmus test because of its proven ability to support enterprise needs across its product portfolio. Google has yet to earn that trust. Microsoft engenders the same level of trust and is hot on the heels of Lotus with its 2010suite of products, slated to be launched midyear. But in the cloud, Lotus is way ahead and offering the kind of ease of access to people and content in context that Microsoft has yet to master. Consider:

• iWorkers suffer from ADD. With plenty to distract iWorkers from their task at hand, people increasingly need help to compartmentalize their work to stay the course. Need to locate the latest sales numbers to put in your presentation to the board? This can trigger a investigation to find who has the latest information, how to best reach them, or perhaps to try and discover if the information is already documented elsewhere. LotusLive addresses these challenges by enabling easier connections to people and content through searching and social networking that don’t require switching applications. You can contact someone based on information published, through integration of a “business card” fed from Connections/SameTime, and escalate from a threaded discussion to voice, video, a meeting, and presence.
• iWorkers need context. We know that information taken out of context is misleading. Value comes from understanding the genesis of information as well as its application in a given scenario. Because of the ability to filter by a lot of work dimensions, such as people, projects, time/date, or specific keyword searches, it’s much easier to surface content and people in relation to what your information needs are. With the ability to find sales numbers and also view related discussion threads or additional presentation materials or documents, greater understanding of the data is possible because more context is provided.
• iWorkers want simple. Ok, I admit it, I am the epitome of the KISS principle. I really don’t adjust well to new technology. I’m lucky to have a husband that manages all of the electronics at home. But I do know good design. It’s simple. It’s clean. I don’t have to think about it. It’s intuitive. What LotusLive accomplishes is a strikingly simple UI that doesn’t force me to change my behavior. iWorkers will relish being able to do what they’ve always done and delight in the ease of discovering more content, more people, and ultimately, be more productive.

Given the concerted effort to solve iWorker pain points through actual use cases, within their core customer industries like banking and healthcare, Lotus is able to deliver what Google Wave fails to address: providing a solution that improves personal productivity without forcing a change in work behavior. The “build it and they will come” approach generally fails. Just look at any efforts around document collaboration and team sites usage. Incrementally improving upon the investments that you already have without forcing a cultural change, however, will be a powerful differentiator. Who knew? Lotus.

 by Sheri McLeish

The EU’s decision this week to accept Microsoft’s proposed browser menu means in March European consumers purchasing or upgrading their operating system will be presented a choice of browser. Beyond that, the acceptance means little for enterprises. Businesses in Europe will be able to bypass the menus for enterprise installation and the menu will not extend beyond the European Union. What matters more for Microsoft will be innovating Internet Explorer to enable better web experiences, from security and administration to personalization and productivity.

After 10 years and more than $2 billion in fines, Microsoft needs to put issues of technical transparency and monopolistic practices to rest, especially in the browser market, because:

• Browsers are everywhere. A decade ago Microsoft did own your browser. But now there are rivals like corporate giants Google and Apple trying to level the field and a nonprofit organization in Mozilla Foundation keeping it honest. Browser choices abound and they are freely available for download. Hence comments like: “People in the EU should be embarassed (sic) about this. Basically it says that they admit that the people are too stupid to download their own browser of choice.”
• Internet Explorer needs to win with innovation, not just Windows. Everyone expects to get online when they fire up their computer. Along with email and word processing, Web browsers are a killer app in the information workday. The reason Mozilla’s Firefox continues to slowly and steadily increase its market share among general users (nearly 50%) and enterprises (20%) isn’t simply because it’s an alternative; it’s because it offers features and performance that draw users through word of mouth. You may be able to get users by packaging your browser and operating system together, but that won’t keep them. Microsoft must offer more compelling reasons why IE8 becomes the default browser of choice.
• The browser’s potential remains untapped. We know Google’s not stupid, and there’s a reason it’s developing its own browser and operating system. Calling them both Chrome probably merits a taunting penalty … but, the point is: We ain’t seen nothin’ yet. The way the Web, SaaS, cloud, and online apps are changing the way we work, iWorkers and consumers will benefit from more intuitive user interfaces, fast support for complex online computing tasks, and strong security to protect content. We can already see new use cases driving design: the “social networking” browser Flock from Mozilla is intended to keep users in tune with friends and their activities. So in this way, the browser market of the future can be anyone’s to own.

By Sheri McLeish

Last week, Microsoft disclosed that it expects Office 2010 and related products to be generally available to consumers at retail in June 2010. Office 2010 and related products will be available to business customers through volume licensing earlier in the first half of 2010. This launch confirmation means massive effort by the Redmond product teams to work through feedback from the public beta and ready the suite for launch.

For Information & Knowledge Management professionals, it means there’s still plenty of time to plan and refine your Microsoft Office enterprise strategy. Office is a big line item for most companies – an expense that often comes into question the closer it gets to renewal time. I’ve spoken with firms that are weeks away from their license expiring and others that have calculated the ROI for their Office investment six years out. In all of these discussions clients want to get the best value and tools for their information workers.

So what are the best practices for developing your Office strategy? First off, get to know what your information workers do all day. Most all I&KM pros acknowledge that Office is standard operating procedure for certain parts of the business: the number crunchers in finance using Excel won’t function without it. But recent Forrester data suggests that six of every 10 information workers don’t need a full-featured word processor to get their job done. Gathering data about your workforce’s use of their tools will improve your negotiating position, help determine who in your organization needs a full productivity suite, and enable you to apply personas to segment your workforce.

But Office strategy isn’t all about license costs, or even usage. For many of the companies I’ve spoken with, there’s no will to disrupt the apple cart. Their calculations of the per user cost through volume licensing are attractive enough to forego the potential for business disruption and cultural upheaval of introducing an alternative productivity suite. For these enterprises, optimizing Office tools for efficiency and integration with collaboration and business processes become a more significant part of the Office strategy.

