Have The E-mail Wars Returned?
Category Administration
Google visited our executive hallways this week, pitching the revolution of Gmail. In my mind I can hear The Who singing away with “Won't Be Fooled Again.” After all, the refrain is the still the same, with lower TCO and better ROI.
Ironically, just today Walter Mossberg, of The Wall Street Journal, cites the reworked Yahoo Mail as the new e-mail champion of the web. Unlike Gmail's streamlined interface, Mossberg prefers the rich feature set of Yahoo which allows "things that once were impossible" for a web application. I can expect Yahoo to be calling in for a conference sit down.
Of course, not all revolutions are happening on the web. The latest release of IBM Lotus Notes, ND8, is fresh on the streets, and garnering rave reviews. I know that IBM is feeling more confident with this version, than ever before. I opened up this month's copy of Redmond Magazine (an “independent” Microsoft oriented technical journal which has mysteriously never looked at Domino). IBM had placed several full place ads, including one for IBM ND8. Astounding.
Nevertheless, I think to suspect another round of e-mail wars would be to completely, unequivocally miss the real trend. What's happening in collaboration and messaging is much larger than a race between vendors, or even open source versus commercial. It's about evolution. Think along the lines of the TV show, “Heroes.” Those that are looking at a drama of good versus bad guys are missing the background story of a renewed humanity.
Irving Wladawsky-Berger thinks we are are in A Kind of Cambrian Explosion. What a perfect metaphor to explain the gargantuan proportion of change.
The new world order of IT starts with interoperability, not by exchanging one silo stack of technology for another. My messaging platform begins with a PDA/cellphone that I can Twitter-blog, text-message, IM, VOIP, or call in to my corporate, integrated universal mail messaging system. I have e-mail enabled applications that are RSS/Atom enabled for client access and include SOA for platform integration.
I have not a clue what to expect for the next five years in messaging and collaboration. I just know what it is not going to be, and it's not about us versus them.
It's going to be about “we.”
Google visited our executive hallways this week, pitching the revolution of Gmail. In my mind I can hear The Who singing away with “Won't Be Fooled Again.” After all, the refrain is the still the same, with lower TCO and better ROI.
Ironically, just today Walter Mossberg, of The Wall Street Journal, cites the reworked Yahoo Mail as the new e-mail champion of the web. Unlike Gmail's streamlined interface, Mossberg prefers the rich feature set of Yahoo which allows "things that once were impossible" for a web application. I can expect Yahoo to be calling in for a conference sit down.
Of course, not all revolutions are happening on the web. The latest release of IBM Lotus Notes, ND8, is fresh on the streets, and garnering rave reviews. I know that IBM is feeling more confident with this version, than ever before. I opened up this month's copy of Redmond Magazine (an “independent” Microsoft oriented technical journal which has mysteriously never looked at Domino). IBM had placed several full place ads, including one for IBM ND8. Astounding.
Nevertheless, I think to suspect another round of e-mail wars would be to completely, unequivocally miss the real trend. What's happening in collaboration and messaging is much larger than a race between vendors, or even open source versus commercial. It's about evolution. Think along the lines of the TV show, “Heroes.” Those that are looking at a drama of good versus bad guys are missing the background story of a renewed humanity.
Irving Wladawsky-Berger thinks we are are in A Kind of Cambrian Explosion. What a perfect metaphor to explain the gargantuan proportion of change.
The new world order of IT starts with interoperability, not by exchanging one silo stack of technology for another. My messaging platform begins with a PDA/cellphone that I can Twitter-blog, text-message, IM, VOIP, or call in to my corporate, integrated universal mail messaging system. I have e-mail enabled applications that are RSS/Atom enabled for client access and include SOA for platform integration.
I have not a clue what to expect for the next five years in messaging and collaboration. I just know what it is not going to be, and it's not about us versus them.
It's going to be about “we.”
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Comments
I check in with yahoo from time to time, but, rarely find much compelling. In one of the release notices I read that they had unified messageing with MSN listed as a feature. I never was able to get anything to work, but, played with Yahoo mail long enough to notice a level of polish.
I was especially impressed with large folder navigation, (I made the mistake of sending my yahoo account 3000 messages).
I moused over the folder then used my scroll wheel and was surprised that it worked perfectly!
I clicked on the first item, in the list, heald down control & paged down. It correctly selected all of those document. I was impressed!
Google mail, suffers from too much re-design. I don't like how my messages are grouped automatically, I don't know what gmail is trying to tell me. Im sure it does make sense, but, I was a very early adopter and I still have to really examine what Im looking at in gmail to figure out whats going on.
I concider that stuff going on at live (MS) as a step back. I can't figure out what they are doing. I've gone back to clasic mode again.
Posted by Dwight Wilbanks At 03:26:16 AM On 09/03/2007 | - Website - |