IBM and Microsoft Benchmark.

According to the latest Buffer Group Workgroup and Enterprise Collaboration Lifecycle Positions Report, as the collaboration market reaches maturity in 2007, the outperforming vendors will be those that are capable of delivering solutions that integrate tightly with business processes and deliver unified messaging. Strong vertical strategies will be paramount to survival as the trend of commoditisation will continue to put pressure on solution providers to deliver value.

A somewhat unusual aspect of this market sector is the lack of a vendor in the Outperform category in the Early Adopter Phase (2003). Whilst certain vendors have managed to achieve a commanding position in the market, their products and solutions cannot yet be referred to as best-of-breed. The market is still immature and whilst the majority of vendors are'Under-performing' this is not a reflection on the quality of their solution offering.

Comment:

If we look at those vendors that are currently under-performing--Oracle, Computer Associates, Centra, Plumtree etc, they do not have poor solutions or technologies per se, but they are entering an evolving market space that is trying to develop and cement an identity. Centra, for example,has some excellent e-learning and on-line conferencing collaboration technology. However, it does not have some of the necessary components to deliver the different styles of Workgroup and Enterprise Collaboration.

This is not an omission on the part of Centra, as its strategy is to work via partnerships where additional functionality is required. Oracle will be playing catch-up but only for a short time, Plumtree is currently building specific collaborative functionality as part of the Enterprise Web Suite.

Consequently, it will not take long for these 'Under-performing' vendors to make a stand in the market and establish valuable technology share."Butler Group cites Documentum, Hyperwave, IBM, Intraspect, Microsoft, and Opentext as currently 'Performing'.

IBM is in the process of pulling all of its collaboration-facilitating products under one banner bringing much needed clarity to the positioning of the toolset. Microsoft is taking the logical step of moving towards a portal-centric view of collaboration, but it will not be until the release of version 2.0 of SharePoint Portal Server that the vendor will be in a position to exploit its true capabilities. Some industry watchers may be surprised by Hyperwave's current position.

However, Hyperwave has an excellent portfolio and is able to deliver and meet the requirements of a number of different styles of Workgroup and Enterprise Collaboration. The standards set by IBM and Microsoft will be difficult for the other vendors to match.

By 2007 the market for Workgroup and Enterprise Collaboration will be Mature. IBM and Microsoft will have been joined by CA and Oracle, and if Documentum makes some strategic acquisitions to bolster its document management collaboration capacities then Butler Group believes the vendor will justify its Outperform position.

By 2007, the rest of the market will have reached its own natural balance and smaller entrants will struggle to make an impact on the landscape due to the boundaries between collaboration, business process, and application integration becoming increasingly blurred. Potential entrants will be for Linux-based deployments, but if IBM uses its marketing muscle to keep product pricing low these solutions will gain very little market penetration.

www.butlergroup.com