Leadership By Numbers :: Firefox Is Scouting For Thunderbird

Category IBM/Lotus

Mozzilla’s Firefox has been increasing its mind-share and internet usage as it continues to diminish the monolith that was once Internet Explorer. I’ve been a user of Mozilla since I began using Linux and have made it my standard browser on all platforms.

InformationWeek has a special edition, this week, on Firefox. John Foley’s Opening the Desktop argues that the real fight is not with the browser, but the desktop. Right behind Firefox’s release is Thunderbird, a full-featured email client that outshines Outlook Express in every aspect. Many believe that because of Mozilla’s heritage, it has the credentials to compete against Microsoft’s monoculture.

Mozilla has risen from the ashes of Netscape, having experienced both market success and monopolistic suffocation. Interesting, isn’t it that the chairman of the Mozilla Foundation is Mitch Kapor (Lotus co-founder). This is a group of very bright, innovative professionals who have crafted open source resources, clever technology, and an effective business model into a dynamic product family.

But, there is another aspect to Firefox’s ascendancy—it is succeeding because of the commodization of information technology. If all we ask for is a simple mail client (calendaring is coming for Thunderbird), then Exchange, Groupwise, and even Domino have little allure. The difference for Domino is it’s extensibility as an application development platform. In the future, I expect the distribution of messaging/collaboration to shift into an hour-glass look. The commodity of general-purpose messaging will take the bottom-half, and the customizable, IM/email/integrated calendaring/VOIP platform will take the top half.

Domino isn’t going to compete with Thunderbird, but Workplace can. Obviously, Workplace needs an avian branding and I’m placing my vote for a Griffin. After all its special talent was digging up gold. What could be a better emblem for anyone’s return-on-investment?

Comments

3 - Jon--well said. And, I appreciate your summation and it may come to happen in the way you describe. Foretelling the future always has a Mel Brooks feel to it. I hate doing it because while on one hand I'm very confident I'm right, on the other, I know in my heart that my success rate is as low as anyone else's.

I guess where I was trying to go, was in defining the need that Workplace meets. I run into people (and the trade journalists) who seem confused about the *need* for Workplace. The common perspective is that IBM is running a WebSphere conspiracy to convert all IT technologies into J2EE portals. I want to point these confused Radicatti-ites (that's just fun to say) to Thunderbird or OpenExchange on Novell/SuSe. We're talking commodity, low cost messaging that is going to drive down the old client-server models that we've employed for 15 years. Workplace is up to the challenge, and as you say, it offers much more.

Posted by Jack Dausman At 09:48:42 AM On 12/17/2004 | - Website - |

2 - Jack,

I guess I can see Workplace being a Thunderbird competitor, but not in the way that you seem to be saying. Increased versatility in clients like Thunderbird represents one end of the axis, while Workplace, with its reliance upon server-based portals and administration represents the other end. Domino, to me, falls in the middle, providing a thick client experience with rich server-side application development and integration.

It is odd that in many ways we have come so far since the 90's "client-server" revolution, to the point that now it is almost a "Client vs. Server" mentality. This, to me, is one of the weaknesses of IBM's portal-centric model. To be successful, it depends to a large extent upon client homogeneity. Diverse, varied clients make development and deployment more difficult.

Posted by Jon Walkup At 10:31:30 PM On 12/16/2004 | - Website - |