Okay, I get it. These commenters think I'm biased. Here's some more information. Microsoft is a client. So is just about every other vendor on the planet. No single client pays us enough to buy our opinion and analysis. Ever. Ever. Ever. If I thought they could, I'd be the first to resign. This is a very important product launch. Think of it as SharePoint version 3 if that helps. This is the one they got right. SharePoint is already widely deployed. This release will affirm that it wasn't a bad decision to use it. Lots of other vendors -- notably IBM and Google and Cisco -- have great technology for solving collaboration challenges. But none has 500,000,000 people using their productivity tools. That alone makes Microsoft the most important supplier in this market. It wasn't that long ago that Microsoft was the rebel company, putting information power into individual's hands in defiance of corporate IT. They haven't actually changed all that much since then. Happy to talk further about this. tschadler(at)forrester(dot)com. Ted

Some important thoughts here (and one marketing pitch that you should feel free to ignore). When application developers start pushing the boundaries of what they can use this device for, we'll see some very cool apps, I'm sure. Forms apps, for sure, though maybe for high-falutin scenarios first until the price comes down. Better content management and content integration tools for mobile professionals, yes. I'm expecting that we'll even see Microsoft respond at some point with apps tailored for these kinds of devices. Already, they would say that Office Web Apps on Safari on iPad could get the job done. And yes, it will be available in Conway,SC, mybe even at the RadioShack in Myrtle Beach! Ted

Harell: I agree on what's needed to move to a BYO world. The network and security buried in the application data and not the device are key. Lots of money will have to be spent to do that, though. And somebody has to decide it's worth spending that money. My bet is that it won't be a device that justifies the spend, it will be telecommuting, remote workers, and the need for better partner collaboration. Businesses care about those things more. Ted

Orient: Truth be told, I guess I was bragging a little. We put names on new technologies sometimes just to have a way to talk about them. That was the case with mobile Internet devices (which we did actually convince Intel to use) and mobile media tablets. But it isn't any pride of authorship, really; it's just a way to get a handle on what makes the things different from PCs and phones. (I do see tablets as an in-between category, not a replacement for most people of phones or computers. When gadgets get cheap enough, people tend to buy lots of them. It's more like footwear than electronics; one for every activiy.) The bigger issue is of course what you raise. How should IT deal with this thing? My advice is to start to get on board and also demand better security and application management from Apple and its partners. My belief is that the days of one-size-fits-all are over, replaced by rich Internet interfaces, cloud delivery in many cases, and BYO devices. This will be a big challenge for IT, of course, and we spend a lot of our time helping the CIO organization figure out how to respond. I spend most of my time helping the collaboration professional do things that make employees the most productive. And mobility support for messaging, collaboration, and content tops is way up on that IT to-do list. iPad simply adds yet another mobile device to worry about. Hopefully, my post just pointed out why it may start appearing in exec's hands in the same way that iPhone did. Apple has a lot of work to do to make iPhone, iPod Touch, and now iPad enterprise-ready. Anyway, thanks for your comments. Hope to talk soon. Ted ps. Funny video clip. And watched 2.4M times!

Orient, Thanks for your comments. I don't think companies are going to pay for these devices any time soon. But I do think that consumers will buy them and expect to get support at work. That's what has happened with iPhones, for example. IT support for Bring-Your-Own (BYO) devices is a very tough conversation between IT and employees, and it's getting tougher every month. But the amount of self-provisioned technology that employees are using to get work done is astounding and on the rise. On the naming thing, I'm happy to send you the report. Just send me an email to tschadler@forrester.com. Regards, Ted

Ah, Oliver, raising some good points. Clearly, anybody looking at a specific solution will want to understand each layer of the stack, including the very real situation of a SaaS solution running on another provider's hardware. Still and all, the ability to deploy changes quickly and consistently and deliver a platform that can be configured rather than customized is easier in a multi-tenant software layer. That's the key issue in my view: successive improvement that doesn't break the application.