Microsoft has a lot riding on Office 2010. As it toiled on its fourteenth version of the world’s most popular knowledge worker toolset, the market dramatically changed: Cloud computing and SaaS have fueled Office alternatives like Google Apps and Zoho, while OpenOffice suites have reached a level of interoperability with Office to make them truly viable alternatives for many information workers. But Microsoft still has an ace up its sleeve: a majority of enterprises own SharePoint for content management. And that content is overwhelmingly created in Office apps. In this sense, the strategy for most companies is clear – and now the RSVP date is, too. No regrets.

  By Sheri McLeish

As people spend more time consuming information digitally at home and at work, reliance on paper continues to decrease. But how far are we across the Digital Divide? In 1975, George E. Pake, then head of Xerox Corp.’s Palo Alto Research Center, predicted that in 1995 his office would be completely different: “There will be a TV-display terminal with keyboard sitting on his desk. I’ll be able to call up documents from my files on the screen, or by pressing a button. I can get my mail or any messages. I don’t know how much hard copy I’ll want in this world.”

Thirty-five years later Pake’s vision largely came true for iWorkers, who today toggle between laptops, smart phones, and other devices to create, consume, and manage information. But an interesting thing happened along the way. With the initial rise in popularity of email and the Internet in the late 1990s, there was actually a bump in paper usage, not a decrease. People printed out their emails, receipts for e-purchases, documents, presentations – you get the idea. In fact, the World Wildlife Fund reported that some 10,000 sheets of paper are used each year by the average office worker in Western industrialized countries.

The other challenge faced by businesses has been the explosion of content types. Firms today need to support and coordinate multiple inbound and outbound channels. For processes like customer onboarding, paper persists due to lack of integration or reliance on paper by customers, partners, and staff. Today only a quarter of enterprises report that 25-50% of their customers are fully paperless, according to a recent Forrester Information Capture survey. Eighty-seven percent of firms have, are in the process of, or are planning to implement or upgrade information capture technology in their companies. The No. 1 investment area? No surprise here: integrating with enterprise apps.

This ongoing effort to remove paper from processes is driven by good, solid business reasons: For each sheet of paper used there are costs for purchasing, storage, copying, printing, labor, postage, disposal, and recycling. The ROI for capture investments is one of the most straight-forward for a technology investment. Driven by cost savings, increased productivity, and improved access and retention of electronic documents, companies continue to invest steadily in information capture to support business processes like registration, invoicing, and contract management.

Most Content Now Born Digital

But there’s another other huge driver of paper reduction in the enterprise: the iWorker. I know I still have a few piles of paper lingering at the office and more at home, but I haven’t looked at that stuff in years. I use my smart phone for a shopping list; I seem to have a hard time locating pens because I so rarely use them.

And I’m not unique. Forrester believes that well over two-thirds of content created today originates digitally. Consider:

• In our Forrester Workforce Analysis Survey, Q2 2009, 79% responded that they use word processing tools, and 60% report using word processing daily.
• Spreadsheets have similar but slightly lower use, with about half of information workers using spreadsheets daily.
• From the same study iWorkers are shown to be pretty happy with word processing tools – 82% indicate high satisfaction

This high level of satisfaction and ongoing use of tools to work with content in digital form supports the notion that most of the content being handled by iWorkers today is in electronic formats. And this will accelerate as Millennials who were “born digital” make up greater proportions of the workforce.

It’s Getting Easier To Be Green

Paper reduction also fits into the Green mindset. Along with embracing digital authoring tools, iWorkers indicate a strong desire to reduce paper in the workplace (75% strongly agree) and recognize the benefits of digital content such as facilitating quicker distribution and ability to reuse content. Paper-based or whiteboard content from collaborative work sessions increasingly are moving to the digital realm. During a tour of EMC’s storage manufacturing facility last week several of the process efficiencies touted were tied to digitizing information collection, including a widescreen digital whiteboard on the shop floor to replicate a physical whiteboard and an application that provides electronic access to the state of components as they are being tested, a task that previously required the technicians to walk through the test rooms and write down the information to then be inputted.

Custom development to automate and digitize manual processes remains core to ongoing process improvement. But for more informal content development, eventually iWorkers will take for granted originating this content digitally. Today adoption of wikis and blogs is still nascent, with under 10% of information workers using these tools. But as collaborative environments become more accessible via Web-based platforms like the Google Wave, Novell’s Pulse, IBM/Lotus Live, and Microsoft’s SharePoint and Office 2010, it will become even easier to live fully in a digital world of content.

Holdouts Hindered By Real Hurdles

There will be exceptions to the digital rule, however. Content captured via paper forms or that isn’t well supported for electronic input, such as math formulas or diagrams, will persist until better user interfaces make even these uses obsolete on paper. Most iWorkers today are not provisioned a stylus and tablet PC, so doing a first pass on paper or on a whiteboard remains faster even if eventually these drawings need to be captured digitally.

And there will be other holdouts as well: In an interview with NPR earlier this year, one of our era’s most prolific novelists James Patterson admitted he does all of his writing in longhand before turning it over to an assistant to be typeset. But in college classrooms, often the best barometer for what’s to come, more and more professors are allowing laptops and electronic note taking tools to be used in class. And as we look even further ahead, consider that penmanship has taken a backseat to keyboarding in the elementary curriculum at many schools. So for the class of 2025, Forrester predicts that their offices may not be just sans paper, but without a pen too. I guess that puts me ahead of the curve.

What about you? Are you farther along the paperless trail at home or at work? What’s driving paper reduction in your firm? What’s holding you back?