August 21, 2011 - Gert ter Burg, one of the Board Members of Open Horizons Benelux and proud owner of GWCheck.com, had the opportunity to interview Michael Osterman, President of Osterman Research. Osterman Research provides market research, industry analysis reports, white papers, Webinars, surveys and related services for vendors and customers in the messaging, Web 2.0, social media, mobile, collaboration, information management and other markets.

Gert: Hi Michael, it’s good to talk to you. I’ve followed you over the years and you are an expert in the collaboration space. Can you give us a short background on how this started and got to where it is now?
Michael: I’ve been following the messaging and collaboration industry since 1993 when I went to work for Creative Networks and later became their vice president of market research.

When Creative Networks was dissolved by their new owners in 2001, I took over the market research operation and formed a new company, Osterman Research. Although it was a new company, I worked with Creative Networks’ owners and was able to bring over some of the clients with whom I had been working previously. Being able to hit the ground running in a new venture was a definite blessing, particularly during the recession of 2001.

Gert: You do a lot of research and publish lots of documents. Where do you find the resources for this? Who are your customers?
Michael: We do a lot of primary research with IT managers, email admins, collaboration managers and others that are on our survey panel. The panel was started at Creative Networks in 1998 as a way of conducting research more efficiently and more quickly and I was able to invite those panel members to the Osterman Research panel as part of the agreement with Creative Networks’ owners. Today, the panel numbers about 1,500 people and allows us to conduct primary research quite nicely.

In terms of producing the white papers and industry analysis reports that we publish, I write most of the content, but we also use industry experts around the world to produce some of the content for us. I made the decision several years ago to use industry experts on a contract basis, since I want to manage research and content development, not people.

Gert: You must stay in the field to know the way collaboration changes and develops. Do you visit a lot of companies and events? Do you have “access to the boardrooms” where to meet CEO’s?
Michael: Yes, I visit companies on a regular basis, as well as participate in a lot of vendor briefings. I also attend a number of events each year. At these events and briefings I’m given NDA access to important information about corporate plans, roadmaps, etc.

I meet with many CEOs, as well as product managers and others who can provide in-depth information on plans and the like. I also use this time to field questions about corporate messaging and plans, so I like to make these meetings beneficial for both parties.

Gert: You visit Novell BrainShare and GWAVACon. What is your impression of GroupWise and its community? Are there people you stay in contact with?
Michael: I thoroughly enjoy the GroupWise community for a couple of reasons.

First, virtually everyone I meet that manages GroupWise, as well as the people that sell it and partner with Novell, are a very nice group and are pleasant people with whom to interact.

Second, the GroupWise community tends to be very loyal and enthusiastic about GroupWise in a way that is not common among some other messaging and collaboration platform communities.

I think this may be borne from the pressure that these people face in defending GroupWise against internal decision makers who want to replace it with other messaging platforms.

On the admin side, I believe that it’s also the result of there being so few of them: because a single GroupWise admin can support so many users compared to the some other messaging and collaboration systems, the number of people who actually manage GroupWise is quite small, resulting in perhaps a tighter-knit community than you’ll find for other platforms.

Gert: Where do you think Novell, its partners and the community can improve GroupWise? How do you see the way it developed over the years?
Michael: Confidence is the critical element in promoting stability in any realm – we see it in politics, financial markets, companies, etc.: simply put, a lack of confidence results in instability.

I believe that Novell’s problem over the years, and Attachmate’s problem now, has been that senior decision makers in many organizations that use GroupWise aren’t sure where the platform is going or what the long-term roadmap looks like.

As a result, many are migrating to Exchange – not because Exchange is a better system technically, but because Microsoft has done a very good job at establishing a long-term roadmap across all of the company’s messaging and collaboration offerings.

To be sure, Microsoft has offered financial incentives and has been aggressive in its licensing policies, but I believe the fundamental differentiator has been their ability to build confidence among those who make financial decisions about spending for messaging and collaboration platforms.

The bottom line, in my opinion, is that Attachmate/Novell needs to develop a solid, long-term plan for GroupWise and push very hard on the messaging around it.

If corporate decision makers can be convinced that GroupWise has a lower total cost of ownership and that it’s roadmap will satisfy organizational requirements for robust messaging and collaboration functionality for many years to come, most of them will stay with GroupWise – and Attachmate/Novell will be able to gain some new converts, as well.

Gert: If you compare GroupWise and collaboration according to Novell and the way the collaboration market develops, do you see challenges for the community to work together with people outside the community? Breaking the circle.
Michael: GroupWise is a very solid platform with a lower TCO than many of its competitors, but it goes back to the confidence issue noted above.

Messaging and collaboration are central to the way that people work (the typical user spends about 30% of his or her day using them) and decision makers need to be convinced that Attachmate/Novell will be able to meet their needs over the long term.

If a long-term vision is established in which partners and GroupWise customers have confidence, that will go a long way toward helping the GroupWise community to work together to develop new offerings, and it will help to attract new partners.

I’d like to see Attachmate/Novell work hard on a couple of things:
a) promote more frequent industry events, perhaps something like a BrainShare roadshow or multiple annual events, something along the lines of what GWAVAcon has done;
and b) work to develop a larger cloud-based GroupWise ecosystem as Microsoft has done for years.

Gert: What role can Osterman Research play in all this? What are your wishes or where do you see possibilities to work together?
Michael: We are an independent market research and consulting firm and so we focus on the “rising tide lifts all ships” approach to the market. We strive to remain as objective as possible, but certainly think that GroupWise – if managed by Attachmate/Novell properly – will be around for the very long term.

Gert: What is the vision of Osterman Research on the collaboration and messaging market for the next four years? Who will be key players, what is the role of mobility for collaboration? Will the web (cloud computing) play a more important role?
Michael: Great questions! I believe the key players in four years will largely be the same ones we see today: Microsoft, IBM, Google, VMware, Novell and many, many others.

Mobility will play a key role in messaging and collaboration over the next four years, but not in a “post-PC” role as many believe, but in a “plus-PC” role. What mobility does is to allow messaging and collaboration to become more location-neutral so that the platform – desktop, laptop, tablet, smartphone, etc. – actually becomes less important in how people work.

I believe that Apple and Google will be key players in the mobile space over the next four years, but I believe that RIM will hold its own, largely because of the robust security capabilities of the BlackBerry platform.

As for the cloud, we will see a major emphasis on cloud-based delivery of messaging and collaboration services. However, the primary driver will not be reducing IT costs as much as it will be reducing the costs of real estate and taxes.

Because the cloud, along with mobility and unified communications, allows individuals to be less dependent on location for doing their work, that will give employers the flexibility of allowing their people to work remotely to a greater degree than we see today.

We have analyzed the cost savings from the cloud and have found that for the typical organization, the primary benefit of the cloud will be the ability to have a smaller office footprint, the savings from which will be much greater than the IT-related savings.

Gert: Thanks for the interview, Michael. GWCheck will follow you.
Michael: Thank you, Gert. I appreciated the opportunity to respond to your questions!

More news from GWCheck van be found at www.gwcheck.com - more about Osterman Research at www.ostermanresearch.com