Roger, Thanks for sharing this interesting offering. I think that with enough bandwidth and the right video conferencing codecs, end points, and particularly control systems, we will see dozens or hundreds of other opportunities to bring experts to the scene in highly efficient ways. The door that opened with radiologists Down Under after lunch doing midnight assessments here is revealing a world of possibilities. I'd love to hear more from a customer. Ted

Thanks for your comment on Web conferencing. I couldn't agree more that firms will get more by conference-enabling every worker than they will by building a handful of telepresence rooms for executives only. (Just did a post on IBM's new Sametime 8.5 release to say more.) But it's not an either/or decision for most firms: It's a "both" decision. Both are required to lay the collaboration infrastructure for higher individual, team, and business productivity. Ted

Shanley: Thanks for weighing in. My first experience with telepresence was with HP, but I'm glad to learn that Teliris was a pioneer in this market. With your long history in this market, it must be gratifying to see the market for telepresence gaining critical mass and heating up. Ted

D'oh. Good catch, Lindsay. Hopefully I fixed it. Thanks, Ted

I'm wondering how much of this is being able to host security services for on-premises applications versus how much it is another step in building a cloud-based security platform . . . to secure cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-premise applications as well as on-premises apps. Feels like Cisco is headed pretty swiftly to cloud-hosted [YourWorkloadHere]. Thoughts? Ted [tschadler@forrester.com)

I'm very happy to have Skype be good enough. And free's always better. But for firms, there are some issues around quality, access control, sometimes archiving, usually firewall traversal, etc. These things make Skype not ready yet. With the spinoff of Skype, perhaps they create an enterprise business group as Second Life has done to solve some of these problems. I'm thinking of vendors like HP Skyroom, Vidyo, RADVISION, Microsoft, IBM, on the desktop video side today. (In addition to Tandberg, Polycom, LifeSize, Teliris, etc.). I'd love to keep "chat" but it tends to sounds like an IM chat.

Ah, good point. However, when this group got their first rental pad or bought their first house, dial-up was in full swing and broadband was one of the things they considered. Of course the lines are fuzzy, but there's no refuting based on the data that Gen X treats the Internet with a whole lot more comfort than their older breathren, so the point remains valid and useful. Ted

Thanks, JessieX. Worth another post, I think: http://blogs.forrester.com/information_management/2009/09/defining-the-generations-based-on-technology-era.html Ted

Chris: Here's a link to the report, just now live: http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/0,7211,55268,00.html Sibylle, I'm happy to also talk offline about this (tschadler@forrester.com), but in general I would expect that as more businesses enable Web 2.0 and mobile tools, the Gen Y uptake will pick up. It's already clear from our consumer data that at home, Gen Y and youth (the so-called "millenials") are much more comfortable with Internet and mobile technology. My own opinion is that younger people are in some ways more practical than old folks like me. They use what works because they have no rutted road of history to follow. (How's that for a metaphor from the victorian era?!?) But we know young consumers are not big into Twitter; they prefer mobile texting where they have direct control over the message. Facebook's different: it's about social influence through exposure. But if Facebook disappoints, Gen Y and youth will flee as they did MySpace. Happy to talk further. Just ping me by email. Ted

Konnie, it's hard to get quantitative data on things that are used by a tiny percentage of information workers using a general survey. Instead, you would have to survey a targeted set of users, such as their own customers. However, we do know based on a survey of IT professionals that 27% of firms are at least interested in implementing microblogging. But as far as firm-level adoption, it's in the small single digits and among information workers, it's way less than that. What are you trying to learn? Ted

We don't have to wonder about enterprise support -- we have plenty of data to support it. Enterprise support for iPhone has grown to 17% of enterprises in Q2 2009 (up from zero less than two years previously). BlackBerry has 74% of enterprises (and the vast bulk of the market int he US and Europe anyway), and Windows Mobile has support from 40% of enterprises. Check out this report: [subscription required] Technology Populism Fuels Mobile Collaboration http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/0,7211,54773,00.html Almost every CIO, EA, or CISO conversation I have these days includes a "tell me how to support iPhone because I know I have to" section. It's about people wanting the device, the quality of the Internet browser, and the rising tide of apps. Doesn't mean BlackBerry or Windows Mobile goes away; it just means that the competition got a whole lot more interesting. All will benefit as smartphones move from 11% of information workers (in the US today) to more like . . . all of them!

