Carl Tyler's Blog

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but I'm back now. The InstantMessagingPlanet conference in San Jose was interesting, Microsoft was very convincing with their strategy for Microsoft Office Live server, which everyone is now referring to as Microsoft LCS (Live Communications Server). AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft all had a strong presence there with booths, keynotes and lots of staff. IBM had one person there; chatting to the IBMer, they were also very impressed with Microsoft's strategy and story, they were also impressed at how many people Microsoft had dedicated to marketing LCS, they were a little embarrassed at how many IBM now had working on IBM Lotus Instant Messaging in comparison (rumour has it, after the latest re-org, there are two)

A few interesting things from the show, the attendees at this show were mainly vendors, not many potential customers and a fairly low attendance, maybe 100 people. Seemed to be more of a press relations opportunity for the big 3 consumer IM products to make noise about their enterprise moves.

Ranking the 3 consumer vendors and their efforts to transition towards enterprise messaging, I would say that Microsoft has the best understanding, following by AOL and then Yahoo, who seem to be lagging in getting to grips with enterprise IM; AOL needs to change their thinking about how partner programs work, you should not have to pay AOL $150k to get access to protocols etc. if you want to build companion products for their network. Other interesting thing from the show, everyone except the IBMer referred to IBM Lotus Instant Messaging as Sametime, sorry IBM, but your renaming has failed (and sorry Sue for picking on IBM again, but come on this was a ridiculous decision).

Best things about the show? Meeting our customer in person, and listening to him sit on the panel and tell people how he built his first bot in less than 20 minutes with our Instant Agent Framework product, and now has about a dozen different bots running. To quote the customer, "if you can use Excel, you can build bots with IAF". It was good to meet the AOL, Yahoo and MS folks again in person. My money is on Microsoft winning this space, but I need to stay friends with them all.

I took part in a panel with folks from Microsoft, Sun, Oracle and The Yankee group (although he is a Red Sox fan). The panel was on awareness and presence, and the Oracle and Sun folks were toting worklow integration, similar to what the ikimbo folks deliver today, where as the Microsoft guy and myself were thinking of that and further with things along the lines of telephony and IM awareness becoming combined etc.

Was it a waste of my time? I don't think so, it was a very good way to get validation from other vendors for what we're doing, and also a great opportunity to meet some other people that have a lot of belief in the growing enterprise Instant Messaging market.

My strange thought for the day sitting on the plane coming back: Has Mobile, Alabama ever actually moved, I mean it is mobile after all?

My irritation for the day, how long till the security folks at US airports will be doing strip searches? This time through security, I was made to remove my shoes, belt, jacket, computer out of bag (I guess X-ray machines can't see through bags). They didn't ask the girl behind me to remove her under wired bra so I don't really see what is so special about belts. If I had to choose between belts and bras then I'd always be having the women remove their bras. Isn't it amazing how I can take a semi serious blog and bring it down to my true level in no time at all...