I put this question to the product management team at Microsoft and received the response below. My own take is that for firms that are working internally, what matters most is standards, not standard. In other words, as long as all users have the same tool, they can take advantage of Backstage as is. However, for multi-organizational collaboration, a standard like ODF 1.2 could very well be important. We'll keep an eye on this. Here's Microsoft's response: "ODF 1.2 is still being developed and no one at this point knows exactly what it will include in its final form or when it will be issued. As a result, Microsoft cannot at this time be concrete as to its support plans. Once ODF 1.2 is completed, however, we will evaluate it, assess the interest of our customers and partners in it, and then make a decision about support for it. We are pleased to be positive contributors to the ODF 1.2 standards development process in OASIS. "We note that Office 2010 will provide support for IS29500, the Open XML version ratified by ISO last year. That standard has support for custom-defined schema. Examples of solutions that leverage the custom schema solution support in Open XML can be located http://www.codeproject.com/KB/office/Connect_Word_to_your_data.aspx, https://channel9.msdn.com/shows/In+the+Office/DataView-Separation-in-Word-2007/. Note that Microsoft’s support for Open XML and ODF is fully documented at this location: http://www.documentinteropinitiative.org/. As we near the shipment of Office 2010, MSDN will be updated with information related to the extensibility of Backstage, to help developers add custom solutions for document workflows, metadata or potentially other types of solutions. The Protocol and Interoperability Documentation for Office 2010, detailed here, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc307432.aspx, can help developers learn about various interfaces for communicating with Microsoft Office products."

These are great points, Tim. Thanks for sharing. I guess my key takeaway is that once Google showed what's possible, others will also tap into those features and benefits. Both IBM and Microsoft, for example, are watching this with interest, and I've just learned that Novell has been building something like Wave into its collaboration product. So even if Google isn't able to bring this market through Google Apps Premier Edition (and I'll be you a dollar that they will), other vendors will deliver at least some of this functionality. For the record, we are having dozens of conversations with global companies about cloud-based collaboration and Google as well as Microsoft and IBM in the cloud. And I know of at least two that have moved to Google (with perhaps a case study pending) and many more that are piloting or trialing Google, often as an additional tool rather than a replacement for Notes or Exchange. WIM (what it means): Google Wave or at least its features will show up in an enterprise setting by the end of 2010.

These are great points, Tim. Thanks for sharing. I guess my key takeaway is that once Google showed what's possible, others will also tap into those features and benefits. Both IBM and Microsoft, for example, are watching this with interest, and I've just learned that Novell has been building something like Wave into its collaboration product. So even if Google isn't able to bring this market through Google Apps Premier Edition (and I'll be you a dollar that they will), other vendors will deliver at least some of this functionality. For the record, we are having dozens of conversations with global companies about cloud-based collaboration and Google as well as Microsoft and IBM in the cloud. And I know of at least two that have moved to Google (with perhaps a case study pending) and many more that are piloting or trialing Google, often as an additional tool rather than a replacement for Notes or Exchange. WIM (what it means): Google Wave or at least its features will show up in an enterprise setting by the end of 2010.

Intriguing (and disturbing for sure) parallel you're drawing here, Jamie. I'd love to hear the logic behind your statement. What do you see as the barriers to the Google Wave that would prevent it from catching on? Please say more. Thanks, Ted